At breakfast the small family of three was silent and preoccupied. The one glimpse they had taken of the shivering, naked plum-tree would have sufficiently accounted for the depression. Iriya and Yuki sat a little behind the master, eating from their small rice-bowls, and attending in turn upon his wants. As Suzumè crept in to remove the half-emptied dishes, Yuki said to her father, "Father, a little later, when you have smoked and read your paper, may I speak with you?"
"Why, certainly, my child," said Tetsujo, kindly, looking up from the damp printed sheet he had already unfurled; "though I may have but few thoughts apart from this terrible storm."
"It is a terrible storm," shuddered Iriya. "A great camphor-tree in the Zen Temple garden has fallen. It was a goblin-tree, and the priests fear evil."
"I spoke not of the storm in the material universe, but of that vast political tempest brewing over us. Our minister leaves St. Petersburg to-morrow. War has practically come."
No comment was made. The three tacitly avoided, each, the glance of the other. Iriya rose quietly, then Yuki. In the door-frame the girl paused. "I shall return in half an hour, father."
Tetsujo nodded. "I shall be here."
In her own room Yuki moved about mechanically, putting into place her few indispensable possessions,—a silver brush, comb, and hand-glass, her white prayer-book and neat Bible, a picture of Gwendolen in a burnt-leather frame, and a lacquered box containing a second photograph, not of Gwendolen, and a package of letters, all addressed in the same hand. She fought to keep her imagination from the coming war. Its dark omen only strengthened her determination to have things understood. She prayed for strength and self-control. Punctual to the moment she entered the guest-room, bowing again to her father. He looked up from his brooding revery. Something in the girl's face made him ask, "Ah, have you indeed a matter of importance? My little Yuki has gone. This is a woman who comes to speak with me."
"Alas, father. Childhood, like the petals of the plum-tree, vanishes at the breath of storms."
"What storm can have found you so early, my little one?"
Yuki drew in a long breath, and steadied herself for a deliberate reply. In the pause Tetsujo leaned out, and with one motion of his powerful hand flung a panel of the shoji to one side, giving a view of the drenched and storm-tormented garden. On the veranda floor, usually so smooth, beaten plum-petals clung like bits of white leather. The drip from the low-tiled roof enclosed them in the bars of a silver cage.