Akabo was the up-country village, whence the first Fujinami had come to Tokyo to seek his fortune.  The Japanese never completely loses touch with his ancestral village; and for over a hundred years the Tokyo Fujinami had paid their annual visit to the mountains of the North to render tribute to the graves of their forefathers.  They still preserved an inherited faith in the “wise woman” of the district, who from time to time was summoned to the capital to give her advice.  Their other medical counselor was Professor Kashio, who held degrees from Munich and Vienna.

* * * * *

During the first days of her self-chosen widowhood Asako was little better than a convalescent.  She had never looked at sorrow before; and the shock of what she had seen had paralyzed her vitality without as yet opening her understanding.  Like a dog, who in the midst of his faithful affection has been struck for a fault of which he is unconscious, she took refuge in darkness, solitude and despair.

The Japanese, who are as a rule intuitively aware of others’ emotions, recognized her case.  A room was prepared for her in a distant wing of the straggling house, a “foreign-style” room in an upper story with glass in the windows—­stained glass too—­with white muslin blinds, a colored lithograph of Napoleon and a real bed, recently purchased on Sadako’s pleading that everything must be done to make life happy for their guest.

“But she is a Japanese,” Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had objected.  “It is not right that a Japanese should sleep upon a tall bed.  She must learn to give up luxurious ways.”

Sadako protested that her cousin’s health was not yet assured; and so discipline was relaxed for a time.

Asako spent most of her days in the tall bed, gazing through the open doorway, across the polished wood veranda like the toffee veranda of a confectioner’s model, past the wandering branch of an old twisted pine-tree which crouched by the side of the mansion like a faithful beast, over the pigmy landscape of the garden, to the scale-like roofs of the distant city, and to the pagoda on the opposite hill.

It rested her to lie thus and look at her country.  From time to time Sadako would steal into the room.  Her cousin would leave the invalid in silence, but she always smiled; and she would bring some offering with her, a dish of food—­Asako’s favorite dishes, of which Tanaka had already compiled a complete list—­or sometimes a flower.  At the open door she would pause to shuffle off her pale blue zori (sandals); and she would glide across the clean rice-straw matting shod in her snow-white tabi only.