"Please do not stick your knees or your elbows out of the windows."
"Fat people must ride on the platform."
"Soiled coolies must take a bath before entering."
An advertisement in English emphasized the talk of the afternoon: "Invaluable most fragrant and nice pills, especially for sudden illness. For refreshing drooping minds and regulating disordered spirits, whooping cough and helping reconvalescents to progress."
The force of Kishimoto's appeal was strong upon me.
I alighted at my street and began the climb that led to my house. Halfway up a picture-book tea-house offered hospitality; in its miniature garden I paused to rest and faced the sea in all its evening beauty. Happily the glory of the skies and the tender loveliness of the hills still belonged to their Maker, untouched by commercialism.
The golden track of the setting sun streamed across the mountain tops and turned to fiery red a feathery shock of distant clouds. High and clear came the note of a wild goose as he called to his mate on their homeward flight. In the city below a thousand lights danced and beckoned through the soft velvet shadows of coming night. There fluttered up to me many sounds—a temple bell, the happy call of children at play, cheerful echoes of home-like content, the gentle gaiety of simple life. It was for these, the foundations of the Empire, that Kishimoto San feared ruin, with the coming of too sudden a transition.
But I forgot the man and his woes. The spell of heavenly peace that spread upon land and sea fell like a benediction.
It crept into my heart and filled me with thankfulness that I had known this land and its people and for all the blessings that had fallen to me in the coming of Zura Wingate. Gratitude for my full understanding of her was deep. If only the shadows could be cleared away from the boy I loved, life would be complete.
Exalted by the beauty of the evening, and by my spiritual communings, I entered my house and faced the door of the study. It was ajar. Silhouetted against the golden light, which had so filled me with joy and peace, stood two figures. And the man held the hands of the girl against his breast, and looked down into her glad eyes as a soul in the balance must look into Paradise.