handmaid watched. Every day the faded flowers were replaced by purchased ones—cheaper and cheaper ones. Their last money went for this and the candles which renewed the lights of the lanterns each night. These were not a thousand—were not a dozen—now.
She did not think of going to him. In destroying her Japanese conventions this was the one thing that had been left. In "Onna Yushoku Mibea Bunko" ("The Young Ladies' Old Book of Decorum") she had read that the only woman who seeks a male is a yujo, a courtezan.
in a week a passenger-steamer came into the bay. They took no interest in her. But the next day, quite by accident, they saw him for the first time. He was on the deck of the strange ship. A blonde woman was on his arm. They watched quite sleeplessly all that night. A few more lanterns were lighted.
On the following morning the war-ship had disappeared from the harbor.
Cho-Cho-San was frightened. The sinking at her heart she now knew to be black doubt. Her little, unused, frivolous mind