Jack Bigelow was beset by the nakodas (professional match-makers). He was known to be one of the richest foreigners in the city, and the nakodas gave him no rest. Though he found them interesting, with the little comedies and tragedies to relate of the matches they had made and unmade, he had remained impregnable to their arts. He naturally shrank from such a union, and in this position he was strengthened by a promise he had made before leaving America to a college chum, his most intimate friend, a young English-Japanese student, named Taro Burton, that during his stay in Japan he would not append his name to the long list of foreigners who for a short, happy, and convenient season cheerfully take unto themselves Japanese wives, and with the same cheerfulness desert them.

Taro Burton was almost a monomaniac on this subject, and denounced both the foreigners who took to themselves and deserted Japanese wives, and the native Japanese, who made such a practice possible. He himself was a half-caste, being the product of a marriage between an Englishman and a Japanese woman. In this case, however, the husband had proved faithful to his wife and children up to death; but then he had married a daughter of the nobility, a descendant of the proud Jokichi family, and the ceremony had been performed by an English missionary. Despite the happiness of this marriage, Taro held that the Eurasian was born to a sorrowful lot, and was bitterly opposed to the union of the women of his country with men of other lands, particularly as he was Westernized enough to appreciate how lightly such marriages were held by the foreigners. It was true, of course, that after the desertion the wife was divorced, according to the law, but that, in Taro’s mind, only made the matter more detestable.

For five years, up to their graduation four months before this, the young American and the young half-Japanese had been associated as closely together as it is possible for two young men to be, and a strong and deep affection existed between them.

It had been originally decided that the friends would make this trip together, which in Taro Burton’s case was to be his return to the home he had left, and, with Jack Bigelow, was to be the beginning of a year’s travel preliminary to entering the business of his father, who was a rich shipbuilder. But for some reason, which he never clearly set forth to his friend, Taro had backed out at almost the last minute; yet he had urged Jack to undertake the trip alone, and, under promise to follow shortly, finally had prevailed. So Jack Bigelow had made the long voyage to Japan, and had taken a pretty house of his own a short distance from Tokyo.

It was unfortunate that Taro could not have accompanied his friend, for, while the latter was not a weak character, he was easy-going, good-natured, and easily manipulated through his feelings.

The young Japanese, had he done nothing else, at least would have kept the nakodas and their offerings of matrimonial happiness on the other side of the American’s doors. As it was, one of them in particular was so picturesque in appearance, quaint in speech, and persistent in his calls, that the young man had encouraged his visits, until a certain jocular intimacy put their relations with each other on a pleasant and familiar footing.

It was this nakoda (Ido was his name, so he told Jack) who brought an applicant for a husband to his house, one day, and besought him at least to hold a look-at meeting with her.

“She is beautiful like unto the sun-goddess,” he declared, with the extravagance of his class.

“The last was like the moon,” said the young man, laughing. “Have you any stars to trot out?”

“Stars!” echoed the other, for a moment puzzled, and then, beaming with delighted enlightenment, “Ah, yes—her eyes, her feet, hair, hands, twinkling like unto them same stars! She prays for just a look-at meeting with your excellency.”

“Well, for the fun of the thing, then,” said the other, laughing. “I’m sure I don’t mind having a look-at meeting with a pretty girl. Show her into the zashishi (guest-room) and I’ll be along in a moment. But, look here,” he continued, “you’d better understand that I’m only going through this ceremony for the fun of the thing, mind you. I don’t intend to marry any one—at all events, not a girl of that class.”

“Nod for a leetle while whicheven?” persuaded the nakoda.

“Nod for a leetle while whicheven,” echoed the young man, but the agent had disappeared.

