His arm was about her and she had recovered somewhat of her confidence.
“It is a purple world,” she said, “all purple and green to-day, Excellency.”
“Why, yes, it does seem so,” he said. “The skies are more purple than blue, and their very reflection seems to rest upon the fields to-day. Just look down there in the valley.”
“It is the purple iris and wistaria,” she said. “I so love them. Do they grow like that in America?”
“And are not the skies purple there?” she asked.
“Oh,” she said, with a sudden, unexpected vehemence, “I never want to go to that America. I love these fields so purple and so green—and those skies! Excellency, you will not take me away, will you?”
“No, no,” he said. “I will not. I will not.”
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Azalea had been married during a brief absence of Matsuda Isami in Tokyo. He had gone there especially at Madame Yamada’s suggestion, to purchase city gifts with which to help him in his suit. The townspeople had never been on sufficiently familiar terms with Matsuda to talk with him even upon his return from an absence. Hence he learned nothing of the marriage until Madame Yamada herself broke the news to him. She appeared to be suffering from intense mortification and anguish of mind because of what she termed the unnatural defiance of her step-daughter, who had married a barbarian beast against all the wishes of her people. As if this shame were not sufficient, she had turned Kirishitan and destroyed the tablets of her ancestors. Madame Yamada declared vehemently that though she, from motives of pity, must sometimes see the abandoned girl, yet she never would allow her pure and virtuous daughters to be contaminated with her society.
The woman had not foreseen the real effects of such news upon Matsuda. For a moment he stood as if turned to stone. Then his long white teeth gleamed out between his thick, coarse lips like the tusks of a savage animal. In his eyes there was unchained rage. Suddenly he laughed hideously. That laughter alone would have unstrung the nerves of one less cowardly than Madame Yamada. She prostrated herself to the very ground and touched his feet with her head.
“Most Exalted,” she said, “the humble one craves your august pardon and abjectly beseeches you to perceive her distress. That this wretched girl has abandoned you for a vile and horrible barbarian is not the fault of the humblest one, who sought with all her power to bring about her union with you.”