Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, volume 2.pdf/113

Rh sound of weeping, which seemed to be coming from the next room. She at once put down her paper, and rising to her feet, she went to see what was the matter. She found her sister sitting beside a brazier, sobbing into the sleeves of her kimono.

“Oh, don’t cry, my dear!” said Nobu-ko gently, but her words had little effect upon Teru-ko, and she continued to sob very bitterly. The elder woman then began to feel a kind of cruel triumphant joy as she watched the quivering shoulders of her younger sister. At last she spoke again in a gentler voice, “Forgive me, my dear sister, I was in the wrong. I’ll be quite contented if I am sure that your life is perfectly happy. Please believe what I say. If Mr. Shunkichi loves you …!”

Then she began to feel in rather a sentimental mood. Her sister lifted her face and looked at her. In her eyes there was no sign at all of deep sorrow or anger, but an expression of envy and jealousy lurked in her tearful eyes.

“Then why … why did you … last night …?” criredcried [sic] Teru-ko, but before she could complete her sentence, she buried her face again in her long sleeves and burst into another paroxysm of weeping.

In an hour or two Nobu-ko, enclosed in a covered rickshaw, was hurrying toward the terminus of the tramway. All she was able to see through the small square window of the covered vehicle were rows of suburban houses mouingmoving [sic] backwards one by one as the rickshaw raced on its way. Variegated leaves of