e had sometimes
thought, but a young maple, unusually upright of growth. It had been
leafless, but now the touch of spring had lighted every twig with a
pale flame-point of red. He recalled that in the autumn it had made a
crimson heart against the sky; and later had sent down into the Kano
garden frail alms of ruby films. Ume had loved to catch them in her
hands, wondering at their brightness, and trying to make him wonder,
too. Love-letters of the passing year, she called them; songs dyed
with the autumn's heart's-blood of regret that he must yield the sweet,
warm earth to his gray rival, winter. She had pretended that the
small, crossed veinlets of the leaves were Chinese ideographs which it
was given her to decipher. Holding him off with one outstretched arm
she would have read to him,--fantastic, exquisite interpreter of
love,--but he, mad brute, had caught the little hands, the autumn
leaves, and crushed them to one hot glow, crying aloud that nature,
beauty, love were all made one in her. Such grief he must have given
many times.

He threw his head hack as in sudden hurt, a gesture becoming habitual
to him, and drew a long, impatient, tremulous sigh. As if to cast
aside black thought, he strode over quickly to the maple tree, flung an
arm around it, and leaned over to stare down into his garden with the
gray nun's eyes. There it was, complete, though in miniature;--rocks,
pines, the pigmy pool, the hillock squatting in one corner like an old,
gray garden toad, and in another corner, scarcely of larger size, the
cottage.

Kano plucked nervously at his sleeve. "You lean too far. Come, Tatsu,
I have a--a--place to show you."

Tatsu wheeled with a start. Try as he would he shivered and grew
faint, even yet, at the sound of Kano's voice breaking abruptly in upon
a silence. He gave a nod of acquiescence and, with downbent head,
followed his guide diagonally across the temple court, past the wide
portico where sparrows and pigeons fought for night-quarters in the
carved, open mouths of dragons, along the side of the main building
until, to Tatsu's wonder, they stopped before a little gate in the
nunnery wall.

"I thought it was almost death for a man to enter here!" exclaimed the
boy.

"For most men it is," said Kano, producing a key of hammered brass
about nine inches long. "But I desired to go the short path to the
cemetery, and it lies this way. As I have told you, the abbot was my
boyhood's fr