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Bud took Polly by the hand, and silently led her to the house. Slim sat down on a keg behind the fire. Taking some loose tobacco and a film of rice-paper from his pocket, he deftly rolled a cigarette, and lighted it with a brand from the blaze. With a sigh he removed his hat. He was the picture of dejection. For several moments he sat in deep thought.
So still was the place that the caged cricket hanging from the eaves of Umè's distant room beat time like an elfin metronome. Two of the four walls of the guest-room were of shoji, a lattice covered with translucent rice-paper. These opened directly upon the garden. The third wall, a solid one of smoke-blue plaster, held the niche called "tokonoma," where pictures are hung and flower vases set.
"If only Wio-wani were here to teach me," thought he, "I would be in the way of becoming a great painter!" The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wani should teach him. So he took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down opposite "Wio-wani's back-door," began painting.
Even the woman's melancholy voice, still to be heard behind the paper partition, was evidently the proper way for them to sing these musicians I had so often seen painted in amazing colors on rice-paper, half closing their dreamy eyes among impossibly large flowers. Long before I arrived there, I had perfectly pictured Japan to myself.
There she keeps letters, various notes written on delicate sheets of rice-paper, prayer amulets drawn up by the bonzes; and above all a number of squares of a silky paper which she puts to the most unexpected uses to dry a teacup, to hold the damp stalk of a flower, or to blow her quaint little nose, when the necessity presents itself.
This hotel among the mountains was two stories high, an unusual thing for a Japanese house; but it had only rice-paper windows, and thin sliding panels in place of doors or partitions. If desired, a whole story could be thrown into one apartment, or subdivided at pleasure into cozy little sleeping-rooms. All material, all food, was brought hither up that pitiless path on the backs of mountaineers.
Then, anxious and fearful lest I should have an attack of fever, she rolled into a pellet and thrust into my mouth a very efficacious prayer written on rice-paper, which she carefully kept in the lining of one of her sleeves. Well, I swallowed that prayer without a smile, anxious not to hurt her feelings or shake her funny little faith.
I dare not say what that one crescent alone is worth, or that emerald bracelet. Jewels of such value as this are a grave responsibility." He stood, shaking his head a little and turning the crescent in his hand. "Wonderful!" he said. "Wonderful! Do not tear up that piece of rice-paper, Miss Derrick," he added, taking it from her. "The crescent was wrapped in it, and I will put it round it again.
Her skin, as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing the purple veins, was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy. Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested attention by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which Raphael has shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the painter who has most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty.
Counters blocked it, making entrance a matter of single file, and, in the deep gloom at the back, two candles burned before a huge, ferocious-looking figure depicted on rice-paper and stuck against the wall. It was hard to believe that it was day outside, so heavy was the darkness, and it was a few moments before Hartley's eyes became accustomed to the sudden change.
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