Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/75

 to live for anyway.’ Kneeling in the gravel again, she pressed her face to my sleeve and wept quite without regard for where she was.

“I was somewhat confused. ‘That will do, that will do,’ I said, pulling her to her feet and patting her on the back. Her body shook and she was choked with tears.

“ ‘I was wrong. Hit me. Kick me. I won’t blame you. Do what you like with me. Nothing can be too bad. Please.’ She pushed herself tight against me. I was a little embarrassed by the sobbing, so loud now that it seemed to echo over the river. My anger disappeared, and I actually found myself apologizing to her, asking her to forgive me. Finally we made our way back.

“That almost lunatic frenzy began to leave her, and she was such a small, abject figure as she touched a hand to her tangled hair, blinked her swollen eyes, looked at the floor as if ashamed to be seen in the full light, that the pity of it was too much for me. I was responsible, and I wanted only to console her. In her happiness she began sniffling again as if she remembered what she ought to have been doing all along. No, no, I’m only boring you with these ruminations about my love affairs. But I’m not lying: the more we quarrelled the deeper we went.

“She had heard that the talks with her geisha house were not going well, she said, and that a lawyer was to be sent after her father. She had therefore gone for help to a broker across the river.

“ ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ I spread out the five bank notes. Since she had been indentured for 800, a compromise at 500 ought to be possible; and so we lay the whole night in each other’s arms, working out the smallest details of the future. Since I had nothing to fear in the world now that my relations with Shimbashi were at an end, I started out boldly the next morning and reached agreement with the house in Shitaya.

“We lived in a dream for a month or two; but I had alienated everyone, we had sold the last of our clothes, and, as the