ed the old man, "you were once an artist! The
foreigners are tainting us all."

"I love art still," said Ando, "but I make a better engineer. And--I
beseech you to overlook my vulgarity--I am getting rich."

Kano groaned again. "Oh, this foreign influence! It is the curse of
modern Japan! Love of money is starting a dry rot in the land of the
gods. Success, material power, money,--all of them illusions, miasma
of the soul, blinding men to reality! Surely my karma was evil that I
needed to be reborn into this age of death!"

Ando looked sympathetic and a little contrite. "Since we are indeed
hopelessly of the present," ventured he, "may it not be as well to let
the foreigners teach us their methods of success?"

"Success?" cried Kano, almost angrily. "What do they succeed in except
the grossest material gains? There is no humanity in them. Love of
beauty dies in the womb. Shall we strive to become as dead things?"

"The love of beauty will never perish in this land," said Ando more
earnestly than he had yet spoken. "A Japanese loves Art as he loves
life. Our rich merchants become the best patrons of the artists."

"Patrons of the artists," echoed Kano, wearily. "You voice your own
degradation, friend Ando. In the great days, who dared to speak of
patronage to us. Emperors were artists and artists Emperors! It was
to us that all men bowed."

"Yes, yes, that is honorably true," Ando hastened to admit. "And so
would they in this age bow to you, if you would but allow it."

"I am not worthy of homage," said Kano, his head falling forward on his
breast. "None knows this better than I,--and yet I am the greatest
among them. Show me one of our young artists who can stand like Fudo
in the flame of his own creative thought! There is none!"

"What you say is unfortunately true of the present Tokyo
painters,--perhaps equally of Kioto and other large cities,--but----"
Here Ando paused as if to arouse expectancy. Kano did not look up.
"But," insisted the other, "may it not be possible that in some place
far from the clamor of modern progress,--in some remote mountain
pass,--maybe----"

Kano looked up now sharply enough. Apathy and indifference flared up
like straws in a sudden flame of passion. He made a fierce gesture.
"Not that, not that!" he cried. "I cannot bear it! Do not seek to
give false life to a hope already dead. I am an old man. I have hoped
and prayed too long. I must go down to m