he sat staring for long intervals out
upon the garden. The sunshine gave no pleasure, only a blurring of his
sight. Beauty was not there for him, this day. He was thinking of
those hours of October sunlight, when the whole earth reeled with joy,
for Ume-ko was of it! Where was she now? And what had there been in
Kano's look and voice to rouse those sleeping demons of despair? Could
any new sorrow await him at the temple? No, his present condition had
at least the negative value of absolute void. From nothing, nothing
could be taken; and to it, nothing be supplied!

In spite of this colorless assurance it was with something of
reluctance, of shrinking, that he prepared to leave the house. Few
words were spoken between the two. Catching up the skirts of narrow,
silken robes a little higher, they tucked the folds into their belts,
and side by side began the long, slow climbing of the road.

The city roofs beneath them hurried off to the edge of the world like
ripples left in the gray sand-bed of a stream. Above the plain the
mist drew in its long, horizontal lines of gray.

About half the distance up the steep the temple bell above them sounded
six slow, deliberate strokes. First came the sonorous impact of the
swinging beam against curved metal, then the "boom," the echo,--the
echoes of that echo to endless repetition, sifting in layers through
the thinner air upon them, sweeping like vapor low along the hillside
with a presence and reality so intense that it should have had color,
or, at least, perfume; settling in a fine dew of sound on quivering
ferns and grasses, permeating, it would seem, with its melodious
vibration the very wood of the houses and the trunks of living trees.

Reaching at last the temple court, old Kano took the lead, crossed the
wide-pebbled space, and halted with his companion at the edge of the
cliff. A cry of wonder came from Tatsu's lips; that low, inimitable
cry of the true artist at some new stab of beauty. Delicately the old
man withdrew, and hid himself in the shadow of the temple.

Tatsu stared out, alone. He saw the round bay like a mirror,--like
Ume's mirror; and to the west the peak of Fuji, a porphyry cone against
the sunset splendor. No wonder that the gray nuns came here at this
hour, or that she, the slender, isolated one, lingered to drain the
last bright drop of beauty! He looked about now to discover her tree.
Yes, there it was, quite close; not a willow as h