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she is.’
    The two were silent for a time. Then Kikuji spoke. ‘Why did you leave your mother to wait for me after Kurimoto’s party?’
    ‘Because I wanted you to know that she was not as bad as you might have thought.’
    ‘She is too much the reverse of bad.’
    The girl looked down. Below the well-shaped nose he could see the small mouth and the lower lip, thrust out as if in a pout. The softly rounded face reminded him of her mother.
    ‘I knew that Mrs Ota had a daughter, and I used to wish I could talk to the girl about my father.’
    She nodded. ‘I used to wish very much the same thing.’
    Kikuji thought how good it would be to talk freely of his father and take no account of Mrs Ota.
    But it was because he could no longer ‘take no account’ that he was able to forgive her, and at the same time to feel that he was forgiving what she and his father had been. Must he find that fact strange?
    Perhaps suspecting that she had stayed too long, the girl hastily stood up.
    Kikuji saw her to the gate.
    ‘I hope we will have a chance sometime to talk about my father. And about your mother, and all the beauty there is in her.’ Kikuji feared that he had chosen a somewhat exaggerated way to express himself. Still, he meant what he had said.
    ‘But you will be getting married soon.’
    ‘I will?’
    ‘Yes. Mother said so. It was a miai with Inamura Yukiko, she said.’
    ‘It was not.’
    A hill fell away from outside the gate. Halfway down the slope the street curved, and, looking back, one saw only the trees in Kikuji’s garden.
    The image of the girl with the thousand-crane kerchief came to him. Fumiko stopped and said good-by.
    Kikuji started back toward the house.

The Grove in the Evening Sun
    Chikako telephoned Kikuji’s office.
    ‘Are you going straight home?’
    He would be going home, but he frowned. ‘Well …’
    ‘You go straight home. For your father’s sake. This is the day he had his tea ceremony every year. I could hardly sit still, thinking about it.’
    Kikuji said nothing.
    ‘The tea cottage … Hello? … I was cleaning the tea cottage, and all of a sudden I wanted to do some cooking.’
    ‘Where are you calling from?’
    ‘Your house. I’m at your house. I’m sorry – I should have said so.’
    Kikuji was startled.
    ‘I just couldn’t sit still. I thought I’d feel better if you would let me clean the cottage. I should have telephoned first, I know, but you would have been sure to refuse me.’
    Kikuji had not used the tea cottage since his father’s death.
    In the months before she died, his mother had gone out to sit in the cottage from time to time. She did not put embers in the hearth, however, but carried hot water with her. Kikuji would wait uneasily for her to come back. It troubled him to imagine what she might be thinking, alone in the stillness.
    He had sometimes wanted to look in on her, but to the end he had kept his distance.
    Chikako rather than his mother had taken care of the cottage while his father was alive. His mother had but rarely gone into it.
    It had been closed since his mother’s death. A maid who had been with the family from his father’s time would air it several times a year.
    ‘How long has it been since you last cleaned the place? I cannot get rid of the mildew, no matter how hard I rub.’ Her voice was brassy. ‘And while I was about the housecleaning, I wanted to do some cooking. The idea just came to me. I don’t have everything I need, but I hope you’ll come right home.’
    ‘You don’t think you’re being a little forward?’
    ‘You’ll be lonely by yourself. Suppose you bring a few friends from the office.’
    ‘Very unlikely. Not one of them is interested in tea.’
    ‘All the better. They won’t expect too much, and the preparations have been very inadequate. We can all relax.’
    ‘Not the slightest chance.’ Kikuji flung the words into the telephone.
    ‘A pity. What shall we do? Do you suppose – someone who shared