[Illustration: "ALWAYS WITH THE SAME SOLEMN EXPRESSION."]

Now, in Japan, as in other countries, mysterious actions and irregular
proceedings of all kinds have to be explained to a wife. Lili-Tsee did
not understand why her husband kept appearing at all hours of the day.
Certainly he kissed her every time he came in like this. At first she
was satisfied with his explanation when he told her that he only ran in
for a minute to see her pretty face. She thought it was really quite
natural on his part, but when day after day he appeared, and always with
the same solemn expression on his face, she began to wonder in her heart
of hearts whether he was telling her the whole truth. And so Lili-Tsee
fell to watching her husband's movements, and she noticed that he never
went away until he had been alone in the little room at the back of
the house.

[Illustration: "WHAT WAS IT SHE SAW?"]

Now the Japanese women are as persevering as any others when there is a
mystery to be discovered, and so Lili-Tsee set herself to discover this
mystery. She hunted day after day to see if she could find some trace of
anything in that little room which was at all unusual, but she found
nothing. One day, however, she happened to come in suddenly and saw her
husband replacing the long blue vase in which she kept her rose leaves
in order to dry them. He made some excuse about its not looking very
steady, and appeared to be just setting it right, and Lili-Tsee
pretended there was nothing out of the common in his putting the vase
straight. The moment he had gone out of the house, though, she was up on
a stool like lightning, and in a moment she had fished the looking-glass
out of the vase. She took it carefully in her hand, wondering whatever