When the professor had picked up the fan and raised his face, there was an expression on it which had not been there before. It was a very complicated expression, as if a reverent feeling at having seen what he should not have seen and a certain satisfaction arising from the consciousness of that feeling had been exaggerated by more or less theatricality.
“Ah, even I who have no children can understand your grief perfectly,” said the professor in a low voice full of feeling, tilting his head back a little as if dazzled by something.
“Thank you. But, whatever we say, it’s beyond help now, so—”
The lady lowered her head the least little bit. A bright smile beamed from her unclouded face as before.
It was two hours later. The professor had taken a bath, finished his supper, eaten some cherries for dessert and settled down comfortably in the cane chair on the veranda.
The twilight of the long summer evening lingered on and, in the large veranda, with its glass windows wide open, there was yet no sign of darkness falling. The professor, with his left knee crossed over his right and his head resting on the back of the chair, was gazing at the tassels of the Gifu lantern in the dim light. Though he had that same book of Strindberg’s in his hand, he appeared not yet to have read another page of it. That was natural. His head was still full of the brave behavior of Nishiyama Atsuko.
During supper, he had told his wife the whole story. And he had praised it as an illustration of the Bushidō of the women of Japan. On hearing it, this lover of Japan and the Japanese could not but sympathize. He had been pleased to find an eager listener in her. His wife, the lady and the Gifu lantern—these three now floated in his consciousness with a certain ethical background.