I go and buy some hyacinths, and then transact some of my business.
Kotmasu is coming to take me to see Mousmé at sundown.
I am at home again early in the afternoon, and, with a view to my proposed marriage, I begin to take stock of my surroundings.
I have lived long enough in Japan to see nothing exceptional in a marriage which will probably be concluded in a space of time that would be considered extremely short to a Western mind. The worst of it is, I am returning to England for good in less than nine months’ time, and what will my people say to my choice?
I have neither mother nor father to reckon with. But I have a sister Lou, who, alas, is a dragon of propriety (and I am no St. George), who will, I fear, never realise that my wife is not an abstraction off a paper screen or a lacquer tray.
