“You’ve got to be very ready with your tongue,” he remarked, “but I should doubt if you, down in your true heart, love me half so much as you used to. That man Tokubey, I understand, is a man of means, sense and everything else;—such a world of difference between him and myself! The sooner I give myself away to the officer, the better for your sake, I know!”
“Oh, stuff! If you mean to play the jealous husband for my entertainment, nix for mine! I don’t relish that sort of thing. I don’t know what you’re thinking of me, but I do know this: except to you, I have never given myself away—”
“More strange that Tokubey should put up so much cash for you!”
“Give me all the more credit for that! I haven’t exactly killed a man, but when it comes to wicked business like that, I know a thing or two to teach you!”
Wherewith the man was satisfied at once. He repented of his mistrusting mind, whining for joy, “Forgive me! Forgive me!”
“To me who know so little about the ways of the people you are with, things seemed so strange that I became suspicious. But now that I have so much from your own lips, as much as I wanted—I can go and die happy!”
“You are generally so quiet and nice, never wanting to have too much your own way, so, a word of jealousy like that from your lips, once in a while, sounds to me all the sweeter—makes me want to love you the more for it!”
Never had he thought her so lovable as at this moment. He wanted, wished to love her strongly; in the tumult of his heart he became so bold of mind that he would as lief cry, “Let everything else be damned!”
“Now, Shin-san, things have gone this far; what difference to them if you stayed back a little longer or shorter time? Stay with me half a year or so, I pray you!” Tsuya was alert to perceive her chance; she poured out her very soul into her words as she strove to sway his mind. What response was given her, scarcely remembered he now—beyond some expression, vague indeed, but indicative, if anything, of a mind drifting whither she willed. And no doubt but he was of such a mind in those hours.
Then, there followed a doze out of which they were not to awake before the second hour past noon. Again, they betook themselves to drinking; but, for some reason or other, they felt their hearts devoid of any such emotion of joy as they might expect to feel as memories of those hours of the morn. The last of their evenings was here, and the evening was still so young, and they sat there, a pair of helpless minds moping in gloom. There seemed to be naught for them save to seek in drinks the aid to buoy their spirits. But what more of drinks they took only brought on an aching stupor to their heads, depressing their minds still farther. It was impotent remorse that had stalked forth in the wake of orgies to assail their minds.
“Shin-san, I hope you haven’t forgotten what you told me early this morning?”
Tsuya spoke as if struck by some passing thought, after a spell of silence that had endured some while, and her sober, grave tone was so foreign to her usual self that it might have been adopted for a studied affect. If not half a year, two or three days more, at least, she persistently urged him to stay; for it was her idea that they should live such a brief time as he should allow himself in a happier spirit yet to be coaxed out of the cups of sake. Shinsuké, for his part, was resolute about his move on the morrow and as insistent in his effort to persuade her to return to her parents’ home. Neither of them was ready to give in; their paths of thought diverged, and remained apart, as they sank deeper into gloomy silence.
“Oh, what’s the use! What’s the use of it all!” she muttered disconsolately, as she rose to her feet. She returned with her samisen.16 With a display of greater vim than was called for, she shoved open the sliding screens at the low, wide window. Placing herself over the sill, she began to play upon the samisen some measures of the Katobushi.17 Her voice of plaintive richness, of which well she may have been proud, floated out to fill the room with its melodious tremors, even arresting the steps of some wayfarers below on the street. “Can you not hear these words of song? Oh! can you not feel the soul of this music that you would still go away from me?”—of such words of appeal her eyes were eloquent, as they gave a quick glance, now and
