e.

But the Princess stopped him. She said that if she were forced to go to
the Palace she would turn at once into a shadow, and even as she spoke
she began to lose her form. Her figure faded from his sight while he
looked.

The Emperor then promised to leave her free if only she would resume
her former shape, which she did.

It was now time for him to return, for his retinue would be wondering
what had happened to their Royal master when they missed him for so
long. So he bade her good-by, and left the house with a sad heart.
Princess Moonlight was for him the most beautiful woman in the world;
all others were dark beside her, and he thought of her night and day.
His Majesty now spent much of his time in writing poems, telling her of
his love and devotion, and sent them to her, and though she refused to
see him again she answered with many verses of her own composing, which
told him gently and kindly that she could never marry any one on this
earth. These little songs always gave him pleasure.

At this time her foster-parents noticed that night after night the
Princess would sit on her balcony and gaze for hours at the moon, in a
spirit of the deepest dejection, ending always in a burst of tears. One
night the old man found her thus weeping as if her heart were broken,
and he besought her to tell him the reason of her sorrow.

With many tears she told him that he had guessed rightly when he
supposed her not to belong to this world--that she had in truth come
from the moon, and that her time on earth would soon be over. On the
fifteenth day of that very month of August her friends from the moon
would come to fetch her, and she would have to return. Her parents were
both there, but having spent a lifetime on the earth she had forgotten
them, and also the moon-world to which she belonged. It made her weep,
she said, to think of leaving her kind foster-parents, and the home
where she had been happy for so long.

When her attendants heard this they were very sad, and could not eat or
drink for sadness at the thought that the Princess was so soon to leave
them.

The Emperor, as soon as the news was carried to him, sent messengers to
the house to find out if the report were true or not.

The old bamboo-cutter went out to meet the Imperial messengers. The
last few days of sorrow had told upon the old man; he had aged greatly,
and looked much more than his seventy years. Weeping bitterly, he told
them that the report