The announcement of his man that Ido and his charge had arrived contained no news for Jack, for he had been watching the road from Tokyo since nine o’clock, and had seen them while they were yet afar off. Nevertheless, he did not enter the zashishi until his man came to him with word that guests from the city were awaiting him, and then he had no definite idea of what he intended to do.

She was dressed exactly as she had been on her previous visit, and she made obeisance almost to the floor, in greeting him, as she then had done. He hastened her recovery from the deep courtesy by taking her hands and raising her to an upright posture.

“You have come to see me again? I am very glad to see you,” he said, with eager politeness.

“Nakoda say you wish see me. Tha’s why I come.” There was not a trace of her former coquetry in her manner.

“Yes, I had to send Ido after you. I don’t suppose you would ever have let me see you again if I had not.”

She shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly. “Me you don’ wish marrying with. You send me ‘way. What I do?”

“We could be capital friends, even if we didn’t care to marry, couldn’t we?”

“Frien’? I don’ wan’ frien’,” she returned, coldly.

“But I’d like to have you for my friend, all the same, though I’m afraid it’s not possible. Ido”—he hesitated—“Ido says you’re going to be married, you know.”

She inclined her head.

“You’re not married yet, are you?” he asked in alarm, forgetting that he had put this same question to the nakoda the day before.

“Nod yit.”

“Do you—um—like him?”

“Which one, my lord?” She looked up at him innocently.

“Oh, both of them!” He was beginning to get angry. He would find pleasure in laying violent hands upon the two, one at a time.

“Jus’ liddle bit, augustness.”

“Better than you do me?” he demanded, jealously.

She shook her head decisively. “You nod so ole, an nod so—hairy-like.” She rubbed her little hands over her face, by which he understood that the two wore beards. They were doubtless of his own country.

He hardly knew what to say next, and the silence grew embarrassing to him. She broke it by remarking, very quietly:

“Nakoda inform me you wan’ make liddle bit talk ad me.”

He turned to the match-maker, who was pretending deep interest in a framed drawing on the wall. “Say, Ido, just step into the next room a minute, will you?”

He turned back to the girl, as soon as Ido had obeyed him, with extravagant alacrity.

“You have never even told me your name,” he said.

“Yuki.”

“That means ‘Snowflake,’ doesn’t it? I like it. Well now, Yuki, mayn’t I visit you at your home, before you are married?”

He was anxious to see what her people were like, and how she lived.

“Mos’ poor house in all Tokyo—so liddle bit house augustness nod lige come.”

“But I don’t care if it is. I want to come anyhow. I want to see you, not the house. Won’t you tell me where you live?”

She shook her head. “No,” She said with simple directness, and then added as an after-thought, “House too small. You altogedder too big to enter thad liddle bit insignificant hovel.”

Her answer gave him offence. He wondered why she should dissemble, wondered whether she was laughing at him. A glance at her, however, and his distrust vanished. She seemed such a simple little body, yet he knew he did not understand her.

Her eyes, which she had kept turned downward, slowly uplifted and looked questioningly into his own. Such wonderful eyes! Such a simple, exquisite face! He was suddenly suffused with a great wave of tenderness, and he bent low, and gently made prisoners of her hands. However indefinite his purpose had been up to this time, it was definite enough now.

“So you remember, Yuki, what you asked me when you were here before?”

“Yes.” She still gazed at him questioningly.

“Would you like to—would you rather marry me than one of those other fellows?” he said, softly.

“Yes,” again, in the smallest voice this time.

He hesitated, and she asked, quickly, “You wan’ me do so?”

“That’s just what I want, Yuki, dear,” he whispered, drawing her hands to his lips.

“All ride.” She trembled—perhaps shivered is the better word—as she said this, but gave no other sign of emotion.

Before Jack could so much as touch his lips to her forehead, Ido entered smiling his professional blessing. It was evident that in the other room he had found no drawing to distract his attention, and a large new peephole in the immaculate shoji indicated where he had given all his eyes and ears to what was going on, and he could wait no longer to press his claim.

Jack, seeing an unpleasant duty before him, and desiring to have done with it at once, told Yuki that he would be back in a minute, and led the nakoda into the room out of which he had just come.

Ido immediately began to make terms. This part was loathsome to the young man.

“Why,” he said, hotly, “if we’re to be married, she can have all she wants and needs.”

That wouldn’t do at all, the nakoda told him, warily. There would have to be a marriage settlement and a stated allowance agreed upon. He would have to pay more, also, as she was a maid and not a widow.

When the ugly terms of the agreement were completed, the nakoda bowed himself out, and Jack went back to Yuki. He found her changed; her simplicity had left her, and her coquetry had returned. She stood off from him, and he felt constrained and awkward. After a time she demanded of him, with a shrewd inflection in her voice:

“You goin’ to lige me, excellency?”

“No question of that,” he answered promptly, smiling.

“No,” she repeated, “tha’s sure thing,” and then she laughed at her own assurance, and she was so pretty he wanted to kiss her, but she backed from him in mock alarm.

“Tha’s nod ride,” she declared, “till we marry.”

“God speed the day!” he said, with devout joyousness. Still approaching her, as she backed from him, he questioned her boyishly:

“And you? Will you like me?”

She surveyed him critically. Then she nodded emphatically. They laughed together this time, but when he approached her she grew fearful. He did not want to frighten her.

“You god nod anudder wife?” she asked.

“No! Good heavens!”

“I god nod anudder hosban’,” she informed him, complacently.

“I should hope not.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “you marrying with girl in Japan thad god marry before. Me? I never.”

“No, of course not.” He didn’t quite understand what she was driving at.

Then she said: “You pay more money ad liddle girl lige me whad nod been marry before?”

He recoiled and frowned heavily at her.

“I settled that matter with the nakoda,” he said, coldly.

Seeing he was displeased, she tried to conciliate him. She smiled at him, engagingly, coaxingly.

“You don’ lige me any more whicheven.”

But his face did not clear up. She had hurt him deeply by her reference to money.

“Perhaps you don’ want me even,” she suggested, tentatively. “I bedder go ‘way. Leave you all ‘lone.”

She turned and was making her way slowly out of the room, when he sprang impetuously after her.

“Don’t, Yuki!” he cried, and caught her eagerly in his arms. She yielded herself to his embrace, though she was trembling like a little frightened child. For the first time he kissed her.

After she had left him, he stared with some wonder at the reflection of himself in a mirror. So he was to be married, was he? Yes, there was no getting out of it now. As for that, he didn’t want to get out of it—of this he was quite sure. He was very well content—nay, he was enthusiastically happy with what the future promised.

But his happiness might have been felt in less measure if his eyes, instead of staring at his mirrored likeness, could have been fixed on Yuki. She had borne herself with a joyous air to the jinrikisha, but once within it, and practically secure from observation, the life had seemingly gone out of her. The brown of her skin had paled to gray, and all the way to Tokyo her eyes shifted neither to right nor left, but stared straight ahead into nothingness, and once, when Ido looked down, he found that they were filled with tears.