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 doing a thing that is 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 you 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 one with an ivory skin, just as a change.”

“But that is only the paint they have put on her, Monsieur!  Beneath it, I assure you, she is of an ivory hue.”

Yves leans toward 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; with almost an expression, almost a thought.  A coppery tint on her rounded cheeks; a straight nose; slightly thick lips, but well modelled and with pretty corners.  A little older than Mademoiselle 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.

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

“Over there, Monsieur?  She is called Mademoiselle 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, Monsieur!”

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 pearl-gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her now sad and mortified expression, and her eyes which twinkle like those of a child about to cry.