was little
better than a convalescent. She had never looked at sorrow before; and
the shock of what she had seen had paralyzed her vitality without as
yet opening her understanding. Like a dog, who in the midst of
his faithful affection has been struck for a fault of which he is
unconscious, she took refuge in darkness, solitude and despair.

The Japanese, who are as a rule intuitively aware of others' emotions,
recognized her case. A room was prepared for her in a distant wing of
the straggling house, a "foreign-style" room in an upper story with
glass in the windows--stained glass too--with white muslin blinds, a
colored lithograph of Napoleon and a real bed, recently purchased on
Sadako's pleading that everything must be done to make life happy for
their guest.

"But she is a Japanese," Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had objected. "It is not
right that a Japanese should sleep upon a tall bed. She must learn to
give up luxurious ways."

Sadako protested that her cousin's health was not yet assured; and so
discipline was relaxed for a time.

Asako spent most of her days in the tall bed, gazing through the open
doorway, across the polished wood veranda like the toffee veranda of
a confectioner's model, past the wandering branch of an old twisted
pine-tree which crouched by the side of the mansion like a faithful
beast, over the pigmy landscape of the garden, to the scale-like roofs
of the distant city, and to the pagoda on the opposite hill.

It rested her to lie thus and look at her country. From time to time
Sadako would steal into the room. Her cousin would leave the invalid
in silence, but she always smiled; and she would bring some offering
with her, a dish of food--Asako's favorite dishes, of which Tanaka had
already compiled a complete list--or sometimes a flower. At the open
door she would pause to shuffle off her pale blue _zori_ (sandals);
and she would glide across the clean rice-straw matting shod in her
snow-white _tabi_ only.

Asako gradually accustomed herself to the noises of the house. First,
there was the clattering of the _amado_, the wooden shutters whose
removal announced the beginning of the day, then the gurgling and the
expectorations which accompanied the family ablutions, then the harsh
sound of the men's voices and their rattling laughter, the sound
of their _geta_ on the gravel paths of the garden like the tedious
dropping of heavy rain on an iron roof, then the flicking and dusting
of the maid