the air. The perfume of plum blossoms
was stealing from it. Once alone he crushed the delicate tissue
against eyes and lips and throat. He rolled upon the bed in agony,
only to press again to his heart this balm of her written words. It
seemed to him, then, that the letter might really have come from the
Meido-land. Could it be true, as the old priest said, that her soul
continually hovered near, waiting only for him to give it recognition?
"Ume, Ume,--my wife! Come back to me!" he cried aloud in an agony so
great that it should drag her backward through that dark
shadow-world,--not only the phantom of what she was, but Ume-ko
herself, with the flower-like body, and the smile of light. He opened
the missive slowly, that not a shred should be torn, and spread the
thin tissue smoothly on his foreign pillow.

"This, beloved, being the forty-ninth day,--the seven-times-seventh-day
after my passing,--when souls of those departed are given special
privilege to return to earth, I speak thus, dumbly, to my lord.
Although the fingers tracing now these timid lines are not permitted to
touch you, oh, believe that, as you read, I wait at the door of your
heart. O thou who art so dear, give to me, I pray, a shelter and a
habitation. Then, because of my great love, I shall be one with you,
bringing you comfort and myself great blessedness. O thou, who art
still my husband, I beseech you to realize that any act on your part of
violence and self-destruction will hurl our lives apart to the full
width of the ten existences; so that, through another thousand years of
unfulfilment we shall be groping in the dark, like children who have
lost their way, calling ever, each on the name of the other.

"The birds of the air know, when storms arise, where to find their
nests. Even the fox has shelter in the hill. Shall the soul of Ume-ko
seek and find no shelter? Send me not forth again in lonely travail!
Open your heart to me, O thou who art loved as no man was ever loved
before thee! Ume-ko."

Kano, listening at the door, thought that the boy had fainted. One
nurse, then another, crept near. At last the old man, unable to endure
the strain, peered through a crevice. He fell back instantly, pressing
both hands upon his mouth to stifle the cry of joy. Tatsu alive,
awake, with eyes opened wide, gazed upward smiling, as into the face of
Buddha.

X

The New Year festival, Shogatsu, had come and gone: white-flower buds