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never mentioned it. At least it hasn’t caused any trouble between us.”
    â€œHe’s very trusting!”
    â€œActually, he treats me like a child,” I said. “That annoys me.”

    It was close to ten by the time I got home that night. “Pretty late, aren’t you?” my husband said, looking glum.
    He seemed so cheerless that I was a little sorry for him. Although I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt a twinge of guilt when I saw that he had just finished dinner, after waiting such a long time for me. Of course when I was meeting my lover, I often used to come home after ten o’clock. But that was all in the past. So maybe he was a bit suspicious. Somehow I myself felt just the way I did in those days.

5
    OH YES , and that was around the time I finished the Kannon picture and showed it to my husband.
    â€œHmm, so this is a portrait of your friend Mitsuko? I must say, you’ve outdone yourself.”
    We were having dinner, and he had spread the painting out on the tatami mats and would glance at it between one mouthful and the next. “But is she really all that beautiful?” he went on doubtfully. “Are you sure it looks like her?”
    â€œOf course it does, or there wouldn’t have been such a fuss over it! Only, the real Mitsuko isn’t just an ethereal beauty; there’s something sensual about her. You can’t bring that out in a Japanese painting.”
    I had put a great deal of effort into the picture and couldn’t help thinking it had turned out well. My husband praised it lavishly. At any rate, from the time I began to study painting I had never worked so hard or with so much enthusiasm.
    â€œWhy don’t we have it mounted?” he suggested. “Then when it’s ready you can ask Mitsuko over to see it.”
    The idea appealed to me, and I put it away, thinking I’d take it to a picture mounter in Kyoto to be done up handsomely. One day I mentioned to Mitsuko what I had in mind.
    â€œIf you’re going to bother to mount it, how about working on it a little more?” she asked. “Of course it’s very nice as it is—the face is good—but the figure doesn’t seem quite right.”
    â€œIt doesn’t? How is that?”
    â€œI can’t tell you in so many words.”
    She was being perfectly honest; there wasn’t the least bit of boastfulness in her tone, the least hint that she thought her own figure was better. But I could see that she felt dissatisfied.
    â€œWell, then, I hope you’ll pose in the nude for me sometime.”
    She agreed at once. “I don’t mind posing for you.”

    I think it was after school one day that she promised to come to pose at my house; the very next afternoon we left classes early and Mitsuko came home with me.
    On the way she said: “I’m afraid your husband will be shocked if he sees me standing there naked.” She seemed amused rather than embarrassed and glanced at me mischievously as if we were out on a lark.
    â€œWe have just the place for it,” I told her. “It’s a Western-style room upstairs, where no one will see us.”
    When I took her up to our bedroom, on the second floor, Mitsuko exclaimed: “How absolutely delightful! And with such a stylish big double bed!” She plumped down on the bed and set the springs rocking as she gazed out at the sea.
    Our house is right on the beach, so we have a splendid view from that upstairs room. There are plate-glass windows to the east and south—in the morning it’s too bright to let you sleep late. When the weather is clear you can see beyond the pine forests across the bay, all the way to the Kishu Mountains and Mount Kongo.
    . . . Swimming? Yes, you can swim there. Along that part of the shore it’s dangerous—if you go too far out, the ocean floor drops off suddenly—but there’s a bathing beach at Koroen. In the summer