“The high hill of the cherry-blossoms was colored with all the colors of Japan.
“I lived there with people—my mother and my father and some others—all with pale faces and sloe-eyes.
“But some of them were very ugly.
“Then came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life’s fire.
“He was ugly, but his face was perfect.
“Straightway I fell in love with this one. Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!
“Where the red barren waste lay spread below me I saw manifold softnesses, like a dove’s breast, like a fawn’s eyes, like melted lilies, and the towering, gloomy rocks were the home of violet dreams.
“In the deep green of the ivy mountain my soul found rest at nightfall among mystery and shadow. It wandered there in marvelous peace. And the coolness and damp and the low muttering of the wind and the night birds went into it with a stirring, powerful influence. Also the voices out of the very long ago came from among the green, dark ivy, and from the crevices of gray stones beneath it, and they told me true things in the stillness.
“From the deepness of the brilliant yellow sky—the yellow of burnished brass—there came legion earth-old contradictions. And wondrous paradox and parallel that had not been among the cherry-blossoms appeared to me as my mind contemplated these. I said, Am I thus in love because that I am weak, or that I am strong? For I see here that it is both weakness and strength. And I said, Am I myself when I do this thing? or was that I who lived among the cherry-blossoms? I said, Who am I? What am I?
“Below all there was the blue, broad sea. This sea gave out a white mist that rose and spread over the earth. I knew that I was in love, once and for all.