"The cruiser which His Majesty has sent to fetch me waits even now at Southampton." "You speak of your work," she remarked, "as though you had been collecting material for a book." He smiled.
"I have been busy collecting information in many ways," he said,--"trying to live your life and feel as you feel, trying to understand those things in your country, and in other countries too, which seem at first so strange to us who come from the other side of the East." "And the end of it all ?" she asked.
His eyes gleamed for a moment with a light which she did not understand.
His smile was tolerant, even genial, but his face remained like the face of a sphinx.
"It is for the good of Japan I came," he said, "for her good that I have stayed here so long.

At the same time it has been very pleasant.

I have met with great kindness." She leaned a little forward so as to look into his face.

The impassivity of his features was like a wall before her.
"After all," she said, "I suppose it is a period of probation.

You are like a schoolboy already who is looking forward to his holidays.