"So, to sum it all up, I think it will be a good thing for you to leave the latchstring of your heart hanging out a bit that some little hand may take a pull at it by chance. It will be good for your present state of mind, and it will be good for your work. I am not joking. Not only will it give you insight into Japanese character such as you may get in no other way, but, if you are at all like me, you may find in some girl, if not exactly inspiration, whatever that is, at least some kind of subtle sympathy that helps and pushes you along. I myself, in my time, under just such circumstances, did some mighty good work, or came near accomplishing it, but now, damn it!"
He snapped his fingers, flung out in impatient gesture. The pause was so sudden it produced, conflictingly, the effect of an abrupt sound, a trumpet blare in hushed stillness. Kent looked up. Jun-san had noticed it, too. Squatting on her silk _zabuton_ in the background, her sewing had dropped to her lap, and she was looking at Karsten wonderingly, solicitously. She never spoke in English; it was generally accepted that she did not understand it, but Kent wondered whether she did not really understand more than they thought, whether she might not intuitively, from intonation, gesture, aided by such words as she must have picked up, gain at least some idea of the drift of their conversation.
The silence became uncomfortable, exasperating. "But why don't you take it up again? You are no man to mope about. You are not doing anything, just killing time reading magazines and novels. How can that satisfy you in the long run. Why, then, don't you take some of the advice that you have just given me?"
"I can't, or at least I won't, on account of---- That is, the woman is still here, in Tokyo, and I want to show her. It may seem to you contradictory, absurd, perverse. It doesn't sound logical, except, possibly, as a sort of heaping of coals on her head, to show her that I, at least, am faithful. I never told her what I knew, never blamed her. I think that in this way she is getting punishment far more subtle than anything I could inflict by abusing her, or by running after other women. Something must be going on in her mind. Still, who am I that I should have a right to punish any woman for turning to another man, after my sort of life? I only got what I deserved, after all. Anyway, my position happened to be such that I couldn't speak out, couldn't jump on the man or the woman. That rather governed my course. For, of course, one doesn't in that way, in such a case, when one is still agitated, shattered by anger, jealousy, disappointment, in all that whirl of emotions, just sit down and deliberately shape out a definite course of procedure, I shall do this, and I shall do that. No, one stews about, waits to figure it out, to decide what to do when one has become calmer, and then, if one has done nothing at the moment of crisis, at the impulse of sudden discovery, consternation, passion, then one gradually drifts into accepting the course which things naturally take, the path of least resistance. Yes, that's undoubtedly it, the path of least resistance."