HE Lady Wistaria arose with the sun. Without waiting to pin back the long, silken hair which hung like a cloud of lacquer about her, she stole softly to the casement of her chamber.
The perfume which stole up to her was sweeter and stronger far than that wafted from the trees laden with the dews of the early morning. Yet the trees were bare of blossoms and would not bloom for a month to come. Nevertheless the ledge of Wistaria’s casement was piled with the living spring blossoms of plum and cherry. She could not but caress them with her hands, her lips, her eyes, her burning cheeks. With little, trembling hands she searched among them and found what she sought—a scroll—a narrow, thin, wonderful scroll, long, yet only a few inches in width, with golden borders down the sides, and the faint, exquisite tracings of birds and flowers intertwined among the words that leaped up at her almost as though they had spoken. It was a poem to her—her grace, beauty, modesty, loveliness, its theme:
“A stately shiro was her home;
In royal halls she shone most fair,
From tiny feet to golden comb,
In her sweet life what is my share?
“Oh, lovely maid, my moon thou art;
O Fuji san, thou hast my heart!”
There were many other verses, but the Lady Wistaria was too much moved to have either the vision or the mind to read beyond the first stanza. As became her rank and the painful tuition of years, she should have pushed very deliberately the flowers from her sill and torn the scroll into ragged pieces, a chastisement prescribed by every etiquette for the temerity of a presumptuous lover.