Onda Tetsujo's spoken order had been "stenshun!" (station), for so have the Japanese incorporated our familiar word. A train was just leaving for Yedo. Three second-class tickets were bought, and the kuruma-men overpaid and dismissed. Had they been merely "paid," a later train would have been taken. The short encounter on the Yokohama pier evidently remained in the master's mind as a most disagreeable impression. While in no sense a stupid man, the quality of Onda's intellect was torpid rather than alert. Things came to him slowly, and remained long. It happened that their train was a "local," stopping at all the small intermediate stations. Between Yokohama and the next stop,--Kanagawa,--not a word was spoken. Yuki felt bewildered, dazed, distressed. What had happened? What was spoiling her home-coming? The promise was not all, for here were her parents, moody and ill at ease, and they as yet knew nothing of her pledge. Surely the few injudicious words Pierre tried to speak should not have wrought all this. Poor Pierre, with his hurt blue eyes and outstretched hand of longing! Well, the American girls used to say that true love never did run smooth. Here she gave a sigh so deep that Iriya started. All three gazed heavily from the windows, only half seeing the villages sweep past, and the wide, gleaming rice-fields in their winter flood, and the long edge of Yedo Bay set with pines, and flecked with shining sails. The gaudy fluttering of small banners above the tea booths of Kawasaki brought a momentary light of pleasure into the girl's eyes. It died down as quickly. Her father's averted face clouded her sun. Yet unconsciously the charm and the glamour of the country was stealing back. At Omori, perhaps the most beautiful of these suburban villages, their compartment, being toward the rear of the train, stopped, it would seem, in the very midst of a grove of "umé" flowers, just coming into bloom. It is an old orchard, knowing many generations of loving care. It is trimmed and tended for beauty alone, the small sour fruit called by foreigners "plums" being uneatable, and no more to the Japanese marketer than are "rose-apples" to us. The trees, set close together so that tips of branches met, were entirely leafless, and frosted over with a delicate lichen growth. On this silver filigree of boughs the blossoms shone, white, crimson, or pink,--translucent gems of flowers. The odor, stealing softly to Yuki in little throbs, smote her as with an ecstasy of remembrance. There is no subtler necromancer than perfume. Through it the past may be reconstructed, dead love quiver into life, and sorrow, often more precious than joy itself, steal back like a loving ghost.