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The young voice had taken on strangely the timbre of the old as, in equal soberness, he answered, "Such, Kano Indara, though I be burdened with years as many as your own, will be the never-ceasing longing for my lost wife, Umè-ko." A little sob, loosed suddenly upon the night, sped past them. "What was it? Who is there?" cried Tatsu, sharply, wheeling round. Kano began to shake.
First there was Umè at the willow; then Tatsu, in the same place, taking his mad plunge for death's oblivion; Umè, the hooded acolyte, kneeling in the sick chamber at the head of her husband's bed; Umè, the nun, standing each day at twilight on the edge of the temple cliff to catch a glimpse of him she loved; and, at the last, Tatsu and Umè rejoined beside the tomb of Kano Uta-ko.
Suddenly the old man hurled his staff away and sank weeping into the stronger arms. "I fear, I fear!" he wailed. "It may be still too early. But she said not, the abbot counselled it! O gods of the Kano home!" "Father," asked Tatsu, rising slowly to his feet, his arms still close about the other, "can it be joy that is to find me, even in this life?"
In this surmise the old dame was, for once, at fault. Tatsu did not return until full daylight of the next morning. He had been wandering, evidently, all night long among the chill and dew-wet branches of the mountain shrubs. His silken robe was torn and stained as had been the blue cotton dress, that first day of his coming.
The red light fell upon a ring of faces, evidently a mother and her children; and on the broad, naked back of the father who leaned far outward on his guiding pole. Umè turned her eyes away. "I think I can walk now," she said. Tatsu rose instantly, and drew her upward by the hands. A shudder of remembered horror caught him. He pressed her once more tightly to his heart.
Next day, exactly at the hour of noon, the culprits tapped upon Kano's wooden gate. During the morning the old man had been in a condition of feverish excitement, but now that the agony of waiting had forever ceased, he assumed a pose of indifference. Tatsu entered first, as a husband should.
"I suppose you know, Miss Umè, that your father may actually adopt this goblin from Kiu Shiu!" "Ah, do you mean Sir Tatsu? Yes, I know. He, my father, has always longed to have a son." "A son is desirable when the price is not too great," said the old dame, nodding sagely.
Noble patrons came to the little cottage bearing rolls of white silk, upon which they entreated humbly, "That the illustrious and honorable young painter, Kano Tatsu, would some day, when he might not be augustly inconvenienced by so doing, trace a leaf or a cloud, anything, in fact, that fancy could suggest, so that it was the work of his own inimitable hand.
"Then I go forth into the city, alone," said the boy. He rose, but Kano stopped him. "Wait! I shall accompany you, if but a little way. You do not know the roads. You will be lost!" "I could return to this place from the under-rim of the world," said Tatsu. "Bound, crippled, blindfold, I should come straight to it." "Maybe, maybe," said Kano, "nevertheless I will go."
No longer was it Umè-ko at all, but in actual truth the Dragon Maid, held from her lover by a jealous god, seeking him through fire and storm and sea, peering for him into the courts of emperors, the shrines of the astonished gods, the very portals of the under-world. And Tatsu listened without sound or motion; only his eyes burned like beacons in a windless night.
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