feelings or shake her funny little faith.




XLV.


To-day, Yves, my mousmé and myself went to the best photographer in
Nagasaki, to be taken in a group together.

We shall send the photograph to France. Yves already smiles as he
thinks of his wife's astonishment when she sees Chrysanthème's little
face between us two, and he wonders what explanation he will give her.

"Well, I will just say it is one of your friends, that's all!"

There are, in Japan, photographers in the style of our own, with this
one difference, that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses.
The one we design to honor to-day carries on his profession in the
suburbs, in that ancient quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas
where, the other day, I met the pretty little mousmé. His signboard,
written in several languages, is stuck up against a wall on the edge
of the little torrent which, rushing down from the green mountain
above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of old granite and lined on
either side by light bamboos or oleanders in full bloom.

It is astonishing and puzzling to find a photographer perched there,
in the very heart of old Japan.