The professor thought it strange that the death of the emperor of a country should bring so much sorrow even to the children. It was not only of the question of the relation existing between the imperial house and the people that he was made to think. The impulsive expression of their emotions by occidentals, which had impressed him ever since he came to the West, now surprised, as if it were something new, this professor, a Japanese and a believer in Bushidō. He had never forgotten the feeling, seemingly compounded of suspicion and sympathy, that he experienced at that time. Conversely, he now felt precisely the same degree of surprise at this lady’s not weeping. But a second discovery followed on the heels of the first. It was just as their conversation, after having gone from reminiscences of the dead youth into details of his daily life, was about to turn back again to more reminiscences. The Korean fan chanced to slip from the professor’s hand and fell of a sudden on the marquetry floor. The conversation, of course, was not so urgent as not to permit of a momentary interruption. So, bending forward from his chair and looking down, he stretched out his hand toward the floor. The fan was lying beneath the little table just beside the lady’s white tabi concealed in her slippers.
Then he chanced to notice the lady’s knees. On them, rested her hands holding the handkerchief. Of course this alone was no discovery. But at the same instant he realized that her hands were trembling fearfully. And he noticed that, probably due to her endeavor to suppress the agitation of her emotions, her hands, as they trembled, grasped the handkerchief on her knees so hard that they all but tore it in two. Finally he perceived that the embroidered edge of the wrinkled silk handkerchief moved between her delicate fingers as if stirred by a light breeze. The lady smiled with her face, indeed, but the truth was that she had been weeping with her whole body from the first.