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Updated: June 17, 2025
Reaching at last the temple court, old Kano took the lead, crossed the wide-pebbled space, and halted with his companion at the edge of the cliff. A cry of wonder came from Tatsu's lips; that low, inimitable cry of the true artist at some new stab of beauty. Delicately the old man withdrew, and hid himself in the shadow of the temple. Tatsu stared out, alone.
Each motion of the slow-strolling form in its clinging robes was a separate loveliness. Kano drew a long sigh. He could not blind himself to Tatsu's savagery.
She denounced her erstwhile beloved master as a blind old dotard, and the idolized Umè, she declared a weak and yielding idiot. Tatsu's attempts at retort were swept away with a hiss. For a while he raged like a flame upon the doorstep, but he was no match for his vigorous opponent. It was something to realize his own defeat.
Umè-ko, quivering now in every limb, sank to the floor. She bowed first to the guest of honor, then to her father. Touching her wet eyes with a silken sleeve she moved backward to the rear of the room where she seated herself upright, motionless as the wall itself, between the two tall candles. Tatsu's eyes never left her face.
A flush of embarrassment dyed her face, and she threw a half-frightened look towards Tatsu. Answering her father's unrelenting frown, she murmured, timidly, "To-morrow, if the gods will, my dear husband shall paint." Tatsu's steady gaze drew her. "Your eyes, Umè-ko. Is it true that for this to make me paint you consented to become my wife?" Umè tried in vain to resist the look he gave her.
The camphor tree overhead was thrown out darkly against the stars, like its own shadow. The velvety boom of the temple bell, striking nine, held in its echoes the color and the softness of the hour. Kano, turning at last from the veranda, slowly re-entered the guest-room, and seated himself upon one of the cushions that had aroused Tatsu's scorn. A dead cat, forsooth!
New garments, new mats, dainty household furnishings, were showered upon him, too; but they might have been autumn leaves, for all the interest he showed. To gain his Dragon Maid, to know that in this life she was irrevocably his, that was Tatsu's one conscious thought. The wedding day came at last.
Ando promised a generous donation in return for information concerning the Kano family. Being assured that the motive for this curiosity was benevolent rather than mischievous, the priest consented to make the attempt. He reached the Kano gate at noon, within a few days after Tatsu's arrival. Mata opened to his call.
He could trust Tatsu's diplomacy and powers of resource to save his cherished possessions, and ultimately to restore a seemly order from the chaos, he was sure that Kitty and her decorators would create.
At Tatsu's terrible speech, Umè-ko, unconscious of further cause of offense, hid her face against his sleeve, and clung to him, that her trembling might not cast her to the floor. Kano, at first, was unable to speak. He grew slowly the hue of death. His brief words, when at last they came, were in convulsive spasms of sound. "Go to your rooms, both.
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