The devil takes care of that!
He saw Jane not only as she was, but as she had been, fair, and fresh, and innocent, against the background of the beeches round Glenbruach, and the sea lochs, and the purple hills.
What he did with his body that day in Arita, or where he wandered, he could never tell, for his mind was fighting a battle so fierce that all intelligent perception of outward things was blurred.
At the end of it he found himself in a tea house sitting before some food which he had apparently ordered, and the battle was won. So he told himself.
As a matter of fact, he was worn out. Passion was exhausted, fighting against fate, attempting to escape from the pursuing devils, beating himself against the trees, he had fallen beneath them, telling himself that the battle was won, wondering at himself that he ever could have even dreamed of the ruinous course of action which lust had urged him to.
But the trees remained steadfast and unharmed, waiting only for the renewal of the madman’s strength and the inevitable end.
It was dark when he reached the Nagasaki station. He picked a riksha from a row of them standing outside with hoods up, for it had been raining slightly, and looking absurdly like a row of tiny, unhorsed hansom cabs, and told the man to take him to the House of the Clouds.
He came up the hill-path, and as he came the wind, blowing against him, brought a perfume with it, the perfume of rain-wet azaleas. During the day and the previous night dozens of blossoms had broken forth, filling the garden with their fragrance and beauty; dozens more would be born ere the morrow under the light of the silvery moon now gliding up over the hill-tops behind a tracery of flying, fleecy clouds.
As he approached the house, he saw through the open panel space the silhouettes of Pine-breeze and Cherry-blossom.
They were sitting opposite to each other on their heels upon the lamplit matting, and seemed at first to be engaged in the game of kitsune-ken, but almost instantly he perceived that they were playing at no game, but were engaged in conversation. Alarmed conversation, to judge by the movements of their hands, now up-flung, now flung out sideways. Sweetbriar San was promenading the matting with tail fluffed out, now rubbing against Pine-breeze, now against Cherry-blossom, attempting apparently to join in the conversation, and seeming to share in the excitement.