‘Where’s Michimasa?’ said Yukitomo, looking for him among Miya’s mother, brother, and sisters as they rose to greet him.

‘The master’s not here today,’ said the foreman called Tomoshichi who had been staying at the hospital night and day. Yukitomo, secretly relieved, assumed a bad-tempered look and said nothing, at which Tomoshichi went on, as though to smooth things over, ‘He was tired from looking after the invalid … He must take a little rest, at least.’

In fact Michimasa had not gone home but to see the first showing of that week’s installment of an American film serial. Nearing fifty though he was, the cinema and the theater were still a pleasure that even his wife’s death could not make him willingly forgo.

That morning the patient’s condition had raised doubts that she would last the night, but the hospital director who had examined her some while ago had said that there would probably be no sudden change for a day or two; this Yukitomo learned, in fragments, from Miya’s brothers and sisters and her mother, who in the midst of it all spotted Takao standing glumly behind Yukitomo in his gray uniform and exclaimed unctuously:

‘Well, Takao! I didn’t recognize you, you’ve grown so tall!’

To Takao, Miya’s close relatives, gathered there with their worried expressions and forced tears as though they felt an obligation to grieve, had the artificiality of unskilled actors.

‘Is she asleep?’ asked Yukitomo.

‘Oh no, she’s awake. She hasn’t seen Takao for such a long time … she’s sure to be pleased.’ With which, Miya’s mother took them into the sickroom.

It was a white-walled room with two windows. A high iron bed was covered with a thin layer of silk gauze quilts between which, so slender as hardly to suggest the presence of a human body, lay Miya.

Nurses in white uniforms with high collars were seated at the head and foot of the bed, gently stirring the air with round paper fans.

‘Miya, here’s Takao to see you,’ said Yukitomo seating himself by the bed and opening the front of his kimono to fan his chest. His voice was youthful and resilient.

Dully Miya raised her eyes which had been lightly closed and stared at Yukitomo. She seemed too tired to shift her gaze.

‘Takao?’ she said in a voice that had lost all its resonance.

Takao peered out from behind his grandfather.

‘How do you feel?’ he said.

‘My throat’s so dry … I don’t seem to have any voice …’

Her thin hand went up to feel at her throat. The eyes that had been little more than slits in her plump cheeks stood out dark and hollow against her face, which now that it was thin was youthful and attractive, and remarkably like Ruriko’s.

‘Is school over?’