Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/47

 “You’re wrong about all that, you know. Well, the melon is good anyway.”

“In America you’ll be getting stacks of food to eat every morning as soon as you wake up.”

The conversation drifted along lightly. Finally the waiters brought in fruit-salad and poured champagne.

“Aren’t you jealous—even a little?” the woman suddenly asked. All the time they had been eating and chatting away, she had remembered how they used to sit facing each other like this after the theatre at the little restaurant above the Blühr Steps. Sometimes they had quarrelled, but they had always made it up in the end. She had meant to sound as if she were joking; but despite herself, her voice was serious and she felt ashamed.

Watanabé lifted his champagne glass high above the flowers and said in a clear voice, “Kosinsky soll leben!”

The woman silently raised her glass. There was a frozen smile on her face. Under the table her hand trembled uncontrollably.

It was still only half past eight when a lonely, black car drove slowly along the Ginza through an ocean of flickering lights. In the back sat a woman, her face hidden by a veil.

Mori Ōgai (1862–1922) This story was first published in 1910 Translated by Ivan Morris