the tea, the perfume of a presence, the sense that something
exquisite had come and gone.

I sat there thinking of her in the abstract, and wondering how many
maids outside Japan were dowried with like grace and the like voice.
With such a one for cupbearer, I could have continued to sip tea, I
thought, for the rest of my natural, or, alas, unnatural existence.

There I stayed, squatting on my feet on the mats, admiring the mimic
volcano which in the orthodox artistic way the charcoal was arranged
to represent, and trying my best to warm myself over the idea.
But the idea proved almost as cold comfort as the brazier itself.
The higher aesthetic part of me was in paradise, and the bodily half
somewhere on the chill confines of outer space. The spot would no
doubt have proved wholly heaven to that witty individual who was so
anxious to exchange the necessities of life for a certainty of its
luxuries. For here, according to our scheme of things, was everything
one had no right to expect, and nothing that one had. My European
belongings looked very gross littering the mats; and I seemed to
myself a boor beside the unconscious breeding of those about me.
Yet it was only a poor village inn, and its people were but peasants,
after all.

I pondered over this as I dined in solitary state; and when I had
mounted my funeral pyre for the night, I remember romancing about it
as I fell asleep.

I was still a knight-errant, and the princess was saying all manner
of charming things to me in her still more charming manner, when I
became aware that it was the voice of the evening before wishing me