e of blue and white cotton, and tie all in with a sash of brocaded
blue and gold,--that was the sum of it. For washing she had a shallow
wooden basin on the kitchen veranda, where cold water splashed
incessantly from bamboo tubes thrust into the hillside. Hurriedly
drying her face and hands on a small towel that hung from a swinging
bamboo hoop, she ran into the kitchen to assist the still grumbling
Mata.

By this time old Kano had again seated himself at the edge of his
veranda. The summer sun grew unpleasantly warm. The morning-glories
on their trellises had begun to droop. A little later they would hang,
wretched and limp, mere faded scraps of dissolution. Overhead the
temple bell struck seven. Kano shuddered at this foreign marking out
of hours. A melancholy, intense as had been his former ecstacy, began
to enfold his spirit. Perhaps he had waited too long for the simple
breakfast; perhaps the recent glory had drained him of vital force. A
hopelessness, alike of life and death, rose about him in a tide.

Ume prostrated herself upon the veranda near him. "Good morning,
august father. Will you deign to enter now and partake of food?"

Her voice and the morning face she lifted might have won a smile from a
stone image. Kano turned sourly. "Why," he thought, "in Shaka's name,
could n't she have been a son?"

He rose, however, shaking off his wooden clogs so that they remained
upon the path below, and followed Ume to the zashiki, or main room of
the house, with the best view of the garden.

The tea was delicious in its first delicate infusion; the pickled plums
most stimulating to a morning appetite.

"Rice and fish will soon honorably eventuate," Ume assured him as she
went back, smiling, into the kitchen.

Kano pensively lifted a plum upon the point of a toothpick and began
nibbling at its wrinkled skin. Yes, why could she not have been a son?
As it was, the girl could paint,--paint far better than most women even
the famous ones of old. But, after all, no woman painter could be
supreme. Love comes first with women! They have not the strong heart,
the cruelty, the fierce imagination that go to the making of a great
artist. Even among the men of the day, corrupted and distracted as
they are by foreign innovations, could real strength be found? Alas!
Art was surely doomed, and his own life,--the life of the last great
Kano, futile and perishable as the withering flowers on their stems.

He at