Masago smiled faintly at the expression in her mother’s eyes and continued rapidly:—
“Listen. I am seventeen years now,—old enough, almost, my father says, to be married. But I do not wish to marry.”
“No; do not interrupt me. I want to go away to school,—a private school in Kyoto, where other rich men send their daughters, and where I, too, can sometimes see those palaces and maybe the noble ladies and gentlemen you have told me so much about.”
“But, Masago, every maiden of your age wishes to marry; and your father has chosen—”
“Let me finish, if you please, or I will not talk to you at all. I do not know why it is, but I have no desire to marry; and sometimes I feel like one who is stifling in this miserable little town. Why should we, who have more wealth than many of those in Tokyo who live in palaces, be caged up here, like birds with clipped wings? What is the use of having that wealth if we may not use it? Oh, there are so many joyful happenings in the capital every day and every night. I read about it in those papers which father brings home sometimes from Tokyo. The city is so gay and brilliant, mother, and there are so many peculiar foreigners to see. I was made for such a place—not for this dull, quiet town. Why, I would even be content to see all this as an outsider, but to have to remain here when—Oh!”
She struck her hands together with an eloquent motion. Ohano stared at her aghast, regarding her flushing face and snapping eyes.
“Oh, mother,” she continued, “many people say I do not belong here. They recognize my difference from themselves,—everybody here. You know it is so. Ever since I was a little girl when you would tell me the fairy tales of those palaces in Kyoto—”
“They were not fairy tales,” said Ohano, gently.
“No, but I thought them so—then. And I imagined that some day the gods would befriend me, and that I would belong to that joyful world of which you spoke. And now to come to seventeen years and to be given right away in marriage to some foolish youth before I have had any chance to see—”
Her voice broke, and her emotion was so unusual a thing that Ohano could not bear to see it. Both her heart and tongue were stirred.
“You have a right to see it,” she said. “You belong to it—are a part of it, Masago. Your own father is—”