THE DRAGON PAINTER
back all too soon, perhaps before my master and Miss Umè come down from the temple."
In this surmise the old dame was, for once, at fault. Tatsu did not return until full daylight of the next morning. He had been wandering, evidently, all night long among the chill and dew-wet branches of the mountain shrubs. His silken robe was torn and stained as had been the blue cotton dress, that first day of his coming. At sight of his sunken eyes and haggard look Umè-ko's heart cried out to him, and it was with difficulty that she restrained her tears. But she still had a last appeal to make, and this was to be the hour.
In response to his angry questions, she would answer nothing but that she and her father had business at the temple. More than this, she would not say. As he persisted, pleading for her motives in so leaving him, and heaping her with the reproaches of tortured love, she suddenly threw herself on the mat before him, in a passion of grief
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