Page:Sidnay McCall--The dragon painter2.djvu/238

 that he so challenged public censure, and was willing to cast dishonor upon the name of his only child? Hour after hour in the lonely house did the old dame seek to piece together the broken edges of her shattered faith. The master had always been a religious man, over-zealous, she had thought, in minute observances. Yet now he was willing to neglect, to ignore, the very fundamental principles of social decency. Personally he had seemed wretched enough after Umè's loss. The kindly neighbors had at first marvelled aloud at his whitening hair and heavily burdened frame. Mata, pleased at the sympathy, did nothing to distract it; but in her heart she knew that it was Tatsu's illness, not his daughter's death, that bore upon old Kano like the winter snow upon his pines.

On that most sacred period of mourning, the seven-times-seventh day after "divine retirement," when the spirit is privileged to enter most closely into the hearts of those that pray, Mata had believed that, beyond