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[Illustration: MOUSMÉ AND CYRIL. PAGE 79.]
_Author of_ “Mousmé,” “Marcelle of the Quarter,” “A Writer of Fiction,” etc.
New York Frederick A. Stokes Company _Publishers_
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
That the present edition of “_My Japanese Wife_” has been called for is a source of satisfaction to the writer. Of previous editions some 60,000 copies have been sold, and it is hoped the present version will prove none the less acceptable from the fact that the story has been revised and a considerable amount of new matter added to it.
The author has done this to enable the final form of the novel to be that in which it was originally written, but which for purposes of first publication in a particular series it was necessary to alter.
Mousmé is leaning over me as I write. Mousmé, a butterfly from a far Eastern land, her dress of apricot silk, with a magenta satin _obi_ (sash), a blot of bright colour in the dulness of my English study. My Mousmé! with Dresden-china tinted cheeks, and tiny ways; playing at life, as it always seems to me, with the dainty grace of Japan, that idealised doll’s-house land. Mousmé, who goes with me everywhere, whose _bizarre_ clothing attracts notice to her even when the delicately pretty face of a child-woman with innocent, soft eyes and finely arched brows is hidden behind the ever-present fan, which she draws from the ample folds of her _obi_.
My friends at Nagasaki told me that I was foolish to marry a mousmé, especially as I was to return to England so soon.
“Why not hire one for the remaining period of your stay?” suggested Kotmasu, who dined with me at my little toy-like villa so often that he began to offer advice as a matter of course. “Misawa would find you a mousmé,” he continued, “whom you could put off as easily as an old glove. A real mousmé, not a _geisha_ girl with a past, an ambiguous present, and a who-knows-what future.”
Others of my friends laughed till they made the paper partitions of my house shiver like the strings and parchment of the _samisen_. “You will tire of her,” said they.