Page:Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon (Reece).pdf/275

 Therefore, I'll follow your suggestion and send Tanaka back to Kyoto, if possible, and I would like to ask you to keep my daughter under your care for another couple of years."

"That's a good idea," Tokio said.

They also conversed on one or two things relating to Yoshiko and Tanaka. Tokio told Yoshiko's father about their stay at Saga in Kyoto, and developments since then; he concluded by saying that it was his belief that only platonic love had been established between them, and they had had no disgraceful relationship. On hearing this, although Yoshiko's father nodded and said, "Even so, I must assume a disgraceful relationship has taken place between them."

All too late, her father's mind was filled with remorse concerning his daughter. He had sent Yoshiko to live in a dormitory of a fashionable girls' school in Kobe out of a provincial's vanity, by granting her earnest desire to study writing, he had agreed to send her to Tokyo. He did not hold too strict a control over her actions and allowed her to have her own way because of her delicate health. These things recurred in his mind.

An hour later, Tanaka, who had been summoned, entered the room where Tokio and Mr. Yokoyama were seated. Yoshiko seated herself beside Tanaka and listened, with her pompadour head leaning forward, to what they were talking about. From the start, her father's impression of Tanaka was not very favorable. The shabby appearance of Tanaka, who wore a white-striped and a navy blue  with white splashes, induced feelings of disdain and abhorrence in Yoshiko's father's heart. His sense of resentment against Tanaka for stealing