“I couldn’t help feeling, the more I looked at her, that she was like a tree that has begun to lose its leaves. I was so shocked by the whole effect that I think I must have taken a step back, or let out a gasp, or in some way given her some hint of my feelings, for all at once she said to me, in that raspy voice of hers:

‘What are you looking at!’

‘I’m very sorry, ma’am. I was looking at your kimono,’ I told her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.’

This must have been the right answer—if there was a right answer—because she let out something of a laugh, though it sounded like a cough.

‘So you like it, do you?’ she said, continuing to cough, or laugh, I couldn’t tell which. ‘Do you have any idea what it cost?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘More than you did, that’s for certain.'”

—from Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden