families, yet Sadako and her mother
had learned from their hairdresser that there was talk of such a
possibility in the servants' quarter of the Kamimura mansion, and
that old Dowager Viscountess Kamimura was undoubtedly making inquiries
which could only point to that one object.

The young Viscount, however, on ascertaining the origin of the family
wealth, eliminated poor Sadako from the competition for his hand.

It was a great disappointment to the Fujinami, and most of all to the
ambitious Sadako. For a moment she had seen opening the doorway into
that marvellous world of high diplomacy, of European capitals, of
diamonds, duchesses and intrigue, of which she had read in foreign
novels, where everybody is rich, brilliant, immoral and distinguished,
and where to women are given the roles to play even more important
than those of the men. This was the only world, she felt, worthy of
her talents; but few, very few, just one in a million Japanese women,
ever gets the remotest chance of entering it. This chance presented
itself to Sadako--but for a moment only. The doorway shut to again;
and Sadako was left feeling more acutely than before the emptiness
of life, and the bitterness of woman's lot in a land where men are
supreme.

Her cousin, Asako, by the mere luck of having had an eccentric parent
and a European upbringing, possessed all the advantages and all the
experience which the Japanese girl knew only through the glamorous
medium of books. But this Asa San was a fool. Sadako had found that
out at once in the course of a few minutes talk at the Maple Club
dinner. She was sweet, gentle and innocent; far more Japanese, indeed,
than her sophisticated cousin. Her obvious respect and affection for
her big rough husband, her pathetic solicitude for the father whose
face she could hardly remember and for the mother who was nothing but
a name; these traits of character belong to the meek Japanese girl
of _Onna Daigaku_ (Woman's Great Learning), that famous classic
of Japanese girlhood which teaches the submission of women and the
superiority of men. It was a type which was becoming rare in her own
country. Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative
heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to
whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin. Asako must be a fool. She
exasperated her Japanese cousin, who at the same time was envious of
her, envious above all of her independent wealth. As she