, and it moved up the hill. The very garden now was tinged
with sandalwood.

Until the dawn, and after, he walked the pebbled paths, not thinking,
indeed not fearing, hoping, or giving conscious form to speculation.
He was dazed. But the young blood in his veins ran alternate currents
of fire and ice.

With the first sun-ray he perceived a companion in the dewy solitude.
He had noticed the figure before, but always, until this hour, at
twilight. It was the form of a nun standing, high above him on the
temple cliff, with one arm about a tree.

After this nothing mysterious broke the quiet routine of his life. The
presence of Ume in the chamber seemed to fade a little, but, for some
reason inexplicable to himself, this brought now no poignant grief. He
did not tell the wonderful thing to Mata or old Kano, but hid the still
unfinished picture where no one but himself could see it.

So February passed, and March.

XI

With April came the cherry-flowers, wistaria, and peonies; with iris in
the bud, and shy hedge-violets; wonder of yama buki shrubs that played
gold fountains on the hills, and the swift, bright contagion of young
grass. Even from old Kano's moon-viewing hillock one might see, in
looking out across the desert of gray city roofs, round tops of cherry
trees rising like puffs of rosy smoke. From out the face of the temple
cliff long, supple fronds of ferns unrolled, bending uncertain arms
toward the garden. The tangled sasa-grass rustled new sleeves of silk;
and the great camphor tree, air-hung in blue, seemed caught in a
jewelled mesh of chrysoprase and gold.

Down in the lower level of the garden, too, springtime busied itself
with beauty. The potted plants, once Ume-ko's loved charges, had
become now, quite mysteriously to himself, Tatsu's companions and his
special care. Among the more familiar growths a few foreign bushes had
been given place, a rose, a heliotrope, and a small, frightened
cyclamen. Slips of chrysanthemum needed already to be set for the
autumn yield. Tatsu, watering and tending them, thought with wistful
sadness upon these plans for future enjoyment. "We are all bound upon
the wheel of life," he said to them. "Would that with me, as you, the
turning were but for a single season!"

"My son," the elder man began abruptly, at a certain noonday meal about
the middle of the month, "how is it that you never go with me to the
temple on the hill?"

Tatsu looked up from