Broken Butterflies

With the approach of Saturday Kent became impatient. The feeling of being alone, that there was in the whole world no one who was really interested in his affairs, who cared whe...

The return to Tokyo of Sylvia Elliott at this very time seemed an especially kind dispensation of Providence. Kent had seen practically nothing of her since his arrival in Japan...

A few days later he went to Viscount Kikuchi's office. A young fellow occupied the seat at the head of the stairway. "You are new here, aren't you?" Kent ventured. Yes, he had c...

He sat up in bed in bewildered wonder whether it had been an actual sound, an explosion, that had awakened him, or whether it had been some particularly realistic bit of dream....

Even as they made their way up the hill, among the booths, animal cages, swinging bridges and slides of the amusement park which formed an adjunct of the Kagetsuen, the crash an...

For days he went about in a state of irritating uncertainty. What should be his next step? There was no good reason for seeking further speech with the Viscount for the present....

The following morning Kittrick dropped in to discuss the news. But there was little to discuss; all Japan was unanimous in the belief that the official statement constituted but...

They had come down from the banquet hall in the Imperial Hotel, a group of correspondents, Kittrick, Kent, Butterfield and Templeton, with Roberts, just arrived from New York to...

Kent read the letter over again, carefully, laboriously, for his thoughts would not concentrate on the sentences. He had to force himself to bring his mind on them. The letters...

Gradually life became smoothed into the old routine existence. News seemed to occur sporadically in cycles, like the apexes and depressions of a chart; at times the vernacular p...

The more he thought it over, the more the new assignment appealed to Kent. It required close thinking. He must move with the utmost caution lest suspicion be aroused which would...

He tried to beat down the wave-crest of emotion, happiness, that surged over him, gripped him and shook him. He wanted none of it, wished desperately to fight against it. It was...

It was a dull season for news. From San Francisco they had cabled him to "hold down." A nation-wide strike in America and one of these futile European reparations conferences we...

The black bow of the _Tenyo Maru_ cut into the broad ribbon of moonlight stretching, interminably, straight into the vast spaces of the opalescent night. Somewhere ahead, bathed...

Kent drifted into his daily routine quickly and easily. His Japanese clerk watched the papers for him, read over the headlines, and translated into queer, but fairly understanda...

Karsten could give him no help. "Better make up your mind that you have lost her. She has evidently been taken away to some other geisha quarter, Yotsuya, Ushigomo, Akasaka, pro...

Kent's office was in the rear of a building in the Shimbashi section, a corner room facing two sides on narrow alleys, neither more than four feet wide. His landlord, Nishimura,...

"But you are." Realization had suddenly flashed upon Kent that he had nothing to celebrate; he had accomplished nothing, had been brought no nearer a decision in his relationshi...

A row of shoes in the entrance of the tea house told them that most of the others had already arrived. A flock of maidservants met them, took their hats and canes, waiting while...

The situation grew on Kent's nerves. Every morning when he looked out from his window, he half expected to see red flags in the streets, to hear the turmoil of mobs. It was absu...

They arrived too late in the morning to see Fuji-san. Clouds lay over the mountain ranges and smoky haze obscured the land, only the nearest foreshore appearing, gray, formless,...

it. But, of course, there must be others, girls who are fine-souled enough to suffer from the constant degradation that is offered them day after day, every day. The whole damne...