wistaria?"

Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there
had come before my mind a picture very like that. Such a picture in the
Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted
out from mind and reality the better for all concerned. I spoke
positively to my companion.

"Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn't for breaking a commandment I would
call you foolish with one syllable. Don't you know that in this country
a young man and woman walking and talking together cannot be permitted?
Neither love nor romance is free or permissible, but they are governed
by laws which, if transgressed, will break heart and spirit."

"So I have heard," cooed Miss Gray, unimpressed by my statements.
"Wouldn't it be sweet, though, for you and me to go about teaching these
dear Japanese people that young love will have its freedom and make a
custom of its own?"

"Yes, indeed! Wouldn't it be a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged
women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for
young love--subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray
novel or so!" I said all this and a little more.

Jane went on unheeding, "That's it. We must preach love and live it
till we have made convicts of every inhabitant."

Of course she meant "converts," but the kinks in Miss Gray's tongue were
as startling as the peculiar twists in her religion.