“No,” says Mousmé, “let us go home.”
Then, seeing I do not quite understand her desire, she explains with charming naïveté that she is afraid of bad dreams.
How queer, little Mousmé! and how childlike, to be sure!
Mousmé’s words have made me notice that the crowd is lessening in density, and the lanterns are going out. Or is it they are paling before the coming dawn?
I look into the face of Mousmé, and then into the faces of the people near us. Yes, that is it. The moon is gone down into the sea, and the sun will be climbing up the first steps of another day’s journey ere we arrive home.
We leave the terrace, with its lingering crowds of tired-faced holiday-makers, and fading light of lanterns and tea-houses, and by a short cut gain a mountain-path leading close home.
The sound of the trumpets is less and less distinct, and that of the ever-chirping cicalas more so, as we wend our way—Mousmé and I—along the narrow, rough, unpaved path in the rapidly growing dawn of a Japanese morning.
Below us to the left lies the town as yet indistinct in the slowly increasing light, a mysterious mass of shadows and projections which mark the places of streets and roofs of houses. Here and there twinkle yellowish red points of light which grow dimmer each moment in the quickening dawn. The harbour stretches a mist-obscured expanse, with gaps here and there like chrysoprases laid in cotton wool. Soon the shipping will become visible, and the mist roll off the face of the tranquil water, like a gauze curtain lifted by unseen hands.
The path runs between fields of flowers, and is edged with dewy grass. The perfume of the blossoms and the keen freshness of the morning air arouse Mousmé’s almost slumbering senses. Through the indescribable fragrance and glamour of an Eastern dawn we wend our way homewards slowly and with tired feet.