This afternoon I returned to the entrance of IyÉyasu, and sketched under the great trees of the central avenue. The great white clouds were there again in the blue above, colored as with gold where they showed below through the trees; then they came nearer, then they melted together; then suddenly all was veiled, the rain came down in sheets, and I was glad of the refuge of the tea booths along the eastern wall. It was late, almost evening; no one there; a few pilgrims and attendants and priests scurried away through the court, disappearing with bare reddened legs and wet clogs around the corners of the avenues. And the rain persisted, hanging before me like a veil of water. I had in front, as I sat in the booths, already damp and gusty with drafts, the face of the tall red pagoda behind its stone balustrade and at right angles to the great Torii that I had been painting. The great trees were all of one green, their near and far columns flattened out with the branches into masses of equal values. Through them, below, in the few openings to the west, the sky was colored with the sunset, as if it were clear far over Nan-tai-san. The gold of the roofs' edges and of the painted carvings below was light and pale as the sky far away. Higher up the gold was bright and clear under the rain, which made it glisten; it glowed between the brackets of the lower cornices and paled like silver higher up. All the innumerable painted carvings and projections and ornaments looked pale behind the rain, while the great red mass grew richer as it rose, and the bronze roofs, freshly washed, were blacker, and the green copper glistened, like malachite, on the edges of the vermilion rails, or on the bells which hung from the roof corners, against the sky or against the trees. The green, wet mosses spotted with light the stone flags below, or glowed like a fairy yellow flame on the adjoining red lacquer of the temple fence, so drenched now that I could see reflected in it the white divisions and still whiter lichens of the stone balustrade. Below it the great temple wall was blotched with dark purple and black lichens, and the columns of the Torii were white at the bottom with mosses. Its upper cross-arm glistened yellow with their growths as if it had caught the sun. But the heavy rain was drenching all; and now from all the roofs of the pagoda poured lines of water, the one within the other, the highest describing a great curve that encircled all the others, and the whole high tower itself, as if with a lengthened aureole of silver drops. It was as if water had poured out from the fountain basins, one above the other, which the Italian Renaissance liked to picture on tall pilasters, even as this one was profiled against the sky and distant rain. Below, a yellow torrent covered the great court with an eddying lake, and its course rushed down the great steps or made a crested, bounding line along the gutters by the walls. I watched for a time the beautiful curves dropping from the roofs of the tower, until all grew dark and my coolie arrived to carry paint box and easel, and we managed to get home, with sketching umbrellas, wet, however, through every layer of clothing.