When Jack, curious to know what she was like, she who was seeking him for a husband, entered the zashishi, he found the blinds high up and the sunshine pouring into the room. His eyes fell upon her at once, for the shoji at the back of the room was parted, and she stood in the opening, her head drooping bewitchingly. He could not see her face. She was quite small, though not so small as the average Japanese woman, and the two little hands, clasped before her, were the whitest, most irresistible and perfect hands he had ever seen. He had heard of the beauty of the hands of the Japanese women, and was not surprised to find even a girl of this class—she was a geisha, of course, he told himself—with such exquisite, delicate hands. He knew she was holding them so that they could be seen to advantage, and her little affected pose amused and pleased him.

After he had looked at her a moment, she subsided to the mats and made her prostration. She was dressed very gayly in a red crÊpe kimono, tied about with a purple obi. Her hair was dressed after the fashion of the geisha, with a flower ornament at top and long, pointed daggers at either side; but as she bowed her head to the mats, some pin in her hair escaped and slipped, and then a tawny, rebellious mass of hair, which was never meant to be worn smoothly, had fallen all about her, tumbled into her eyes and over her ears, and literally covered her little crouching form. She shivered in shame at the mishap, and then knelt very still at his feet.

Bigelow was speechless. Never before in his life had he seen such hair. It was black, though not densely so, for all over it, even where it had been darkened with oil, there was a rich red tinge, and it was luxuriously thick and long and wavy.

“Good heavens!” he said, after the little figure had remained absolutely motionless for a full minute; “she’ll hurt or cramp herself in that position.”

The girl did not rise at the sound of his voice, but crept nearer to him, her hair still enshrouding her. It made him feel creepy, and annoyed and pleased and amused him altogether.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Please stand up. Do!”

The nakoda told him to lift her to her feet, and the young man did so, entangling his hands in her hair. When she stood up, he saw her face, which was oval and rosy, the lips very red. She still drooped her eyes, so that her face was incomplete.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, gently. “And what do you want with me?”

Now she raised her head and he saw her eyes. They startled him. They were large, though narrow, and intensely, vividly blue. Before, with her hair neatly smoothed and dressed, he had noticed nothing extraordinary about her; now, with that rich red-black hair enshrouding her, and the long, blue eyes looking at him mistily, she was an eerie little creature that made him marvel. A Japanese girl with such hair and eyes! And yet the more he looked at her the more he saw that her clothes became her; that she was Japanese despite the hair and eyes. He did not try to explain the anomaly to himself, but he could not doubt her nationality. There was no other country she could belong to.

“You are Japanese?” he finally asked, to make sure.

She nodded.

“I thought so, and yet—”

She smiled, and her eyes closed a trifle as she did so. She was all Japanese in a moment, and prettier than ever.

“You see—your eyes and hair—” he began again. She nodded and dimpled, and he knew she understood.

“What is it you want with me?” he asked, desiring rather to hear her speak than to learn her object, for this he knew.

She was solemn now. She flushed, and her eyes went down. To explain to him why she had come to him in this wise was a painful task. He could guess that, but she forced the words past her lips.

“To be your wife, my lord,” she said in English, and the queer quality of her voice thrilled him strangely.

This was the answer he knew was coming; nevertheless it stirred him in a way he had not expected. To have this wonderfully pretty girl before him, beseeching him to marry her—he who had as yet never dreamed of marriage for himself—was disturbing to his balance of mind. Nay, more—it was revolting. He shrank back involuntarily, wondering why she had come to him, and this wonder he put into words.

“But why do you want to marry me?” he asked.

The expression of her face was enigmatical now. She had ceased to blush and smile, and had become quite white. Suddenly she commenced to laugh—thrilling, elfish laughter, that rang out through the room, startling the echoes of the house.

“Why?” he repeated, fascinated.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I mus’ make money,” she said.

Of course this was her reason; he knew that before she spoke; but hearing her say so gave him pain. She was such a dainty little body.

“Oh, you need not sell yourself for that,” he said, earnestly. “Why, I’ll give you some—all you want. You’re awfully young, aren’t you? Just a little girl. I can’t marry you. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Again she shrugged her shoulders, and spoke in Japanese to the nakoda.

“She says some one else will, then,” he interpreted.

“All right,” said the young man, almost bitterly.

