"We have many Japanese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country, of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,--but the term which you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life." "Father," she pleaded, "I am still a Japanese. I know how it must seem to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I must speak." "You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?" "To him--that one--I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve. "Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother, Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better than I." His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls talk--and the matrons. All theatres treat of it--and books are full of it. You sent me no warning--I could not know, of myself. Please, honorably, restrain anger against me." "I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But gods! this is a foul spectre to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man--this person--spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio." "Father, father," cried the girl, "you _are_ becoming angry. I did not have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met--our noble baron." If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly undeceived. "The gamester--the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an alien! No Japanese--not even a Yedo scavenger--could have been guilty of that misdeed!" "But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends, the Todds," said Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like flames about this new thought. "And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,--did he encourage your filial impiety?" "It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate, Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.