"And 'a lie which doeth good,'" quoted Kiomidzu, "'is, manifestly, a good lie.'"
"Happy is he," said Namishima, "who, being a liar for the truth, is willing, like us, to abide by its consequences from the unenlightened, to whom there is but one office in a lie—evil!"
"Nembutsu!" agreed the brother of Namishima, his hard hands rasping with his prayer as do the soles of worn sandals.
And then they went on, to the end of the story of this picture of "The Great Death," which had been painted and hung at the tokonoma when Arisuga was a child to deceive him into thinking that his father had honorably fought and died for his emperor instead of against him, that his soul was probably in Buddha's bosom instead of wandering in the alien dark Meido, unredeemed, that his body had been burned on a pyre instead of left to rot in that great ditch in Jokoji. This these old imperialists fancied their duty. The little boy sobbed there behind the shoji.
"Sh!" whispered the uncle from Osaka.
"Sh!" echoed the uncle from Kobé. "He wakes. If he should hear, all would be of no avail."
They covered the fire of the hibachi and caused a darkness in which they stole away.