It was only a matter of a few minutes to light the lamp and arrange the bed in the guest-room I had taken such pleasure in preparing before for Zura’s visit.  I went through these small duties without speaking.  I bore no ill will to the girl who had been thrust upon me.  My thoughts were too deep for anger against the wayward child whose start in life had been neither fair nor just.  But in separating herself from her family she had done the most serious thing a girl can do in whose veins runs the blood of a Japanese.  Everything ready, I said good-night as kindly as circumstances would permit.

Zura put out her hand and thanked me.  A smile twitched her lips as she said, “Never mind, Miss Jenkins.  Don’t be troubled.  No use fighting against fate and freckles.”  The tears in her voice belied her frivolous words.

Anxious for what might happen, I sat for the rest of the night in the room adjoining the one occupied by my unexpected guest.  Twice before the coming of the dawn there reached me from the farther chamber sounds of a soul in conflict—­the first battle of a young girl in a strange land, facing the future penniless and heavily handicapped.

It was a lonely vigil and a weary one.

XII

A DREAM COMES TRUE

If becoming a member of my household was a turning-point in Zura’s life, in mine it was nothing less than a small-sized revolution, moving with the speed of a typhoon.

The days piled into weeks; the weeks plunged head-foremost into eternity, and before we could say “how d’y’ do” to lovely summer, autumn had put on her splendid robes of red and yellow and soft, dull brown.

If once I yearned for things to happen, I now sometimes pined for a chance, as one of my students put it, “to shut the door of think and rest my tired by suspended animation.”  For I had as much idea about rearing girls as I had on the subject of training young kangaroos.  But it grew plainer to me every day my nearly ossified habits would have to disintegrate.  Also I must learn to manipulate the role of mother without being one.

Soon after the girl’s break with her family the ineffective child-woman who had given Zura life passed quietly into the great Silence before the daughter could be summoned.  Though Zura was included among the mourners at the stately funeral, she had no communication with her grandfather.  Afterwards the separation was final.

Once only I visited Kishimoto San’s house and had an interview with him.  He was courteous, and his formality more sad than cold.  He would never again take Zura into his house; neither would he interfere with her.  Her name had been stricken from his family register.  As long as I was kind enough to give her shelter, he would provide for her.  Further than that he would not go, “for his memory had long ears and he could never forget.”

It was a painful hour which I did not care to repeat.