And while through the tinted lantern light I wander on with the gentle
noisy people, up the great steps of stone, between other displays of
lotus-blossoms, between other high hedgerows of paper flowers, my
thought suddenly goes back to the little broken shrine in the poor
woman's room, with the humble playthings hanging before it, and the
laughing, twirling mask of Otafuku. I see the happy, funny little eyes,
oblique and silky-shadowed like Otafuku's own, which used to look at
those toys,--toys in which the fresh child-senses found a charm that I
can but faintly divine, a delight hereditary, ancestral. I see the
tender little creature being borne, as it was doubtless borne many
times, through just such a peaceful throng as this, in just such a
lukewarm, luminous night, peeping over the mother's shoulder, softly
clinging at her neck with tiny hands.

Somewhere among this multitude she is--the mother. She will feel again
to-night the faint touch of little hands, yet will not turn her head to
look and laugh, as in other days.



Chapter Six
Bon-odori

1

Over the mountains to Izumo, the land of the Kamiyo, [1] the land of the
Ancient Gods. A journey of four days by kuruma, with strong runners,
from the Pacific to the Sea of Japan; for we have taken the longest and
least frequented route.