"Good-morning, _asenebo-san_, sleepy-head." She had crept up to him playfully, like a child and stood beside him laughing, radiant, with a freshness like a flower from the bath. Not a trace of the soul-stirring emotions of the night before. "Soon we shall have breakfast, and after lunch we shall go back to Tokyo."
"You forget that the trains may not be running then. Have they had any news down below?"
"Oh, it will be only a twenty-four hour strike. That was decided. Of course, they don't know anything, the inn people, but I know." She was enjoying her superiority of knowledge. "That was decided on some time ago, only I didn't know it would come so soon. Don't you know that while workers are allowed to organize unions, the Imperial Railways men are not allowed to form them, because they are Government employees. That's just why we wanted this strike, the first real nation-wide strike, to come from them, just to strike fear into these governing classes, to show them how powerless they really are. So a lot of the most important railroad men, engineers and conductors, all over Japan, wherever we could find them, were organized secretly, and we trusted that when they struck the others would come along, for they are all resentful since the Government cut the freight rates and cut their wages for the benefit of the rich people who own the freight. Of course, the authorities suspected something, but they couldn't find out just what was going to happen and when it was going to come off. And they will punish a lot of the leaders, no doubt. But let them put them in jail; it will only make us stronger. I'm so glad that this really happened; we thought it would be almost impossible to bring it through."
How intensely he disliked hearing her talk like this. Who the devil were these "we"? Why should this beautiful, slender girl be stirring her white fingers in this mess. These words, the sordid jargon of class passion and hate, seemed so grotesquely incongruous issuing from rose-petal child lips that should have been humming the lilting songs of maidenhood.
"Sadako-san," he could not keep impatience out of his voice, "what the deuce are you doing in this mess, anyway? Such things are not for girls like you. It will bring you only unhappiness. Why don't you drop it?"