DISPROVING A PROVERB.
While Taylor sketched Koto, Sinclair and Numè wandered away from them,
and finding a pretty shady spot sat down together. The girl was
strangely shy, though she did not pretend to hide the artless pleasure
she had in seeing him again.
"What have you been doing with yourself all these days, Numè?"
"Nosing."
"I thought you had been making sly trips to Tokyo?"
"I was _so lonely_," the girl said, sadly.
"You ought to be very happy now--now that your marriage is assured."
"Numè is nod _always_ habby," she answered, wistfully. "Sometimes I tell
Mrs. Davees I am nod _vaery_, VAERY habby, an' she laf at me, tell me I
donno how habby I am."
"But why are you not always happy?"
"I _don't_ to understand. I thing' thad I want to--" she looked Sinclair
in the face with serious, wistful eyes--"I thing' I want to be luf," she
said.
Sinclair felt the blood rush to his head in a torrent at this strange,
ingenuous confession. The girl's sweet face fascinated him strangely. He
had thought of her constantly ever since he had met her. With her
strange, foreign, half-wild beauty, she awakened in him all the
slumbering passion of his nature, and at the same time, because of her
sweetness, innocence and purity of heart, a finer sense of chivalry than
he had ever felt before--a wish to protect her.
"You do not need to wish to be loved, Numè--every one who knows you must
love you."
"Koto luf me," she said, "tha's all. My fadder _vaery_ proud of me
sometimes, an' thad I marry with Orito; Orito luf me a liddle, liddle
bit--Mrs. Davees--vaery good friend--you----" she paused, looking at him
questioningly. Then she added, shyly:
"You are _vaery_ good friend too, I thing'."
Sinclair had forgotten everything save the witching beauty of the girl
at his side. She continued speaking to him:
"Are you habby, too?" she asked.
"Sometimes, Numè; not always."
"Mrs. Davees tell me thad you luf the pretty Americazan lady all with
your heart, an' thad you marry with her soon, so Numè thing' you _mus'_
be vaery habby."
Sinclair made a nervous gesture, but he did not answer Numè. After a
while he said:
"Numè, one does not always love where one marries."
"No--in Japan naever; bud Mrs. Davees say nearly always always in
America."
"Mrs. Davis is wrong this time, Numè."
About a half hour later he heard Taylor calling to them.
"Numè," he said, as he helped her rise to her feet, "I know a pretty
spot on the river not far from your home. Won't you and Koto come there
instead of going all the way to Tokyo?"
The girl nodded her head. As they started up the hill she said: "Mrs.
Davees tell me _not_ to say too much to you."
"Don't put any bar on your speech, Numè. There is nothing you may not
say;" he paused, "but--er--perhaps you had better not say anything to
_her_ about our meeting."
He was strangely abstracted as he and Taylor trudged back to their
hotel. The Englishman glanced at him sideways.
"Nice little girl, that--Numè-san."
Taylor stopped in the walk to knock the ash from his pipe against a huge
oak tree.
"Hope she is not like the rest of them."
"What do you mean?"
"Ah--well, don't you know--lots of fire and all that--but as for
heart--ever hear the old saying: 'A Japanese flower has no smell, and a
Japanese woman no heart'?"
The perfume-laden blossoms and flowers about them stole their sweetness
into his nostrils even as he spoke. Perhaps Sinclair recognized this.
"It is doubtless as untrue of the woman as the flower. Ah--pretty good
smelling flowers those over there, eh?" He plucked a couple of wild
flowers that resembled the pink.
"Well, I guess the poet--or--fool--who said that alluded only to the
national flower--the chrysanthemum," Taylor said.
"Apparently--yes; he was a fool;--didn't know what he was talking
about."