Kikuji sensed that Mrs Ota was talking of her own love as she talked of the girl. She seemed to be pleading something with all the passion she had, and in its final implications the plea did not seem to make a distinction between Kikuji’s father and Kikuji himself. There was a deep, affectionate nostalgia in it, as if she meant to be talking to Kikuji’s father. The hostility which Kikuji, with his mother, had felt for Mrs Ota had lost some of its strength, though it had not entirely disappeared. He even feared that unless he was careful he might find in himself the father loved by Mrs Ota. He
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