and
swept out, where the clear sunshine pours in, and the soft wind, and the
yellowed leaves of the garden, she is sitting all alone, her back turned
to the door; she is dressed for walking, ready to go to her mother's,
her rose-colored parasol beside her.

On the floor are spread out all the fine silver dollars which, according
to our agreement, I had given her the evening before. With the competent
dexterity of an old money-changer she fingers them, turns them over,
throws them on the floor, and, armed with a little mallet ad hoc, rings
them vigorously against her ear, singing the while I know not what
little pensive bird-like song which I daresay she improvises as she goes
along.

Well, after all, it is even more completely Japanese than I could
possibly have imagined it--this last scene of my married life! I feel
inclined to laugh. How simple I have been, to allow myself to be taken
in by the few clever words she whispered yesterday, as she walked beside
me, by a tolerably pretty little phrase embellished as it was by
the silence of two o'clock in the morning, and all the wonderful
enchantments of night.

Ah! not more for Yves than for me, not more for me than for Yves, has
any feeling passed through that little brain, that little heart.

When I have looked at her long enough, I call:

"Hi! Chrysantheme!"

She turns confused, and reddening even to her ears at having been caught
at this work.

She is quite wrong, however, to be so much troubled, for I am, on
the contrary, delighted. The fear that I might be leaving her in some
sadness had almost given me a pang, and I infinitely prefer that this
marriage should end as it had begun, in a joke.

"That is a good idea of yours," I say; "a precaution which should always
be taken in this country of yours, where so many evil-minded people are
clever in forging money. Make haste and get through it before I start,
and if any false pieces have found their way into the number, I will
willingly replace them."

However, she refuses to continue before me, and I expected as much;
to do so would have been contrary to all her notions of politeness,
hereditary and acquired, all her conventionality, all her Japanesery.
With a disdainful little foot, clothed as usual in exquisite socks, with
a special hood for the great toe, she pushes away the piles of white
dollars and scatters them on the mats.

"We have hired a large, covered sampan," she says to change the
conversati