Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/228

214 great tea-Louse to-night for the last time; but although we both say we are too tired, we are in truth both aware that we have no heart for mixing with the merry throng, or for watching the geishas dancing. So we go to rest.

“Our last night here,” as Mousmé says, with a little choked sob. Everything is now described as “last.”

It is terribly melancholy.

In the morning we go round the garden, and Mousmé gathers a posy of the choicest flowers, pink-cupped lotus, gardenias and roses; she buries her face in it to hide the tears I know are falling in salt dew upon the fragrant blossoms. Then we feed the gold-fish, and watch them poke their red-gold heads just above the surface, making rippling circles which widen and rock the lily-leaves and lotus blossoms. And whilst we are doing all this in the sunlit garden of our late home, we can hear Oka’s deep, gruff