The sun was sinking low behind the peach-trees when workers from the rice-fields came straggling back to the village. By twos and threes they came, toil-stained women and boys, with here and there an old, gnarled man, their shadows long on the road before them. Tani, maker of sandals, looked up from his work as each one came abreast his shop, responding gravely to the low-voiced, musical greetings. But after the last worker had passed, his eyes, shaded beneath the palm of his hand, still sought the road beyond the village in patient expectancy. Presently he heard the distant click of clogs, and a little figure came in sight. Her cotton kimono was looped to the knees, the mud of the paddy-fields still clung to her slender brown limbs. She drew near. "Greeting, Su Su O!" "Greeting, Tani!" The girl paused before the shop, with quaint genuflection and the gentle hiss of indrawn breath that in Japan is a courtesy. The sandal-maker sat back on his heels. "Tired, Su Su O?" "Very," replied the girl. She moved the heavy, mud-caked hoe from her shoulder and leaned on the haft, looking down at him with a little smile. Her mouth, with its geranium-scarlet lips, drooped wearily at the corners when in repose: her whole attitude betrayed fatigue. The man frowned. "It is not well, Su Su O, that you should do coolie work. You are not of coolie stock, nor yet of coolie strength. Su Su O, hearken yet again! Be my wife! Come and live with me here, and let me labour for us both! I need you so, little Flower. I want you for my wife ... not to see you only at sunrise and dusk, passing my dwelling by." The sun set swiftly; swiftly the purple night swept up over rice-field and cherry-orchard. Here and there along the village street a coloured lantern glowed suddenly out of the darkness; through the frail oiled-paper walls of the cottages drifted the voices of children and the tinkle of a samisen. The sandal-maker stood up and took the girl's hand in his. "I am lonely without you, Su Su O," he pleaded. Her lip quivered. "I too am lonely, Tani; but I am a beggar--a coolie girl without father or mother. I cannot marry you: I have no dowry. I can bring nothing to the wedding--save myself, in rags. It would bring disgrace upon us." In vain he pleaded, all the poetic imagery of the Asiatic upon his tongue. In vain he scoffed at convention--that terrible, inexorable convention of the East; still the dainty head shook in plaintive negation. Some unknown strain in her blood set honour before love, bowed to the decrees that had ruled her unknown forbears. At length, as if fearing that her resolution might weaken from sheer physical weariness--and she loved very dearly too--she turned towards the village. "I must go, Tani. It is of no avail.... Nay, entreat me not further.... Nay, Tani, I am so tired...."