saw two figures
pass through the swing door at the entrance ... one was a Japanese lady,
dressed in the national Japanese costume--a kimono of dark iron-grey
silk--the other, a tall, slim, near-sighted youth of seventeen dressed
also in kimono, wearing a peaked collegiate cloth cap and sandals on his
feet. The pair hesitated at the doorway, and after questioning one of
the hotel clerks, came towards us under his guidance.

Mrs. Atkinson realised at once that this was her Japanese
half-sister-in-law. The nearest relations never embrace in Japan, but
the two ladies saluted one another with profound bows and smiles.

Mrs. Koizumi could never have been, even according to Japanese ideas,
good-looking; it was difficult to reconcile this subdued, sad-faced,
Quaker-like person with Hearn's description written to Ellwood Hendrik,
of the little lady whom he dressed up like a queen, and who nourished
dreams of "beautiful things to be bought for the adornment of her
person." But the face had a pleasing expression of gentle, sensible
honesty. Had it not been for the arched eyebrows, oblique eyes and
elaborate coiffure--the usual erection worn by her country-women--she
might have been a dignified, well-mannered housekeeper in a large
English establishment.

The only exception to the strict nationality of her costume was a
shabby, carelessly-folded, American silk umbrella that she carried,
instead of the dainty contrivance of oil paper and bamboo so generally
used and so typical of Japan. There was something vaguely and
indefinably suggestive, like the revival of a sensation, a shadowing of
memory, blended in the associations of that umbrella; we felt certain it
had been used by her "August One" in his "honourable" journeyings to and
from the Imperial University.

After having placed this precious possession, with careful precision,
leaning against a chair, she turned to introduce her son to his aunt. He
was already bowing profoundly over Dorothy Atkinson's hand in the
background.

At first the lad had given the impression of being a Japanese, but as he
laughed and talked with his beautiful cousin, you recognised another
race; no child of Nippon was this, the fairy folk had stolen a Celtic
changeling and put him into their garb; but he was not one of them, he
was an Irishman and a Hearn, bearing a striking resemblance to Carleton
Atkinson, Dorothy's brother. The same gentle manner, soft voice, and
near-sighted eyes, obliging the