ed against the peak pale,
luminous vapor of new cloud. Turning, twisting sidewise, this way, then
that, the yielding implement, he seemed to carve upon the silk broad
silver planes of rock, until there rose up a self-revealing vision, the
granite cliff from which a thin, white waterfall leaps out.

[Illustration: "With the soft tuft of camel hair he blurred against the
peak pale, luminous vapor of new cloud."]

But this one swift achievement only whetted the famished appetite to more
creative ardor. Sketch after sketch he made, some to tear at once into
strips, others to fling carelessly aside to any corner where they might
chance to fall, others, again, to be stored cunningly upon some remote
shelf to which old Kano and Uchida and Mata could not reach, but whence
he, Tatsu, the Dragon Painter, should, in a few days more, withdraw them
and show them to his bride. The purple dusk brimmed his tiny garden, and
yet he could not stop. Art had seized him by the throat, and shook him,
as a prey. Uchida, peering at him from between the fusuma, perceived the
glory and turned away in silence; nor for that day nor the next would he
allow any one to approach the frenzied boy. The elder man had, himself
in youth, fared along the valleys of art, and knew the signals on the
peaks.

Tatsu, unconscious that the house was not still empty, painted on.
Sometimes he sobbed. Again an ague of beauty caught him, and he needed
to hurl himself full length upon the mats until the ecstacy was past.
Just as the daylight went he saw, upon the one great glimmering square of
silk as yet immaculate, a dream of Ume-ko, the Dragon Maiden, who had
danced before him. This was an apparition too holy to be limned in
artificial light. When the sun came, next day, he knew well what there
was for him to do. He placed the frame upright, where the first pink
beam would find it. Brushes, water vessels, and paints were placed in
readiness, with such neatness and precision that old Kano's heart would
have laughed in pleasure. That night the shoji and amado were not
closed. Tatsu did not sleep. It was a night of consecration. He walked
up and down, sometimes in the narrow room, sometimes in the garden.
Often he prayed. Again he sat in the soft darkness, before the ghostly
glimmer of the silk, tracing upon it visions of ethereal light. When, at
last, the dawn came in, Tatsu bowed to the east, with his usual prayer of
thankful piety, then, with the e