to do the same.

"For," she said, "we believe that the spirits of the dead people are
here; and we must be very good to them."

Asako did as she was told, wondering whether her confessor would
give her penance for idolatry. Sadako then motioned her to sit on the
floor. She took one of the tablets from its place and placed it in
front of her cousin.

"That is your father's _ihai_," she said; and then removing another
and placing it beside the first, she added,--

"This is your mother."

Asako was deeply moved. In England we love our dead; but we consign
them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold
promiscuity of the graveyard. The Japanese dead never seem to leave
the shelter of their home or the circle of their family. We bring to
our dear ones flowers and prayers; but the Japanese give them food
and wine, and surround them with every-day talk. The companionship is
closer. We chatter much about immortality. We believe, many of us, in
some undying particle. We even think that in some other world the
dead may meet the dead whom they have known in life. But the actual
communion of the dead and the living is for us a beautiful and
inspiring metaphor rather than a concrete belief. Now the Japanese,
although their religion is so much vaguer than ours, hardly question
this survival of the ancestors in the close proximity of their
children and grandchildren. The little funeral tablets are for them
clothed with an invisible personality.

"This is your mother."

Asako felt influences floating around her. Her mind was in pain,
straining to remember something which seemed to be not wholly
forgotten.

Just at this moment Mrs. Fujinami arrived, carrying an old photograph
album and a roll of silk. Her appearance was so opportune that any one
less innocent than Asako might have suspected that the scene had
been rehearsed. In the hush and charm of that little chamber of the
spirits, the face of the elder woman looked soft and sweet. She opened
the volume at the middle, and pushed it in front of Asako.

She saw the photograph of a Japanese girl seated in a chair with a
man standing at her side, with one hand resting on the chair back. Her
father's photograph she recognised at once, the broad forehead, the
deep eyes, the aquiline nose, the high cheek bones, and the thin,
angry sarcastic lips; not a typically Japanese face, but a type
recurrent throughout our over-educated world, cultured, desperate an