The old ladies (the mamma no doubt and aunts), prick up their ears, and M. Kangourou translates to them, softening as much as possible, my heartrending decision.  I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact is, that for women who, not to put too fine a point upon it, have come to sell a child, they have an air I was not prepared for:  I can hardly say an air of respectability (a word in use with us, which is absolutely without meaning in Japan), but an air of unconscious and good-natured simplicity; they are only accomplishing an act perfectly admissible in their world, and really it all resembles, more than I could have thought possible, a bona fide marriage.

“But what fault do I find with the little girl?” asks M. Kangourou, in consternation.

I endeavor to present the matter in the most flattering light: 

“She is very young,” I say; “and then she is too white, too much like our own women.  I wished for a yellow one just as a change.”

“But that is only the paint they have put on her, sir!  Beneath it, I assure you, she is yellow.”

Yves leans towards me and whispers: 

“Look over there, brother, in that corner by the last panel; have you noticed the one who is sitting down?”

Not I. In my annoyance I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background.  The fact is this one pleased me much better.  Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have been called good in any country in the world; almost an expression, almost a thought.  A coppery tint on her rounded cheeks; a straight nose; slightly thick lips, but well modeled and with pretty corners.  Less young than Mdlle.  Jasmin, about eighteen years of age perhaps, already more of a woman.  She wore an expression of ennui, also of a little contempt, as if she regretted her attendance at a spectacle which dragged so much, and was so little amusing.

“M.  Kangourou, who is that young lady over there, in dark blue?”

“Over there, sir?  A young lady called Mdlle.  Chrysantheme.  She came with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator.  She pleases you?” said he with eager suddenness, espying a way out of his difficulty.  Then, forgetting all his politeness, all his ceremoniousness, all his Japanesery, he takes her by the hand, forces her to rise, to stand in the dying daylight, to let herself be seen.  And she, who has followed our eyes and begins to guess what is on foot, lowers her head in confusion, with a more decided but more charming pout, and tries to step back, half sulky, half smiling.

“It makes no difference,” continues M. Kangourou, “it can be arranged just as well with this one; she is not married either, sir!”

She is not married!  Then why didn’t the idiot propose her to me at once instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest pity, poor little soul, with her pearly gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her expression which grows sadder, and her eyes which twinkle like those of a child about to cry.