Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/168

152 It was late at night, and in the woods the owls were hooting. The people in their huts in the villages had put out their lights and were sound asleep. She found only one house with a light still burning, and it was the home of Araginu.

Leaving her guide behind, the Goddess proceeded very quietly alone. On approaching the house, she heard the sounds of a beautiful song, and the rhythmic hum of the weaving shuttle made a most charming accompaniment to the song. Araginu was singing some enchanting melody, and all the pain of the deep love in her heart was in her music. The Goddess was so enchanted with the song, that she stopped still and listened for a while, but soon her soul blazed within her with a still fiercer flame of jealousy.

She approached the window, and standing on tiptoe peeped stealthily in the room through a chink in the window shutters. The first thing that met her eyes was a wondrous fabric of great width. It flowed out from the loom, spreading upon the floor, and the other end of it hung from the wall on the opposite side of the room. All the girl’s deepest feelings of love were expressed in the patterns woven into the fabric. Exquisite shades of colour stood out here and there in the forms of birds and rare flowers.

The Goddess watched the graceful figure of the girl, and noted how her eyes beamed with a dreamy ecstasy as she wove. Her rounded cheeks, her heaving breast, her white tapering fingers, which nimbly held the fabric, and her overflowing healthy youth seemed