“Ah, you are too polite,” she said, smiling. “Rising to meet me? It is only you who persist in such courtesies.”
“Let me have my way,” he replied.
They sat down on their floor cushions, opposite each other as usual, and were alone. The first moment was always the same. Each searched the other’s face. This, she said, was to learn what each was feeling, and what had passed since they last met. Then she put out her hands, palms upward and he clasped them. Into each palm he pressed his lips and as he did so, she took his palm, one after the other, and pressed her lips there.
She drew back her hands after this and she laughed softly.
“Now I know,” she said, “and all is well with me, too. Let us eat. I am hungry. The dance was difficult tonight. I felt there were too many people. They crowded onto the stage behind me. I have forbidden it, but still it happens. Then I feel caught between the crowds in front and the crowds behind.”
“They love you,” he said gently.
“Yes, they love me, but it means nothing to me,” she said quickly. “So much love — from nameless persons, none of whom I shall ever know!”
A small silver pot filled with hot soup stood before each of them, and he poured the soup from hers into a silver cup, and then poured his own cup from his pot.
“Better than hate,” he said.
“Oh, I have had hate, too,” she retorted. “In Peking I saw a theatre full of people suddenly hate me. I had to escape for my life while they screamed after me that I was Japanese. You don’t hate the bit of Japanese in me?”
“I hate nothing in you. I love everything in you,” he said gravely.
A long moment hung between them, luminous and silent He broke it unwillingly.
“Drink your soup while it is hot. Meanwhile I must tell you I have a duty tonight. I have made a promise concerning you, which you are not compelled to keep.”
She lifted her delicate eyebrows at this.
“When you go to the United States next week,” he said, “I ask you to carry some messages.”
“Yes?”
“Of two kinds,” he went on. “My grandfather has a few American friends. And the missionaries we know have also relatives and friends. Our government-in-exile is there. You will take messages to them.”
“Yes?”
She held the silver cup in both hands, warming them, the delicate eyebrows still uplifted above eyes so glorious in size and shape and depth that he was all but stifled by the breath caught in his breast.
“Please—” he said, his voice low. “Please do not look at me like that until I have finished!”
She laughed sudden clear laughter and changed her look. That face of hers, so exquisite, so mobile, quivering and alive — he looked away and went on.
“The purpose of these messages is to prepare everything here in our country for the coming of the Americans — and to prepare the Americans for us, when they come.”
She put down her cup. “The Americans!”
“They will come, I assure you. If there is any danger to you here, because of the messages, then stay away — stay in America or in France, wait until the victory when we have taken back our country. Then I shall arrange such a welcome for you as a queen would have. My grandfather loved a queen once, and my grandmother is jealous to this day. But no one knows that I have a queen of my own!”
He looked up at her now. They leaned across the narrow table and kissed. She had taught him the kiss.
“Touch my lips,” she had said to him suddenly one evening as they sat like this across the table.
He had been stupid and only stared at her.
“Like this,” she had insisted, and taking his hand she had kissed it.
“But how your lips?” he had inquired.
“With your lips,” she had whispered, and had pursed her lips into a waiting flower.
He had of course seen kisses in western motion pictures but he had taken it as a strange western custom. Nevertheless at her bidding he had leaned forward until his lips rested on hers, and had let them so rest for a short space. Then he had sat back.
“Pleasant?” she had inquired with mischief.
“New,” he had said reflecting, “very new—”
“You are not sure you like it?” she had inquired.
“Not quite,” he had confessed, somewhat embarrassed.
“Shall we try again?”
She made this suggestion in so calm a voice that he had tried again and had made conclusion.
“Very pleasant!”
She had laughed outrageously at him then and the scene had made cause for laughter many times thereafter. He would not allow many kisses in an evening, however, and tonight not until he had finished his duty. He had no wish to use her as a prostitute. It might be that she had been so used but he had never inquired. In the reserve and delicacy of his spirit he did not want to know. What had been could not be changed. She was what she now was and he had complete faith in her. His comprehending instinct discerned no impurity in her.
“I shall not be able to refuse Sasha forever,” she said suddenly.
He waited, aware of a quick anxiety. She helped herself to chicken and with a pair of silver chopsticks put a tender bit into his bowl.
She went on when he did not speak. “What shall I tell this cousin of yours? He is very fierce — not like you—” She broke off.
He spoke out of a fear such as he had never felt. “How can I answer until I know how you feel?”
“I am afraid of him,” she said in a low voice.
“Why?”
She shook her head. “He has a power in him.”
“Over you?” he asked.
A long pause then, while she ate, bit by bit, daintily, not lifting her eyes. Then she put down her silver chopsticks.
“I feel him,” she confessed, “and I am afraid.”
“Of him?”
“Of myself, too.”
He met her pleading eyes gravely. “I have not finished my duty. Do we speak now of Sasha or shall I go on with what I must say?”
She sat back and folded her hands together. “Please go on.”
Against all his being he went on. “You are to take certain letters to certain persons whose names and addresses I will give you. Do not entrust the letters to anyone else, but put them yourself into the hands of those who should receive them.”
“Are these persons Americans or Koreans?”
“Most of them are Koreans but a few are Americans. It is essential that the important persons in Washington should know that we have a government ready to perform its duties and that when the American army arrives it is we who will receive our country from their hands and not our Japanese rulers.”
She listened closely and without coquetry or graceful movement until he had finished. “Must I know all this?” she asked.
“You prefer not to know?”
“It is safer for me not to know. Let me be the innocent bearer of these messages.”
He had now to face the truth. He was putting her life into danger. Upon the slightest suspicion of what he was asking her to do she might be arrested or, more likely, simply shot when she came on the stage, or as she left the theatre or in her own garden or anywhere in the world where she happened to be, in any country, in any city.
To such death they were accustomed. An unknown assassin, a murderer never found, meant that no attempt need be made for justice. And who more reasonably killed than a beautiful woman whom many men loved?
He groaned aloud. “What man was ever compelled to make such a choice — between his love and his country!”
She smiled and suddenly was all woman again. “Do you know,” she said softly, hands clasped under her chin, “I have never seen you troubled. Now you are troubled — and for me! So I know you love me. And I shall be safe. Do you know why? Because I shall be very careful — very, very careful — to come back alive and well and safely to you. I will take no chances. So you need not make the choice. I will take the messages. I will deliver them, but I will not know what is in them. I do not ask. I will only see that they are received. It will not be difficult. I have many American friends. Some are famous and powerful. They will all help me. Say no more — say no more! Some moment before I leave, at one o’clock six nights from now, after my performance, give me the letters. Let me go alone to the airfield. There will be many people there to see me off, but you must not be there. And now that is enough.”