Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/53

THE WILLOW-TREE WOMAN

The incense, an old vibration of the Japanese heart, quite peculiar, naturally fastidious, gesticulated, while stealing up from a two-homed dragon's mouth, for my friend (who returned home from America by the last steamer) to stop his talk on automobiles and sky-scrapers. It was only a little while since the new moon, looking so attractive after a shower-bath of rain, had left the pine branches of my garden. I begged my friend to change his Western sack-coat for one of my yukatas, the cotton summer dress with somewhat demonstrative design (thank heaven, it is in the summer time all free, when we are allowed to act even fantastically), as it was, I told him informally, out of place in my Japanese house; I confess that the poetical balance of my mind has grown to be easily ruined by a single harsh note of the too real West. When I, with my friend new-made in Japanese robe, most comfortably stretched my body upon the mats, I felt the night lovely, the dusk so blessed; my friend said he wished, if possible, to cry heartily while listening to some