It was much later that they told him of Ohano. At first the girl’s sacrifice, for his sake and that of the ancestors, brought from him only an exclamation of pity; he seemed unable to appreciate the facts of the matter. There was no room for a shadow upon his happiness now. They were sitting in the sunlight, that came in a golden stream through the latticed shoji, piercing its way even through the amado. They said little to each other, but upon their faces was a radiance as golden as the sunlight.
Suddenly a tiny shape flickered across the outer wall. It seemed but a moving speck at first upon the water-colored paper; but so insistently did it beat against the wall that the family perceived it was an insect of some kind.
Gonji arose and looked at it curiously, where it fluttered against the outside of the paper wall.
“Why, it is a cicada—and at this time of year!” he said.
Lady Saito laid her pipe upon the hibachi and hobbled across to her son’s side, and Moonlight and the little Taro pressed against him on the other. They all watched the moving little shape outside with absorbed interest and wonder.
“I dreamed of a cicada last night,” said Lady Saito, uneasily. “It kept flying at my ears, whispering that it could not rest. It is a bad sign. Open the shoji, my son. We can catch it with the sleeve.”
He pushed the screen partly open, and the cicada crept along the lacquered latticed wall, beating its little wings and sliding up and down.
Lady Saito slapped at it with the end of her long sleeve, but it fled to the top of the wall. She beat at it with a bamboo broom, and presently it fluttered down and fell upon the floor.
They all hung over the curious little creature, and as they examined it an oppressive feeling of sadness crept upon them.
“How strange is this little cicada,” murmured Moonlight, troubled. “See, one of its little wings is much smaller than the other.”