A couple of the artists passed, bowed courteously. He raised his hat to them.
"But it isn't pose, at least with only a few of them. If you only knew how some of them slave and toil for the ideals they have, you wouldn't talk like that. They may seem absurd to you, or funny even, but I tell you, you would have a different idea of them, if you only knew them."
"Yes, I daresay they must be interesting to know." Throughout the afternoon he had sensed an indefinite resentment that she seemed to be so familiar with them. How did she come to know them so well? It was not jealousy, still, honestly, it might be something fairly close to that. But the whole thing irritated him. He wanted to get away from it, to some other subject. "It is getting quite late, Adachi-san. Let us have dinner somewhere."
But she would not get away from it. "Thank you very much, Kent-san. You're too good to me. But if you really think they may be interesting, why shouldn't we go to one of the places where they eat, right near here. Kent-san, you are the only foreigner whom I know, and you seem to be such, such a reactionary, and I want you to see our side of it. You foreigners ought to be the ones to help us, you know. I want you to, please." The slim, white hand was on his sleeve. She was looking at him earnestly, appealingly almost.
Hang it, the power which these eyes had over him; they could make him do anything, he felt. Of course, in a way, that was what he wanted, to allow himself complete abandon, inertly drifting, dreaming under the spell of that glorious, pervasive beauty, to let himself go under the hypnotism of her charm. But this was something entirely different; the injection of the element of intellect spoiled the whole thing. It was her beauty, not her brain he wished to enjoy, as one might be dreamily soothed by the spell of a picture, unheeding the mechanics to which it owed being. That was her function, beauty. Why should she disrupt the harmony by bringing in thought, this crass, clamorous new thought that seemed like a plague of fever obsessing the new generation? "Our" side of it, she said. He wanted her to be Japan of droning temple bell, slender pagoda, rich, flaunting silks, not the Japan of steam, electricity and new thought. But her earnestness softened him. He would make the best of it. To-day, they had fallen into the wrong setting. He would contrive, next time, one more congruous with the idea which he had in mind.