Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/161

Rh his body had been poisoned, and a sensation of weakness came over him as if he would fall there and then.

Several times he thought to himself, “Now I shall stop.” But somehow a feeling of inertia prevented him from stopping his work. The blade of the razor was caught a little by the roughness of the youth’s skin. The young man’s throat quivered in his sleep. Yoshisaburo felt some strange and unknown sensation run swiftly through his body from head to toe. This feeling seemed suddenly to take away all his former fatigue and weariness.

The cut which he had made on the rough skin of the youth’s chin was barely half an inch in length. He stood staring at it. The spot left by the thinly stripped skin was at first a milky white, but gradually it began to change into pink, and then to crimson, and soon the blood was oozing from the small cut. Yoshisaburo still gazed. The blood now came out rather freely in dark-red drops, swelling like rubies, and then bursting and falling down his chin in streaks.

Then a feeling of cruelty came over him. To barber Yoshisaburo, who had never till that moment hurt any customer’s face, this feeling came with surprising force. His breathing became quicker and quicker. His whole body and soul seemed to be intent on the cut he had made, and he could no longer overcome the strong feeling of satisfaction which had taken hold of his brain.

Grasping the razor with the point downwards, he