d assured myself that I was unobserved, I
wrote simply,

Whether there or here,
Be with me, dear!

Once more I strode back and forth. Then it occurred to me that so long
as I remained in the park I could observe from some hiding-place
whether any one read the inscription.

My bamboo stood right at the intersection of a smaller path and the
bamboo alley, and could be seen from a distance. I accordingly followed
the cross path and came thus into the dark green bosket out of which
the erythrina stood towering. From a distance it seemed as though the
flowering giant were closely surrounded by the smaller trees and
bushes; but if one stepped through the green hedge, one found in the
centre of it a great open circle, like the hallowed precinct of a
sacred tree; out of the ground rose massively the mighty trunk, showing
in clear outline its flower-laden branches, of which the lower ones
were far extended and dipped their fiery burden deep in the surrounding
thicket. Beneath the tree was a bench; from it I could, to the left,
look back along the path and into the bamboo alley, while straight
ahead an opening in the bushes afforded a view of the fountain and the
middle of the garden.

I seated myself in the hedged-in sultry air, which seemed to have been
very little cooled by the night, and dreamed of the expected
sweetheart. I gazed to the left and saw the sunbathed stems and twigs
of bamboo stand out clearly and prettily on the dark shady background;
and looked straight ahead and saw the fountain spraying and foaming,
and often in the tea plantation observed the old man bend forward and
rise erect again.

What did she look like? Like this woman and that woman who had before
now found favor in my sight? Hardly; in that case those other women
would have held me captive. How must she be? Black, white, or red--that
cannot matter. Her eyes will take me, her lips will intoxicate me,
because they are hers! She will be such that my eye will no more
estimate and compare, that my mind will no more dream and desire, that
I shall feel she is she, and acknowledge her as the only power outside
myself; so that my heart, my brain, and every fibre of my flesh will
glow under the same compulsion to take from itself this body and spirit
now subject to another will than mine, to transform it, to engraft it
upon my being, whether for life or for death, to consume it, to drain
it up as the sole