of each other: in the deep of the night the mirrors engaged in a combat so fierce that both broke, along with the hearts of their sleeping owners. You understand, then, how a woman of occult powers like O-Take could send her first lover her soul in the mirror into which she had once gazed at her image.” He arose and stretched himself.
“Well, what happened with Masushige,” I prompted him.
For the fraction of a second his eyes seemed to bulge unnaturally but he recoverd himself so quickly that in the next moment I was not sure of the fleeting impression.
“Yes, we must not forget our Masushige,” he muttered and raised his head, meeting my glance. “The ballad is silent on this point, ending with the death of O-Take and her last recollections of the Temple of the Winds, her village, and the companion of her childhood. But I ascertained facts, that is, I have a theory, I have a sort of foundation or well-founded supposition as to the foundation of theory . . . yes . . .” He became somewhat confused and stuttered.” Masushige was. . . a sort . . . of eccentric person. He never even looked into the mirror. Was he afraid of breaking his holy vows? Was he hurt too deply? All I know is that secretly he threw the mirror into the forest tarn to which I am now leading you, and which is situated near the nook where O-Take gave herself to him, only to desert him the same night . . . “He laughed somewhat forcedly.” From his monastery it was a good distance. Our Masushige must have been a sort of monomaniac, whatever his fixed idea may have been; fear of the sensuous soul of her whom he had once loved so much, or disillusion, the longing to save at least some illusion, or revenge unworthy of a monk . . . He threw the mirror into the tarn, near which he had once lived through the most beautiful moments of his life, he threw it away without ever having looked into it . . .”
I could not help smiling. “And how do you know this, if I may ask?” I said with an involuntary tinge of irony.
He turned towards me and I noticed that he was almost livid. “I found it,” he answered, “and when we return I shall show it to you.”
And he quickened his pace as if something were driving him away from the melancholy ruins of the temple; and before we had gone a hundred steps he changed his mind, suddenly declared the walk to the tarn to be be entirely superfluous, and led me back to his lodging beyond the village, halfway between the paper factory and the new electric plant. The whole way back there
