“I can give him not one grain of affection,” said the girl, bitterly. “Did he not cast off my mother for that other woman? Ah, I have heard all the story. What I could not understand that first day I have learned since, and you also. Did you not tell me that my mother died shuddering at his memory?”
Aoi sighed helplessly. The girl threw herself down on the floor, and, resting her chin upon her hand, stared out before her at the street without. There had been a little rain, and the bamboo trees across the street were shining with the drops which had not yet dried upon them.
Looking down the street, she could see the dim outline of the country beyond, the cloud-shaped mountains, the sheen of the water beneath. She turned back to Aoi, who had silently seated herself beside her.
“Mother,” she said, “I am going away alone.”
“Alone! Ah, you make my heart stand still with fear.”
“Listen. All Matsushima is known to me, and the priests at the temple are kind and love me. If I need food they will give it to me. Do they not feed even the birds which alight upon their temples?”
“Oh, child, I cannot think what it is you contemplate.”
“I will not leave our Japan,” she cried, passionately. “It is the only home I have known.”
“But what can you do?”
“I will hide,” said the girl.