Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/222

208 the bother of going through, all the letters and papers which I at first, when homesick, commenced to keep because they came from home, and afterwards because I was too indolent to destroy them. All this must be done now, however; must indeed be begun to-morrow. There are Mousmé’s belongings, too, which she is already packing in her mind’s eye in ridiculous little lacquer boxes, which would be battered into matchwood ere they were stowed in the hold.

I lie awake for some time thinking over all this, and watching the big night-moths come in through the open panel of the window, and then flutter round the idol’s head for a moment ere singeing their poor soft wings at the flame of the lamp burning before its placid features. Some of them are so big that they make quite an appreciable noise on the white matting floor when they fall headlong on to it. I fall asleep watching—