“Come in, come in, O’Yoné,” he said; “and is it indeed your mistress that you hold by the hand? Can it be my lady?... Oh, my love!”
O’Yoné answered, “Who else should it be?” and the two came in at the garden gate.
But the Lady of the Morning Dew held up her sleeve to hide her face.
“How was it I lost you?” said the samurai; “how was it I lost you, O’Yoné?”
“Lord,” she said, “we have moved to a little house, a very little house, in the quarter of the city which is called the Green Hill. We were suffered to take nothing with us there, and we are grown very poor. With grief and want my mistress is become pale.”
Then Hagiwara took his lady’s sleeve to draw it gently from her face.
“Lord,” she sobbed, “you will not love me, I am not fair.”
But when he looked upon her his love flamed up within him like a consuming fire, and shook him from head to foot. He said never a word.
She drooped. “Lord,” she murmured, “shall I go or stay?”
And he said, “Stay.”