She pretended to go towards the door, and then came back towards Bigelow.

“I seen you before,” she announced, ingenuously.

“Where?” He was curiously interested. He fancied that her face was familiar.

“Ad tea-house.”

“What tea-house?”

“On liddle bit island. You ‘member? I dance like this-a-way.” She performed a few steps.

“What! you that girl?” He knew her in an instant now. “How could you remember me?”

“You following me after dance with ‘nudder American gent, and before thad some one point ad you—ole wooman thad always accompanying me.”

“How did she know me?”

“She din know you to speag ad, bud—she saying you mos’ reech barbarian ad all Japan.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, coldly.

“She tell me I bedder git marry with you.”

“Indeed! Why?”

She hung her head a moment. “Because she know I luffing with you,” she said.

“You loving with me!” He laughed outright. Her ingenuousness was entrancing.

“Yes,” she said, and he, with masculine conceit, half believed her.

“But wouldn’t you rather stay at the tea-house than get married?” he asked.

“Not nuff money that businesses,” she returned.

“Do you do everything for money?”

“How I goin’ to live?”

This question, answering a question, brought her back to the purpose of her visit. She held her little hands out to him.

“Ah, excellency, pray marry with me,” she begged.

He took her hands quickly in his own. They were soft and so small. He could enclose them with one of his. They were delightful. He knew they were daintily perfumed, like everything else about her. He did not let them go.

“You ought not to marry, you know,” he said to her, almost boyishly. “How old are you, anyhow?”

She ignored his question.

“I will be true, good wife to you forever,” she said, and then swiftly corrected herself, as though frightened by her own words. “No, no, I make ridigulous mistage—not forever—jus’ for liddle bit while—as you desire, augustness!”

“But I don’t desire,” he laughed nervously. “I don’t want to get married. I won’t be over a few months at most in Japan.”

“Oh, jus’ for liddle bit while marry with me,” she breathed, entreatingly—“Pl-ease!”

It hurt him strangely to have her plead so. She looked delicate and refined and gentle. He put her hands quickly from him. She held them out and put them back again into his. Her eyes clouded, and he thought she was going to cry.

He was seized with a desire to keep her from weeping, if he could, this little creature, who seemed made for anything but tears. He spoke from this impulse, without giving so much as a second’s thought to the seriousness of his words.

“Don’t cry. I’ll marry you, of course, if you want me to.”

He felt the hands in his own tremble.

“Thangs, excellency,” she said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, but it was a voice which had in it no note of joy.

There was pleasure, however, in the eyes of the nakoda. He had done a good piece of business, a most excellent piece of business, for the American gentleman was reputed to be able to buy hundreds and hundreds of rice-fields if he so cared to do. The nakoda came forward with a benignant smile to arrange the terms.

“She will cost only three hundred yen per down and fifteen yen each end per week. Soach a cheap price for a wife!”

It was the grinning face of this matrimonial middleman that brought Bigelow back to his senses. He had said he would marry this little creature, whose limp hands he was holding. He dropped them as though they were the hands of one dead, and drew back.

“I won’t do it!” he almost shouted. “Never!” Then he thought what must be the feelings of the little girl whose yoke of marriage he was refusing, and softened. “I wasn’t thinking when I said I would. I don’t want to marry a Japanese girl. I don’t want to marry any girl. I wouldn’t be doing right, and it wouldn’t be fair to you.” He paused, and then added, lamely, “I think I’d like you awfully, though, if I only knew you.”

“But—” spoke up the nakoda, anxiously, who found his dream of a large fee fading into thin air.

Jack turned upon him quickly and gave him a sharp look, whereat he retired hurriedly.

A look of relief had come over the girl’s face when Jack had cried out that he would not marry her, and at this he wondered much. This relief in her face, however, was succeeded almost instantly by disappointment. But she spoke no further word. She gave him a single hurried glance from beneath fluttering eyelashes, courtesied until her head was almost on a level with his knees, and left him.