THREE:"It is the rule in Japan for a man to have only one wife at a time, but he does not always stick to it. If he has children, a man is generally contented; but if he has none, he gets another wife, and either divorces the first one or not, as he chooses. Divorce is very easy for a man to obtain, but not so for the woman; and when she is divorced, she has hardly any means of obtaining justice. But, in justice to the Japanese, it should be said that the men do not often abuse their opportunities for divorce, and that the married life of the people is about as good as that of most countries. Among the reasons for divorce, in addition to what I have mentioned, there are the usual ones that prevail in America. Furthermore, divorce is allowed if a wife is disobedient to her husband's parents, and[Pg 262] also if she talks too much. The last reason is the one most frequently given; but a woman cannot complain of her husband and become divorced from him for the same cause. I wonder if Japan is the only country in the world where women have ever been accused of talking too much.There was never a swifter disillusionment than when she came in, and he stood up, as he had now{157} learned to do, at her entrance. He had heard her step along the passage, and the bird of romance, hidden perhaps behind the sofa or in the case of files, gave out a great jubilant throatful of song. But next moment it was as if some hand, Mrs Fysons perhaps, had wrung its neck and stopped its singing. She had a perfectly friendly smile for him, but the smile was not one shade more friendly than usual, her eyes did not hold lit within them a spark of closer intimacy than had habitually been there for the last fortnight. Whatever had happened to him last night, he saw that nothing whatever had happened to her. No sixth sense had conveyed to her the smallest hint of his midnight walk: she had been through no nocturnal experiences that the most sanguine could construe into correspondence with that, and on the moment he could no more have told her about his midnight walk, or have been humorous on the subject of disintegrated shoes than he could have taken her into his arms and kissed her. And by the standard of how incredibly remote she seemed, he could judge of the distance of his spirits leap towards her, when he stood outside her window last night. The very absence of any change in her was the light by which he saw the change in himself.
