ng
again. Make me beautiful that I may seem beautiful to him, for whose
sake I, the unworthy, beseech this!"

He told her to come next day, and that he only would be too delighted to
thus repay the debt he had owed her for so many years. So he painted
her, as she had been forty years before. When she saw the picture, she
clasped her hands in delight, but how was she ever to repay the master?
She had nothing to offer but her _Shirabyoshi_ garments. He took them,
saying he would keep them as a memory, but that she must allow him to
place her beyond the reach of want.

No money would she accept, but thanking him again and again, she went
away with her treasure. The master had her followed, and on the next day
took his way to the district indicated amidst the abodes of the poor and
outcast. He tapped on the door of the old woman's dwelling, and
receiving no answer pushed open the shutter, and peered through the
aperture. As he stood there the sensation of the moment when, as a tired
lad, forty years before, he had stood, pleading for admission to the
lonesome little cottage amongst the hills, thrilled back to him.

Entering softly, he saw the woman lying on the floor seemingly asleep.
On a rude shelf he recognised the ancient _Butsudan_ with its tablet,
and now, as then, a tiny lamp was burning; in front of it stood the
portrait he had painted.

"The master called the sleeper's name once or twice. Then, suddenly, as
she did not answer, he saw that she was dead, and he wondered while he
gazed upon her face, for it seemed less old. A vague sweetness, like the
ghost of youth, had returned to it; the wrinkles and the lines of sorrow
had been strangely smoothed by the touch of a phantom Master mightier
than he."

CHAPTER XIX
KUMAMOTO

"Of course Urashima was bewildered by the gods. But who is
not bewildered by the gods? What is Life itself but a
bewilderment? And Urashima in his bewilderment doubted the
purpose of the gods, and opened the box. Then he died without
any trouble, and the people built a shrine to him as Urashima
Mio-jin....

"These are quite differently managed in the West. After
disobeying Western gods, we have still to remain alive and to
learn the height and the breadth and the depth of superlative
sorrow. We are not allowed to die quite comfortably just at
the best possible time: m