e cottage in the mountains, and each evening she had danced to
please him. One cold winter he fell sick and died; since then she had
lived alone with nothing to console her but the memory of her lover,
laying daily before his tablet the customary offerings, and nightly
dancing to please his spirit.

After she had told her tale, she begged the young man to go back and try
again to sleep.

On leaving next morning, he wanted to pay for the hospitality he had
received. "What I did was done for kindness alone, and it certainly was
not worth money," she said, as she dismissed him. Then, pointing out the
path he had to follow, she watched him until he passed from sight, his
heart, as he went, full of the charm and beauty of the woman he had left
behind.

Many years passed by; the painter had become old, and rich, and famous.
One day there came to his house an old woman, who asked to speak with
him. The servants, thinking her a common beggar, turned her away, but
she came so persistently that at last they had to tell their master.
When, at his orders, the old woman was admitted, she began untying the
knots of a bundle she had brought with her; inside were quaint garments
of silk, a wonderful costume, the attire of a _Shirabyoshi_.

With many beautiful and pathetic touches, Hearn tells how, as he watched
her smooth out the garments with her trembling fingers, a memory stirred
in the master's brain; again in the soft shock of recollection, he saw
the lonely mountain dwelling in which he had received unremunerated
hospitality, the faintly burning light before the Buddhist shrine, the
strange beauty of a woman dancing there alone in the dead of the night.
"Pardon my rudeness for having forgotten your face for the moment," he
said, as he rose and bowed before her, "but it is more than forty years
since we last saw each other; you received me at your house. You gave up
to me the only bed you had. I saw you dance and you told me all your
story."

The old woman, quite overcome, told him that, in the course of years,
she had been obliged, through poverty, to part with her little house,
and, becoming weak and old, could no longer dance each evening before
the _Butsudan_. Therefore, she had sought out the master, since she
desired for the sake of the dead a picture of herself in the costume and
attitude of the dance that she might hang it up before the _Butsudan_.
"I am not now as I was then," she added. "But, oh, master, make me you