ed above the treasure-chests of time,
choosing from one and then another, as a wise old jewel-setter chooses
gems. Because ambition, art, existence had come to be, for him, gray
webs spun thin across the emptiness of his days, because all hope of
earthly joy was gone, he had now the power to trace, with almost
superhuman mimicry and skill, the shadow-pictures of his shadow-world.

Yet gradually it became not merely a dull necessity to paint, the one
barrier that held from him a devastating grief, but also something of a
solace. The room where Ume's ever-lighted shrine was kept came more
and more to seem the expression of herself. This the old priest had
promised; Ume's letter had assured him that thus she would be near. In
the blurred, purple hour of dusk when paints must be laid aside, and
the heart given over to dreaming, the little room became her very
earthly entity, the soft, smoke-tinted walls her breathing, the elastic
matted floor but the remembered echoes of her feet, the sliding sliver
fusuma her sleeves, the butsudan, with its small, clear lamp, its white
wood, and its flowers, her face.

Now always he kept the walls that used to separate their chamber and
his painting room removed; so that a single essence filled both rooms.
And here, as he worked silently day after day, it seemed to him that
she had learned to come. At first shy, undecided, in some far corner
of the space she watched him; then, taking courage, would drift near.
She leaned now by his shoulder, as he worked. Always it was the left
shoulder. He could feel her breath--colder indeed than from a living
woman--upon his bared throat. Sometimes a little hand, light as the
dust upon a moth's wing, rested the ghost of a moment on his robe.
Once, he could have sworn her cheek had touched his hair. So strong
was this impression that an ague shivered through him, and his heart
stopped, only to beat again with violent strokes. When the physical
tremor was over he arose, took up her round metal mirror, and went to
the veranda to see by strong light whether any trace of the spirit
touch remained. No, there was only, as usual, the tossed, black locks
of hair through which sorrow had begun to weave her silver strands.

January, with its snows, had passed. The plum-tree buds had opened,
one by one, in the chill, early winds of spring, giving at times
unwilling hospitality to flakes of snow whiter than themselves. In
February, under warmer sunshi