Sometimes when her husband had seemed indecently blatant in his displays of affection for Suga, too careless of what others thought, Tomo even considered taking Etsuko and the money and going back to her home in far-off Kyushu. Yet each time her resolve was weakened by the thought of the future awaiting her daughter, now growing into such a beautiful young woman. Etsuko, fortunately, was on good terms with Suga and was loved by her father. If only Tomo herself could bear it, Etsuko would certainly be happier growing up in comfort as the daughter of a man of rank than in poverty in a remote country district of Kyushu.

This was the conclusion to which Tomo’s better judgment always led her despite all her wilder impulses. It would be better for Shirakawa, too. However able he might be in his work it would only need the loss of his strictly upright, uncalculatingly honest wife for him sooner or later to make some fatal blunder in his official capacity also. Tomo, who knew that his difficult disposition had made him many enemies, had come almost without realizing it to see his nature at a step removed. In this she had already ceased to be the wife who obeyed her husband with implicit faith in his judgment, and was gradually acquiring the ability to view him dispassionately, as another human being. Innocent of learning, she had never been taught how to understand a person intellectually and was constitutionally incapable of letting her actions follow the natural dictates of her instincts. Only this had made it possible for her to live in unswerving allegiance to the feudal code of feminine morality and to take as her ideal the chaste wife who grudged no sacrifice for her husband and family. But now an unmistakable mistrust in the code that had been her unquestioned creed was making itself felt within.