Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/124

110 days—now so dark and full of mysterious shadows, heavy with the strong scent of flowers, alive with the incessant noise of the cicalas, and movements of huge, soft- winged night-moths, which circle round the light of our lanterns, beating their wings with a soft, quick rattle against their distended sides, and every now and again flying into our faces and making Mousmé give a little scream of simulated terror, at which Kotmasu and I laugh.

I shut the gate after us, and then taking Mousmé’s arm, we make our way down the rapidly sloping road. There is another party ahead of us, also with lanterns; and so steep is the path, that in the black darkness we almost seem as though we should step off into the abyss, right down on to the swaying lights below us.

Such strange shadows are set dancing on the road by the swaying lanterns we carry, that Mousmé, who must, after all, have