are not clouds, but only dreams of clouds, so filmy they are; ghosts of
clouds, diaphanous spectres, illusions!

All at once I become aware of a child standing before me, a very young
girl who looks up wonderingly at my face; so light her approach that the
joy of the birds and whispering of the leaves quite drowned the soft
sound of her feet. Her ragged garb is Japanese; but her gaze, her loose
fair hair, are not of Nippon only; the ghost of another race--perhaps
my own-watches me through her flower-blue eyes. A strange playground
surely is this for thee, my child; I wonder if all these shapes about
thee do not seem very weird, very strange, to that little soul of thine.
But no; 'tis only I who seem strange to thee; thou hast forgotten the
Other Birth, and thy father's world.

Half-caste and poor and pretty, in this foreign port! Better thou wert
with the dead about thee, child! better than the splendour of this soft
blue light the unknown darkness for thee. There the gentle Jizo would
care for thee, and hide thee in his great sleeves, and keep all evil
from thee, and play shadowy play with thee; and this thy forsaken
mother, who now comes to ask an alms for thy sake, dumbly pointing to
thy strange beauty with her patient Japanese smile, would put little
stones upon the knees of the dear god that thou mightest find rest.

7

'Oh, Akira! you must tell me something more about Jizo, and the ghosts
of the children in the Sai-no-Kawara.' 'I cannot tell you much more,'
answers Akira, smiling at my interest in this charming divinity; 'but if
you will come with me now to Kuboyama, I will show you, in one of the
temples there, pictures of the Sai-no-Kawara and of Jizo, and the