THE DRAGON PAINTER
such as he had not believed possible to her. She clasped his knees, his feet, and besought him, with all the strength and pathos of her soul, to make at least one more attempt to paint. He, now in equal torment, with tears running along his bronzed face, confessed to her that the power seemed to have gone from him. Some demon, he said, must have stolen it from him while he slept, for now the very touch of a brush, the look of paint, frenzied him.
Umè-ko went again to her father, saying that she again had failed. The strain was now, indeed, past all human endurance. The little home became a charged battery of tragic possibilities. Each moment was a separate menace, and the hours heaped up a structure already tottering.
At dawn of the next day, Tatsu, who after a restless and unhappy night had fallen into heavy slumber, awoke, with a start, alone. A pink light glowed upon his paper shoji; the plum tree, now entirely leafless, threw a
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