“Heed it, artist!” said the Lady Fuji-no.
CHAPTER XXI
“YOU ARE NOT SADO-KO!”
CHAPTER XXI
“YOU ARE NOT SADO-KO!”
IT was such another moonlight night as that on which the Princess Sado-ko kept her last tryst with the artist Junzo, but in the Nijo gardens no sight was reminiscent of the flowering gardens of Komatzu. No bamboo grove offered inviting lanes for loitering lovers, no stately camphor trees threw their flickering shadows of mystery upon the moonlit grass.
The lawns about the palace Nijo were quite bare of trees, and even by the wing of the Princess Sado-ko’s apartments the new and ruthless carpenters, not gardeners, had torn up the bright flowering trees and shrubs to put in their places painted boxes, filled with foreign ferns and flowers of priceless value,—gifts from diplomats to the flattered Japanese.
Junzo and Fuji-no kept within the shadow of the princess’s balcony, there being no trees or foliage at hand to screen them otherwise.