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He said nothing of the adventure to his young wife, for, as he said to himself "Women are curious, and then, too, sometimes they are given to talking," and Kiki-Tsum felt that it was too reverent a matter to be discussed by neighbours, this finding of his dead father's portrait in the street. For some days Kiki-Tsum was in a great state of excitement.

He looked carefully at it, and to his intense astonishment saw the image of a brown face, with dark, intelligent eyes, and a look of awestruck wonderment expressed on its features. Kiki-Tsum dropped on his knees, and gazing earnestly at the object he held in his hand, he whispered, "It is my sainted father. How could his portrait have come here? Is it, perhaps, a warning of some kind for me?"

"My children," he said, putting his head in at the door, "why this unseemly anger, why this dispute?" "Father," said Kiki-Tsum, "my wife is mad." "All women are so, my son, more or less," interrupted the holy bonze. "You were wrong to expect perfection, and must abide by your bargain now. It is no use getting angry, all wives are trials." "But what she says is a lie."

Now it happened that a young Japanese, whose daily work was to pull along those light carriages such as were seen at the last Paris Exhibition, picked up one day in the street a small pocket hand-mirror, probably dropped by some English lady-tourist on her travels in that part of the world. It was, of course, the first time in his life that Kiki-Tsum had ever gazed on such a thing.

She had no heart, however, for anything, and did not even make any attempt to prepare a meal for her husband. She just went on sitting there on the floor, nursing the portrait, and at the same time her wrath. When later on Kiki-Tsum arrived, he was surprised to find nothing ready for their evening meal, and no wife.

I found it in the street the other day, and put it in your vase for safety." Lili-Tsee's eyes flashed with indignation at this apparently barefaced lie. "Hear him!" she almost screamed. "He wants to tell me now that I do not know a woman's face from a man's." Kiki-Tsum was wild with indignation, and a quarrel began in good earnest.

Why, the portrait of a woman, and she had believed that Kiki-Tsum was so good, and so fond, and so true. Her grief was at first too deep for any words. She just sat down on the floor with the terrible portrait in her lap, and rocked herself backwards and forwards. This, then, was why her husband came home so many times in the day. It was to look at the portrait of the woman she had just seen.