"One can never study too much," she said, "one is always learning; one can never be perfect. Life is short, art is long." "But it is not an art like painting or playing the piano, just pouring out tea?" "Oh, yes," Sadako smiled again, "it is much more than that. We Japanese do not think art is just to be able to do things, showing off like _geisha_. Art is in the character, in the spirit. And the tea-ceremony teaches us to make our character full of art, by restraining everything ugly and common, in every movement, in the movement of our hands, in the position of our feet, in the looks of our faces. Men and women ought not to sit and move like animals; but the shape of their bodies, and their way of action ought to express a poetry. That is the art of the _chanoyu_." "I should like to see it," said Asako, excited by her cousin's enthusiasm, though she hardly understood a word of what she had been saying. "You ought to learn some of it," said Sadako, with the zeal of a propagandist. "My teacher says--and my teacher was educated at the court of the Tokugawa Shogun--that no woman can have really good manners, if she has not studied the _chanoyu_." Of course, there was nothing which Asako would like more than to sit in this fascinating arbour in the warm days of the coming summer, and play at tea-parties with her new-found Japanese cousin. She would learn to speak Japanese, too; and she would help Sadako with her French and English. The two cousins worked out the scheme for their future intimacy until the stars were reflected in the lake and the evening breeze became too cool for them. Then they left the little hermitage and continued their walk around the garden. They passed a bamboo grove, whose huge plumes, black in the darkness, danced and beckoned like the Erl-king's daughters. They passed a little house shuttered like a Noah's Ark, from which came a monotonous moaning sound as of some one in pain, and the rhythmic beat of a wooden clapper. "What is that?" asked Asako. "That is my father's brother's house. But he is illegitimate brother; he is not of the true family. He is a very pious man. He repeats the prayer to Buddha ten thousand times every day; and he beats upon the _mokugy[=o]_ a kind of drum like a fish which the Buddhist priests use." "Was he at the dinner last night?" asked Asako. "Oh no, he never goes out. He has not once left that house for ten years. He is perhaps rather mad; but it is said that he brings good luck to the family." A little farther on they passed two stone lanterns, cold and blind like tombstones. Stone steps rose between them to what in the darkness looked like a large dog-kennel. A lighted paper lantern hung in front of it like a great ripe fruit. "What is that?" asked Asako. In the failing twilight this fairy garden was becoming more and more wonderful. At any moment, she felt she might meet the Emperor himself in the white robes of ancient days and the black coal-scuttle hat.