The Wild Geese by Ōgai Mori

this was more than she could do. And yet she confessed to herself: “He's not detestable! Usurer or not, he's not detestable!”
    As for Suezo, he had caught an image at the bottom of Otama's mind, had sounded her out regarding it, and had found it a childish trifle. But as he walked down Muenzaka after eleven that night, it seemed as though something were behind what he had already discovered. He was shrewd enough to locate part of the trouble. “Something,” he conjectured, “someone's told her something. Something about me. And she's holding it against me.”
    But he did not know who had told what.

Chapter Eleven
    W HEN O TAMA reached her father's house the next morning, he had just finished breakfast. She had never spent a great deal of time getting ready to go out, and she hurried along thinking that perhaps she had come too early, but the old man, not a late sleeper, had already swept the entrance to his house and had sprinkled water over the grounds. And after washing his hands and feet, he was just taking his lonely meal on the new mats.
    A few doors from her father's house, some places where geishas entertained had recently been constructed, and on certain evenings the neighborhood was noisy. But the houses to the right and left of the old man's, like his own, kept their doors closed and were quiet, especially in the morning.
    As the old man looked out of his low window, he could see though the branches of the parasol pine in his front garden the string-like willow trees faintly moving in the fresh breeze. Beyond them the lotus leaves covered the pond, their green color spotted here and there with light pink flowers blooming at that early hour. In the winter the old man's house would be cold since it faced north, but in the summer it was as good as any one could wish to find.
    Ever since Otama had been old enough to think for herself, she had hoped that if the opportunity arose she would do one thing or another for her father. And when she saw the house he was living in, she couldn't restrain her joy, couldn't help feeling her prayers realized. But even the happiness she felt had its bitter ingredient, an awareness of her altered position. “If I could see my father without that,” she said to herself, “how happy I could be!”
    She felt the frustration expressed in the proverb: “An unfulfilled wish is the world's way.”
    The old man had put down his chopsticks and was taking his tea when he heard a noise at the front door. Since it had never been opened by a visitor, he was surprised. And setting aside his teacup, he kept his eyes in that direction. He could not see any one behind the folding screen of rush stalks, but when he heard his daughter call: “Otossan,” he had a difficult time remaining seated instead of jumping up and rushing over to meet her. Yet he sat where he was, his mind busily trying to find the words to use and thinking he would begin with “It's a wonder you still remember your father!” But when he saw Otama hurry toward him, her face radiant as though experiencing a relief from pain after the interval of their separation, he couldn't have said those words. Yet he was dissatisfied with his weakness in not being able to say even that much, and he stared at her face in silence.
    Yes, he thought, she was beautiful. Even when he had been poor, he had insisted that this only source of pride should always look her best, and he had even refused to let her do heavy tasks. But now that he was seeing her for the first time after an absence of ten days, she seemed reborn. Compared to the present Otama, who was consciously grooming and polishing herself, the daughter he remembered was a precious stone in the rough. A parent who sees his own daughter or an old man who sees a young girl cannot deny the beauty of a beautiful object. And such men cannot be exempt from feeling the power that beauty has in easing the heart.
    The old man had