“I am sorry, I have robbed her of her room. And what does she go to see Daitetsu-san for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything else?”
“Many other things.”
“What many other things?”
“I don’t know.”
This put an end to my catechism, and also to my tiffin. The girl took away the little table. As she pulled open the wall-papered screen, I saw through the opening the young woman of butterfly coiffeur, resting her chin in her hands that were supported by arms which had their elbows on the railing of the up-stairs verandah, overlooking a inner court shrubbery. The “butterfly” was gazing downward with the pose of a modernised goddess of mercy. In contrast to how she struck me this morning, she was serenely calm. Looking downward as she was, I could not tell how her eyes were moving. I could only wonder if any change had come into her expression. An ancient says that nothing speaks better for a person than his pupils. He is right. How can a man conceal? There is, indeed, no organ in human body so alive as the eye. Two real butterflies flew upward twirling around each other from under the railing, on which the human butterfly was leaning quietly. It was just at this juncture that the girl opened the fusuma[(22)] of my room, and the noise made the woman yonder lift her eyes from the butterflies, and direct them toward me. Her eyes shot through the space like a shaft of rays, and hit me between my own. My heart throbbed; but the same moment the girl closed the screen. The momentary spell broke and I returned to the noon tide of balmy Spring.
I again stretched myself full length on the matted floor, and soon I was reciting:
“Sadder than the moon’s lost light,
Lost is the kindling of dawn,