"Our work is now done."
Thus, Shijiro was much more alone than before, and had many more thoughts. But all were of war and the great red death, and none of Yoné.
And then, presently, he came to join the haughty Imperial Guards, who had never dreamed of being a soldier, but only of poetry, and cherry-blossoms, and his samisen, and the soft satin hand of the little Yoné. For it was true, as Nijin said, and as they all agreed, Arisuga among them, that he was not the stuff out of which the empire made its Imperial Guards—quite.
It was in this time, in the presence of the obscured picture, that he wrote his song of "The Great Death."
And his years grew faster than his inches.
YAMATO DAMASHII
V
YAMATO DAMASHII
And, slowly, that fantasy of a great death which infects every Japanese crept into the life and thought of Shijiro Arisuga. Though it came to him, in whom it had lain latent, hardly. But, perhaps for that reason, as is the case with certain diseases, it came with greater certainty and severity than if it had been always with him.