FORE:That moment of his entry had become to him a matter of daily excitement and expectation. Sometimes the soft furrow would be ruled between her eyebrows, and she would give him but the glance of a stranger and a chilly Good-morning, and instantly turn her attention to her work again. Sometimes she would show such a face as she had shown him that Sunday morning on the downs when they had listened to the skylark together, a face of childhood and the possession of spring, sometimes (and it was this that gave the grizzled elderly man the tremulous excitement of a boy when his hand opened the door) she would give him that look which had shot across the town-hall like the launching of a silver spear and transfixed him. But if he did not get it then, sometime during the morning, in some pause in the work, or perhaps even in the middle of his dictation, he would receive it from her, just that one look which made him know, so long as it lasted, that there{265} was no bar or impediment between himself and her. There was neither speech nor language, but her essential self spoke, revealing, affirming to him its existence. Then without pause she would drop her eyes to her work again, and her busy pencil scooped and dabbed over the paper, and he heard in some secret place of his brain, while his lips pronounced sharp business-like sentences, the words, And thou beside me singing in the wilderness.... In the afternoon, when he came to read over her typewritten transcription of the dictation, he always knew at what point in some peremptory letter out of all the sheaf that moment of the clear glance had come. He was always on the look-out for it, but he could never induce it: she gave it him, so it had begun to seem, not in answer to him, but just when she could withhold it no longer.
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FORE:Frank wished to know if the women were desirous of having the custom abolished, but on this point it was not easy for him to obtain precise information. The Doctor thought it was a matter of individual rather than of general preference, and that the views of the women were largely influenced by those of their husbands. "The Japanese wives," said he, "are like the wives of most other countries, and generally wish to do according to the tastes and desires of their husbands. As you grow older you will find that the women of all lands endeavor to suit their modes of dressing and adornment to the wishes of the men with whom they come mostly in contact; of course, there are individual exceptions, but they do not weaken the force of the general rule. In America as in England, in China as in Japan, in India as in Peru, it is the fancy of the men that governs the dress and personal decoration of the other half of the race. As long as it was the fashion to blacken the teeth in this country, the women did it without a murmur; but as soon as the men showed a willingness for them to discontinue the practice, and especially when that willingness became a desire, they began to discontinue it. Twenty years from this time, I imagine, the women with blackened teeth will be less numerous than those at present with white ones.
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