The life of a Japanese lady of quality is peculiarly tedious.  She is relieved from the domestic cares which give occupation to her humbler sisters.  But she is not treated as an equal or as a companion by her menfolk, who are taught that marriage is for business and not for pleasure, and consequently that home-life is a bore.  She is supposed to find her own amusements, such as flower-arrangement, tea-ceremony, music, kimono-making and the composition of poetry.  More often, this refined and innocent ideal degenerates into a poor trickle of an existence, enlivened only by scrappy magazine reading, servants’ gossip, empty chatter about clothes, neighbours and children, backbiting, envying and malice.

Once Sadako took her cousin to a charity entertainment given for the Red Cross at the house of a rich nobleman.  A hundred or more ladies were present; but stiff civility prevailed.  None of the guests seemed to know each other.  There was no friendly talking.  There were no men guests.  There was three hours’ agony of squatting, a careful adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank staring at a dull conjuring performance, and deadly silence.

“Do you ever have dances?” Asako asked her cousin.

“The geisha dance, because they are paid,” said Sadako primly.  Her pose was no longer cordial and sympathetic.  She set herself up as mentor to this young savage, who did not know the usages of civilized society.

“No, not like that,” said the girl from England; “but dancing among yourselves with your men friends.”

“Oh, no, that would not be nice at all.  Only tipsy persons would dance like that.”

Asako tried, not very successfully, to chat in easy Japanese with her cousin; but she fled from the interminable talking parties of her relatives, where she could not understand one word, except the innumerable parentheses—­naruhodo (indeed!) and so des’ka (is it so?)—­with which the conversation was studded.  As the realization of her solitude made her nerves more jumpy, she began to imagine that the women were forever talking about her, criticizing her unfavorably and disposing of her future.

The only man whom she saw during the hot summer months, besides the inevitable Tanaka, was Mr. Ito, the lawyer.  He could talk quite good English.  He was not so egotistical and bitter as Sadako.  He had traveled in America and Europe.  He seemed to understand the trouble of Asako’s mind, and would offer sympathetic advice.

“It is difficult to go to school when we are no longer children,” he would say sententiously.  “Asa San must be patient.  Asa San must forget.  Asa San must take Japanese husband.  I think it is the only way.”

“Oh, no,” the poor girl shivered; “I wouldn’t marry again for anything.”

“But,” Ito went on relentlessly, “it is hurtful to the body when once it has custom to be married.  I think that is reason why so many widow women are unfortunate and become mad.”