“You will seal your play, please, sir, if you don’t mind,” said Otaké in her
place, as if shaking a drowsy child.
The Master seemed, at length, to hear. He muttered something to
himself. His voice caught in his throat, and I do not know what he said.
Thinking that the sealed play would have been decided upon, the secretary
of the Association readied an envelope; but the Master sat vacantly on, as if
apart from the matter at hand.
“I haven’t decided,” he said finally. The expression on his face was as of
having been away from reality and not being able to return quite yet.
He deliberated sixteen minutes longer. White 80 took forty-four minutes.
