Down the vanishing road are two pale yellow umbrellas, gold on grey, and I marvel at the beauty of the colour. Suddenly round the bend of the street comes a third--foreign, _black_--and in a flash the beauty goes; a muddy road in the drenching rain alone is left, cold, prosaic. And I shiver in my _kuruma_. III MMÉ (PLUM-BLOSSOMS) They lay in fleece-white purity down the hillside, and the brooding stillness of that garden was as a sheltering wing above the world. Beneath one’s feet the six-sided tiles set in the brown earth were clean with a Dutch cleanliness, and the soil all around had been raked with the same quaint precision. Not a fallen leaf, nor the foot-mark of a bird, marred the soft brown surface--only the narrow line of glazed tiles ran on and on under the trees. On every side the curve of the hill sloped upwards, outwards, drawing the white garden nearer as a mother draws her child close within her arms. A hot sweet scent is in the air, delicate as honeysuckle, fragrant as the pine, half-soft, half-spiced--the scent of the blossoming plum, _mmé_, the emblem of chastity, of womanly purity and strength. The pale grey stems of the trees are bent and old; some are covered with a grey-green moss, and between their silvered stems I walk as in the cloistered calm of ruined abbeys. Up through the white fleece of blossom overhead bright stars of blue shine down. The sun-warmed presence of the living earth draws her children near. In all the world there is no sound.... “Like as a hen gathereth her chickens.” ... Is not that the white wing of the eternal mother overhead? And the warm, sweet fragrance of herself is all around. IV WET LEAVES It had rained all night and all day; big, solid drops of rain that fell as compactly through the air as battalions of small shot, but at twilight the raindrops dwindled, slackened, dwindled, ceased. The clear, colourless sky, which the whole day long had shot down its drops of rain, drew together in grey clouds, growing momentarily greyer, thicker and more grey, and shining with a pale light as though far away behind those thick coverings a great white light was burning. The stones on the pathway were all wet and shining and crunched down into little pools of water under one’s heels. The trees were dripping raindrops at each leaf, the trunks of all the pines were a dark brown with wet. In the garden there was peace, a peace of plants weighed down with raindrops, and very tired. Up on the damp hillside the note of a solitary bird sounded forlornly. _Uguisu_, the Japanese nightingale was calling. One sweet short song, and then a greater silence.