“Why, have you so strange a fancy, Masago?”
“Is it strange?” she asked, and stopped again. In the dusk of the woodland lane, her upturned face appeared timid, wistful.
“Yes, it is strange for a maiden of our class, Masago, to wish to enter royal gardens.”
“Are they not beautiful?” she asked wistfully.
“Beautiful? Perhaps, to some eyes, but to my mind not of that more desirable beauty nature gives to our more simple gardens.”
“Once you thought the gardens peerless,” she said; “have you forgotten, Junzo?”
He started violently. Suddenly his hand fell upon her arm. In the dimly fading light he bent to see her face.
“How can you know of—Masago, your words are strange.”
She laughed in that soft way so reminiscent to him always of that other one.
“They are not strange, indeed,” she said, “for I have often heard that you declared the palace grounds were beautiful. But then,” she sighed, and resumed the walk, “an artist is no less a man, and therefore fickle.”