Then equal in length and formality followed the ceremony of being introduced to Kishimoto San’s mother and widowed daughter, Mrs. Wingate.  The mother, old and withered, was made strong by her power as mother-in-law and her faith in her country and her gods.  The daughter was weak and negative by reason of no particular faith and no definite gods.  The system by which she had been trained did not include self-reliance nor foster individuality.  Under it many of the country’s daughters grow to beautiful womanhood because of their gift of living their own inner lives entirely apart, while submitting to the external one imposed by custom.

By the same system other women are made the playthings of circumstance and the soul is ever like a frosted flower bud.

Years ago a man, attracted by the soft girlishness and touched by the adoring deference to his sex, bade this girl marry him without the authority of her father.  Nothing had been developed in her to resist outside conditions.  It was an unanswered query, whether it was because of ignorance or courage, she braved displeasure, and followed the strange man to a strange country.  Sometimes the weakness of Japanese women is their greatest strength.  This woman knew how to obey.  In her way she had learned to love, but her limited capacity for affection was consumed by wifehood.  Having married and borne a child to the man who required nothing of her, duty in life so far as she saw it was canceled.  Further effort on her part was unnecessary until the time for her to assert her power as mother-in-law.

Even the contemplation of that happy state failed to enthuse.  Languid and a bit sad, her hold on life was gone.  The blight had come.  On her frail beauty was stamped the sign of the white plague.  She greeted me in very broken English, then left the chief duty of entertaining to the mother.  The stilted conversation was after the prescribed form and my eagerness to see Zura, whom custom forbade my asking for, was, I dare say, ill concealed.

When I first entered, the farther parts of the large room were veiled in the shadow of the late afternoon.  But when Mrs. Kishimoto called, “Zura, come!” a stream of sunlight, as though waiting for the proper time, danced into one corner and rested on the figure of a young girl, sitting awkwardly on her feet, reading.

Her response to her grandmother’s command was none too eager; but as she came forward the brilliant light revealed in coloring of hair and dress as many shades of brown as could be found in a pile of autumn leaves.  In the round eyes, deep set in a face sprinkled with freckles, in the impertinent tilt of the nose, there was no trace of the Orient; but the high arch of the dark brows betrayed her Japanese origin.