It was late in November. The parks were dropping their autumn glories and taking on the browner hues and hints of hoar-frost, black-and-white vestments, the sackcloth and ashes of winter. The recessional of the birds was dying away into silence. Soon the final, long-drawn amen of the north-wind would be breathed out over the deserted woods, where the anthem of praise had rung out to the worshipping air all through the golden days and silver nights of summer.

The still beauty of the autumn evening was piercingly melancholy, and, even with a loving sunset still lingering in the skies, a silken, gentle rain was falling, as though the gods were weeping over the death of the autumn, were weeping hopeless tears—the most tragic of all.

The little house that stood alone on the hill faced to the west, its wet roofs and shingles sparkling and glistening in the rays of the dying sunset that enveloped it.

Yuki opened a shoji (sliding paper door) of her chamber, and looked out wistfully at the city of Tokyo, that in the autumn silence was shining out like a gem, with its many strange lights and colors. She stole softly out on to a small balcony, and stepped down into the tiny garden as the night began to spread its mantle of darkness. A few minutes later her husband called to her:

“Yuki! Yuki!”

He drew her into the room, and closed the shoji behind her.

“You have been crying again!” he said, sharply, and turned her face up to the light.

“It is the rain on my face, my lord,” she answered in the smallest voice.

“But you mustn’t go out in the rain. You are quite wet, dear.”

“Soach a little, gentle rain,” she said. “It will not hurt jus’ me. I loogin’ aeverywhere ‘bout for our liddle bit poor nightingale. Gone! Perhaps daed! Aeverything dies—bird, flowers, mebbe—me!”

He put his hand over her mouth with a hurt exclamation.

“Don’t!” he only said.

The maid brought in their supper on a tray, but before she could set it down Yuki had impetuously crossed the room and taken it from her hands.

“Go, go, honorable maid,” she said. “I will with my own hands attend my lord’s honorable appetite.”

She knelt at his feet, geisha fashion, holding the tray and waiting for him to eat, but he took it from her gravely, and put it on the small table beside them, and then silently, tenderly, he took her small hands in his own.

“What is troubling you, Yuki? You must tell me. You are hiding something from me. What has become of my little mocking-bird? I cannot live without it.”

“You also los’ liddle bird?” she queried, softly—“jus’ lige unto my same liddle nightingale?”

“I have lost—I am losing you,” he said, suddenly, with a burst of anguish. “I cannot make you out these last few weeks. What has come over you? I miss your laughing and your singing. You are always sad now; your eyes—ah, I cannot bear it.” His voice went suddenly anxious. “Tell me, is it—do you—want—need some more money, Yuki? You know you can have all you want.”

She sprang to her feet fiercely.

“No, no, no, no!” she cried; “naever any more for all my life long, dear my lord.”

“Then why—”

“Ah, pray don’ ask why.”

“But why—”

“Then listen unto me. I nod any longer thad liddle bit geisha girl you marrying with. I change grade big moach. Now you see me, I am one wooman, mebbe like wooman one hundled years ole—wise—sad—I change!”

“Yes,” he said. “You are changed. You are my Undine, and I have found your soul at last!”

One oppressive afternoon, when a nagging, bleating wind out-doors had prevented their going on their customary ramble through the woods or on a little trip to the city, Jack had fallen asleep. Long before he had awakened he had felt her warm, soothing presence near him, but with the pleasure it afforded him was mingled a premonition of disaster and a dread of something unhappy about her? He awoke to find her standing by him, her face white and drawn with a despair he could not comprehend.

“What is it?” He started up fearfully. “Your eyes are tragic! You look as if you were contemplating something frightful.”

She sank down to his feet, and, despite his protests, knelt and clung to him there, sobbing with passionate abandon.

“Don’t! Don’t! I can’t bear you to do that. What is it, Yuki?”

“Oh, for liddle while, jus’ liddle bit while, bear with me,” she said.

“Little while! What do you mean?” he demanded.

She tried to regain her composure. Her laughter was piteous.

“I only liddle bit skeered,” she said. “I—” she stammered—“I skeered ‘bout thad liddle foolish jade bracelet, all smashed and broken.”

“Is that all?”

“It is soach a bad omen! The gods trying to separate us, mebbe.”

“Separate us?” His suspicions were growing. “How can they do that? It lies between you and me, such a—such a fate. The gods—ah, you are talking nonsense.”

“The gods see inside,” she said.

“Inside what?”

“Our hearts.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“And what can they find there to distress you?” he asked, almost fiercely. She was hurting him with her failure to confide in him.

“The bracelet—” she began. “It is broken, an’ love, too, mus’ die—an’ break!”

From that day her melancholy grew rather than diminished. But she had roused her husband’s suspicions, and her morbidness irritated rather than appealed to him. He felt that in some way he was being deceived. The day that he found her wardrobe neatly and carefully folded away in her queer little packing-case, as though in preparation for a journey, the full sense of her deceit dawned upon him. Hitherto when she had left him she had taken none of her belongings with her. He perceived it was now her intention to desert him utterly. He had served her purpose, apparently, and she was through with him.

His wrath burst its bounds. He had not known the capabilities of his angry passion. He tore the silken garments from the box with the fierce madness of one demented, then he pushed her into the room, and showed her where they lay scattered.

“The meaning of this?” he demanded, white to the lips with the intensity of his passion.

She remained mute. She did not even trouble to mock or laugh at him, nor would she weep. She seemed dazed and bewildered, and he, infuriated against her, said things which rankled in his conscience for years afterwards.

“Does a promise mean nothing to you—a promise—an oath itself? Were you, parrot-like, merely echoing my words when you swore to stay by me until—” his voice broke—“death?”

Still she made him no denial, and her silence maddened him, and drove him on with his bitter arraignment.

“What your object has been I fail to see, but you cannot deny that you have laid yourself out, have used every effort, every art and wile, of which you are mistress, to make me believe in you. And I—I—like a blind, deluded fool—ah, Yuki—there is something wrong, some hideous mistake somewhere. You have some secret, some trouble. Be frank with me. Can’t you see—understand how I—I am suffering?”

She roused herself with an effort, but her words were pitifully conventional. She apologized for the trouble and noise she had brought into his house.

“You have not answered me!” he cried. “What was your intention? Did you intend to leave me? You shall answer me that!”

“It was bedder so,” she said, and her voice fainted. She could speak no further.

“Then such was your intention!” He could hardly believe her words.