when she knocked at the door of her neighbor the ant.
Poor little gypsy!
I mount the stairs on tiptoe, and stop at the sound of singing that I hear up in my room.
It is undoubtedly Chrysanthème's voice and the song is a cheerful one! This chills me and changes the current of my thoughts. I am almost sorry I have taken the trouble to come.
Mingled with the song is a noise I cannot understand: dzinn! dzinn! a clear metallic ring as of coins being flung vigorously on the floor. I am well aware that this vibrating house exaggerates every sound during the silence of night; but all the same, I am puzzled to know what my mousmé can be doing. Dzinn! dzinn! is she amusing herself with quoits, or the jeu du crapaud, or pitch and toss?
Nothing of the kind; I fancy I have guessed, and I continue my upward progress still more gently, on all fours, with the precautions of a Red Indian, to give myself for the last time the pleasure of surprising her.
She has not heard me come in. In our great white room, emptied and swept out, where the clear sunshine pours in, and the soft wind, and the yellowed leaves of the garden; she is sitting all alone, her back turned to the door: she is dressed for walking, ready to go to her
mother's, her rose-colored parasol beside her.
On the floor are spread out all the fine silver dollars which, according to our agreement, I had given her the evening before. With the competent dexterity of an old money-changer she fingers them, turns them over, throws them on the floor, and armed with a little mallet ad hoc, rings them vigorously against her ear, singing the while I know not what little pensive bird-like song which I daresay she improvises as she goes along.
Well, after all, it is even more completely Japanese than I could possibly have imagined it—this last scene of my married life! I feel inclined to laugh. How simple I have been, to allow myself to be taken in by the few clever words she whispered yesterday, as she walked beside me, by a tolerably pretty little phrase embellished as it was by the silence of two o'clock in the morning, and all the wonderful enchantments of night.