"Elder Sister (3), so much do you look like a person whom I knew long ago,
that I was startled when you first entered this room. Pardon me, therefore,
for asking what is your native place, and what is your name?"


Immediately,-- and in the unforgotten voice of the dead,-- she thus made
answer:--


"My name is O-Tei; and you are Nagao Chosei of Echigo, my promised
husband. Seventeen years ago, I died in Niigata: then you made in writing a
promise to marry me if ever I could come back to this world in the body of
a woman; -- and you sealed that written promise with your seal, and put it
in the butsudan, beside the tablet inscribed with my name. And therefore I
came back."...


As she uttered these last words, she fell unconscious.



Nagao married her; and the marriage was a happy one. But at no time
afterwards could she remember what she had told him in answer to his
question at Ikao: neither could she remember anything of her previous
existence. The recollection of the former birth,-- mysteriously kindled in
the moment of that meeting,-- had again become obscured, and so thereafter
remained.