The little old lady was putting back the five fir branches into the cleft stick with the deftest of deft fingers. Arabella unclasped the brooch at her neck and pulled out what she called a “nosegay.” A bamboo vase, just a piece of the stem hollowed out, in which the fir had come from the florist that morning, lay on the floor. She picked it up. “It should be of glass,” she said forgivingly, “but I will make it do.” And then with her own hand she proceeded to arrange the Yokohama nosegay in the slender bamboo stem. There was a bit of spiræa, one fat red rose, and some miscellaneous leaves, which Arabella referred to grandiloquently as “green.” These she crammed tightly into the bamboo stem, and then placed it, with a “who-shall-deny-me” air, upon the table. I looked at it. No, it was not a good specimen even of Western flower arrangement, but in how many buttonholes, on how many tables, had I seen something like it. Flower arrangement is taught in the schools in Japan, and every Japanese girl learns. If she did not, she would not “arrange” anymore than we should paint or play. The little old lady had finished, and she pushed the bronze dish along the table beside the bamboo vase. Then, with many compliments and much bowing, she thanked the _Ijin San_ for her “august kindness” and her “honourable condescension.” And the smooth phrases ran on and on, while I sat back on my heels and looked. East and West, they stood there before me. At the best, what we aimed at was a scheme of colour, and at our worst no scheme at all. And what they strove after was line, whether in fir branches or lily leaves, in plum-blossom or iris flowers, line, and a coherent whole. Each branch, each twig, each flower, nay, each curve of the branch, each petal of the flower, each leaf of the twig, were parts, essential parts of the whole; for in Japan they draw with flowers and fir branches as we only draw for “design.” And line is beyond colour as sculpture is beyond painting. The sun through the walls of rice-paned _shōji_ spread a warmed white light through the room, a limpid, liquid light in which there was no shadow. The little old lady had been busy tidying up. The room was one clear sheet of pale yellow matting. On the low empty _tokonoma_ stood the bronze dish and its pure line drawing in fir. Arabella was offering the bamboo vase and its mixed contents “as a model,” and the little old lady bowed to the ground. Once more I looked at the bronze vase and the pure outlines of the fir branches, at the bare room perfectly proportioned, at the rice-paned _shōji_, and the snowflake whiteness of that light which knew no colour and no shadow struck on my consciousness. I think I understood. Colour, as colour, in that luminous, shadowless room, whose beauty was its line and its proportion, would have been not colour but a blot. Outside the rice-paned _shōji_ lay life and colour enough. Here was but light and line.