The stolid and indifferent lackeys who had attended the party returned to the boat, where they fell into conversation with the oarsmen.
At last the lovers were alone.
For a long moment Keiki and Wistaria looked into each other’s eyes. They were safe from all observation, for the gardens, and indeed the whole island, was of that rock-and-pebble-built variety favored by the Japanese. Behind and around them they were screened by quaint, grotesque rocks of natural form and immense size, carried from a mountain to this tiny island, placed there in miniature to simulate nature.
Nevertheless Keiki, the impatient and ardent, now at the crucial moment, had naught to say. He had confessed his love in his letters; she had admitted tacitly her own. Still they did not embrace, or even touch each other. Culture is strong in Japan, where also is the fire of love. So these two but looked into each other’s faces, all their hearts’ eloquent passion in their eyes. Wistaria’s eyes did not fall before his tender gaze. Only a rose-red flush crept softly like a magic glow over the oval of her cheeks, tingeing her little chin while accentuating her brow’s whiteness.
Without a word her lover dropped upon one knee, lifted the long sleeve of her kimono, and buried his face within its fabric.
Five minutes later, hand in hand, they were standing on the same spot. They were watching the river, swollen by recent rains, as it burst over the rocks beyond, bounding down the river-bed, rolling swiftly along, twisting, curving, and winding about the sinuous form of the island’s shore, holding it in the grudging love of the water for the land. The water was blue-green in color, save where the sunbeams reflected its own light in glistening gleams of quicksilver, ever moving, ever playing, while the shores on either side threw shadows of their trees and rocks upon it. As it ran busily, merrily along, now and then lapping the shore and leaping to their very feet, it seemed a living thing which babbled and laughed with an inward knowledge of their joy, and also sighed and wailed with a prophetic undercurrent of coming woe.
The touch of their hands close clasped together made them tremble and quiver. Their eyes met to droop away and meet again in the vivid recognition of their own innocent happiness. They could not speak, because their hearts had laid claim to their lips and sealed them in a golden silence.
Then, after a long interval, Keiki found his voice. If he spoke of the flowing river at their feet, it was not the river itself that absorbed his mind, but because in it, as in all things beautiful in life, he now saw reflected the image of his beloved.
“The honorable river,” he said, “flows high at this season, but before the summer dies it will be but a thin line, very still, very quiet.”
“Yes,” said Wistaria, tremulously, “but the lotus will spring up in its honorable waters, and if the river should continue to rise and rush onward like this, I fear me the water-flowers would perish and the noise of its ceaseless flow would drown the voices of the birds, which make the summer speak.”