Slowly the gigantic plumes of thick curdled smoke drifted up into the blue, and they were very beautiful. It was as though Asama wore a sweeping white _panache_ in her coal-black helmet. But the thundering roar of the eruption had torn our sea of frozen snow, to pieces. The blank white mist shut swiftly down, and hid the mountain and the smoke, the cinders and the sky; only the wide black bridge was left sloping straight downwards. * * * * * We reached our horses drenched, to sit on high-peaked saddles and journey back through dank dripping trees, over rutty roads, across thick green commons heavy with mist, back cold, wet and hungry to Karuizawa again. But we kept our stone, and though we had not seen into the crater, we had perhaps come nearer to that mysterious force, itself unseen, unknown, which dwells beneath the lava and the ash, and terrorises life. VI CAMELLIAS Blue bay below as far as eye can reach. Blue sky above, blue to the edge of the horizon. And in between a steep cliff of green: dark fir, pale bamboo, and that impenetrable undergrowth for which alone a botanist has a name--or names. The time of the plum blossom has been, is gone, and the world is drowsing in the dream of summer. Up here in the green the quick sappy life is stirring, I can hear it plainly; for in all the world there is no other sound. The trodden green path runs up, from blue to blue. Midway between the two I stop. And the green world closes in around me, shutting out the blue I came from and the blue to which I go. The tall dark firs sway slowly. The pale bamboos wave slim fingers, green as March lime leaves in the sun, their golden stems are elusive and bewitching, sunned dryads of the East. The green world has me in its hold. I forget the steep path to the blue above. It is warm and still, and the bamboos beckon as they sway. How green it is! All the greens a painter ever dreamt of ... and the graceful bamboos beckon Eastern Vivians to bewitch. I stay to look and look--never trees so graceful nor the green world so fair. A step. I have left the pathway,--and then--I stop. Beyond the pale bamboos and above them, its dark green branches rising upwards to the blue, is a camellia tree. Each glossy handful of leaves holds a single blood-red flower. And the tree stands there beyond, above the swaying, beckoning bamboos, stern, severe. “And the Wages of Sin is Death.” * * * * * I turn back to the path. The blue below spreads out as far as eye can reach, the blue above lies shining at the end of the pathway. The green world between is still. But the path is very steep. VII RAIN