The Lady and Sada San | Page 6

and a dainty watch strapped around his childish wrist.
When I asked him what impressed him most in America, he promptly answered with his eyes on Sada, "Them girls. They are rapturous!"
Farewell Nirvana! With a camp stool in one hand and a rosary in the other, he follows Sada San like the shadow on a sun dial. Wherever she is seated, there is the stool and the royal youth, his mournful eyes feasting on the curves and dimples of her face, her lightest jest far sweeter than any prayer, the beads in his hand forgotten.
The other would-be swain calls himself a Seeker of Truth. Incidentally he is hunting a wife. His general attitude is a constant reminder of the uncertainty of life. His presence makes you glad that nothing lasts. He says his days are heavy with the problems of the universe, but you can see for yourself that this very commercial traveler carries a light side line in an assortment of flirtations that surely must be like dancing little sunbeams on a life of gloom.
Goodness knows how much of a nuisance he would be if it were not for a little lady named Dolly, who sits beside him, gray in color, dress and experience. At no uncertain age she has found a belated youthfulness and is starting on the first pleasure trip of her life.
Coming across the country to San Francisco, her train was wrecked. In the smash-up a rude chair struck her just south of the belt line and she fears brain fever from the blow. The alarm is not general, for though just freed by kind death from an unhappy life sentence of matrimony she is ready to try another jailer.
Whether he spied Dolly first and hoped that the gleam from her many jewels would light up the path in his search for Truth and a few other things, or whether the Seeker was sought, I do not know. However the flirtation which seems to have no age limit has flourished like a bamboo tree. For once the man was too earnest. Dolly gave heed and promptly attached herself with the persistency of a barnacle to a weather-beaten junk. By devices worthy a finished fisher of men, she holds him to his job of suitor, and if in a moment of abstraction his would-be ardor for Sada grows too perceptible, the little lady reels in a yard or so of line to make sure her prize is still dangling on the hook.
To-day at tiffin the griefless widow unconsciously scored at the expense of the Seeker, to the delight of the whole table. For Sada's benefit this man quoted a long passage from some German philosopher. At least it sounded like that. It was far above the little gray head he was trying to ignore and so weighty I feared for her mentality. But I did not know Dolly. She rose like a doughnut. Looking like a child who delights in the rhythm of meaningless sounds, she heard him through, then exclaimed with breathless delight, "Oh, ain't he fluid!"
The man fled, but not before he had asked Sada for two dances at night.
It is like a funny little curtain-raiser, with jealousy as a gray-haired Cupid. So far as Sada is concerned, it is admiration gone to waste. Even if she were not gaily indifferent, she is too absorbed in the happy days she thinks are awaiting her. Poor child! Little she knows of the limited possibilities of a Japanese girl's life; and what the effect of the painful restrictions will be on one of her rearing, I dare not think.
Once she is under the authority of Uncle, the Prince, the Seeker, and all mankind will be swept into oblivion; and, until such time as she can be married profitably and to her master's liking, she will know no man. The cruelest awakening she will face is the attitude of the Orient toward the innocent offspring in whose veins runs the blood of two races, separated by differences which never have been and never will be overcome.
In America the girl's way would not have been so hard because her novel charm would have carried her far. But _hear me_: in Japan, the very wave in her hair and the color of her eyes will prove a barrier to the highest and best in the land. Even with youth and beauty and intelligence, unqualified recognition for the Eurasian is as rare as a square egg.
Another thought hits me in the face as if suddenly meeting a cross bumblebee. Will the teachings of the woman, who lived with her head in the clouds, hold hard and fast when Uncle puts on the screws?
The Seeker says it is the fellow who thinks first that wins. He speaks feelingly on the subject. Right now