“I did not hear you speak, honorable step-mother.”
“Your ears are accommodatingly dull. You did not care to hear.”
Azalea sighed, then pressed her lips together, as if to prevent the retort that might have escaped them.
“No-o,” she said softly, and then, “perhaps, yes. It would be a solution of my troubles, step-mother, would it not?”
“Would you marry any one who asked you, then? You appear to lack the common qualities of maiden modesty.”
“I did not say I would marry any one,” said the girl, flushing, “but almost anyone would be kinder than you.”
They were daring words, and she anticipated their effect upon her step-mother, for, after having spoken them she made a frightened motion from the older woman, who had seized her arm and was cruelly pinching it. Tears of pain came into the girl’s eyes, but she made no outcry. Suddenly Madame Yamada flung the girl’s arm from her.
“Yes,” said Azalea briefly, her arm still sore, though released.
“Yet,” said her step-mother, “the pain inflicted by a woman, who is weak, is nothing to that inflicted by a man. What will you do when your husband beats you?”
“I do not know,” said Azalea mechanically, and then added slowly, “but I should not weep, mother-in-law. I would not give him that pleasure. But—” she paused; “all husbands do not beat their wives. Perhaps the gods will favor me with a kind one. I should not marry him otherwise.”
“How will you test his kindness?” asked her mother scornfully.
“I will know,” she answered. “I will see him and love him before I marry him.”
She arose and fluttered her sleeves back and forth. Her arm was in pain. She moved it thus mechanically as a nervous method of relief, but Madame Yamada had seen the figure coming along the white road toward their house, and she leaped to her feet like a savage.
“What!” she cried. “You stand shamelessly in the open doorway shaking your arms in unmaidenly fashion because a man approaches.”
“I did not even see him,” said Azalea, shrinking before the anger of her step-mother’s expression, “and, mother-in-law, see for yourself. The man is Matsuda Isami. Is it likely I would fling my sleeves at him?”
“At him most of all,” said her step-mother hoarsely. “Do not deny it, shameless girl!”