Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/185

 what you told him because you were "honorable"; that is, entirely worthy of belief. But your speech would have to be quite direct. He drew no inferences, he understood no innuendo, he made no analogies. If he comprehended you at all, it was in the way of your very words.

Kito's was a short-lived trade; and he had already (if we speak of his outside only) outlived his time. Yet he held on, sustained by something within,—it must have been,—unsteady, faltering sometimes, sometimes with a gasp of pain at the cardiac region, sometimes overcome by a weariness his will could not entirely subdue—on, silent and gray in the cheer and light about him, to some hopeless goal that no one knew, no one cared to know. Well, your care was simply what it would have been in the hiring of a horse. If Kito chose to import into the transaction the human equation, that was his affair, not yours. Sentiment in either case would have been an impudent imposition upon the terms of the contract. You wanted speed. And yet, sentiment would tug hard at your heart as you watched Kito's pitiful back, and you would sometimes forget about speed.

When not "otherwise engaged" (and he