It was generally held that Shirakawa had dissipated too much of his strength in pleasure to have any children other than Michimasa and Etsuko, yet even the remote possibility that Suga might have a child made Tomo shudder. Between husband and wife there yawned a gulf deeper than anything foreseen in the imaginings and silent surrenders so often repeated before she had brought Suga home with her. She must resign herself to the fact that henceforth the gulf would become deeper and wider each day, each night that passed. Only now did she realize with a sense of guilt the true reason why, in the inn at Utsunomiya on her return from Tokyo, she had been unable to talk frankly to her husband about the money he had entrusted to her. By nature incapable of being less than honest with others whoever they might be, she had never concealed anything from her husband where money matters were concerned. She had always despised as something shameful the traditional wife’s savings made without her husband’s knowledge, and the idea that she herself had now descended to the same level saddened her and at the same time gave her a new sense of resilience, as though her body had been reinforced throughout with fine wire.

Objectively speaking, there were any number of prominent and distinguished men in society today who had cast off their wives of many years like worn-out slippers and sent them back to their homes in the country, taking as their recognized spouses attractive women risen from the ranks of apprentice geishas or geishas. Since Tomo’s straightforwardness and robust decency had earned her the confidence of Governor Kawashima and his wife it seemed unlikely that even Shirakawa would do anything so outrageous, yet such was his infatuation for Suga these days that there was no knowing what scheme he might be hatching to drive her out. Before the Meiji Restoration, the family code had drawn a dividing line between wife and concubine that was not easily crossed, but now that the lesser retainers of remote country clans had come overnight to reign in the halls of power, the idea of the geisha house as a kind of antechamber to those halls had taken hold among men who aspired to high office, and the position of the wife, which inevitably depended on her husband’s skill in public affairs, had become as vulnerable as a fragile, clinging vine.