s as they went about their daily _soji_ (house-cleaning),
their shrill mouselike chirps and their silly giggle; then the
afternoon stillness when every one was absent or sleeping; and then,
the revival of life and bustle at about six o'clock, when the clogs
were shuffled off at the front door, when the teacups began to jingle,
and when sounds of swishing water came up from the bath-house, the
crackle of the wood-fire under the bathtub, the smell of the burning
logs, and the distant odours of the kitchen.

Outside, the twilight was beginning to gather. A big black crow
flopped lazily on to the branch of the neighbouring pine-tree. His
harsh croak disturbed Asako's mind like a threat. High overhead passed
a flight of wild geese in military formation on their way to the
continent of Asia. Lights began to peep among the trees. Behind the
squat pagoda a sky of raspberry pink closed the background.

The twilight is brief in Japan. The night is velvety; and the
moonlight and the starlight transfigure the dolls' house architecture,
the warped pine-trees, the feathery bamboo clumps and the pagoda
spires.

From a downstair room there came the twang of cousin Sadako's _koto_,
a kind of zither instrument, upon which she played interminable
melancholy sonatas of liquid, detached notes, like desultory thoughts
against a background of silence. There was no accompaniment to this
music and no song to chime with it; for, as the Japanese say, the
accompaniment for _koto_ music is the summer night-time and its heavy
fragrance, and the voice with which it harmonizes is the whisper of
the breeze in the pine-branches.

Long after Sadako had finished her practice, came borne upon the
distance the still more melancholy pipe of a student's flute. This was
the last human sound. After that the night was left to the orchestra
of the insects--the grasshoppers, the crickets and the _semi_
(cicadas). Asako soon was able to distinguish at least ten or twelve
different songs, all metallic in character, like clock springs being
slowly wound up and then let down with a run. The night and the house
vibrated with these infinitesimal chromatics. Sometimes Asako
thought the creatures must have got into her room, and feared for
entanglements in her hair. Then she remembered that her mother's
nickname had been "the _Semi_" and that she had been so called because
she was always happy and singing in her little house by the river.

This memory roused Asako o