the Mitsukoshi store. She
was irritated at Asako's failure to learn Japanese. It bored her to
have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and
undutiful.

Only at night they would chatter as girls will, even if they are
enemies; and it was then that Sadako narrated the history of her
romance with the young student.

One night, Asako awoke to find that the bed beside her was empty, and
that the paper _shoji_ was pushed aside. Nervous and anxious, she
rose and stood in the dark veranda outside the room. A cold wind was
blowing in from some aperture in the _amado_. This was unusual, for a
Japanese house in its night attire is hermetically sealed.

Suddenly Sadako appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair
was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night
kimono. By the dim light of the _andon_ (a rushlight in a square paper
box), Asako could see that the cloak was spotted with rain.

"I have been to _benjo_," said Sadako nervously.

"You have been out in the rain," contradicted her cousin. "You are wet
through. You will catch cold."

"_Sa! Damare!_ (Be quiet!)" whispered Sadako, as she threw her cloak
aside, "do not talk so loud. See!" She drew from her breast a short
sword in a sheath of shagreen. "If you speak one word, I kill you with
this."

"What have you done?" asked Asako, trembling.

"What I wished to do," was the sullen answer.

"You have been with Sekine?" Asako mentioned the student's name.

Sadako nodded in assent. Then she began to cry, hiding her face in her
kimono sleeve.

"Do you love him?" Asako could not help asking.

"Of course, I love him," cried Sadako, starting up from her sorrow.
"You see me. I am no more virgin. He is my life to me. Why cannot I
love him? Why cannot I be free like men are free to love as they wish?
I am new woman. I read Bernard Shaw. I find one law for men in Japan,
and another law for women. But I will break that law. I have made
Sekine my lover, because I am free."

Asako could never have imagined her proud, inhuman cousin reduced to
this state of quivering emotion. Never before had she seen a Japanese
soul laid bare.

"But you will marry Sekine, Sada dear; and then you will be happy."

"Marry Sekine!" the girl hissed, "marry a boy with no money and leave
you to be the Fujinami heiress, when I am promised to the Governor of
Osaka, who will be home Minister when the next Governor comes!"

"Oh, don't do that," urged