Yukitomo decided that Ruriko in addition to Yoshihiko should be brought to live at the big house. It might be that in this young girl who every day grew more attractive and more graceful he was seeking to recapture the Miya that had once been, yet toward her grandfather Ruriko employed none of her mother’s wheedling familiarity nor did she show the slightest consciousness of the beauty that struck others so forcibly.

‘Miss Ruriko is still just an immature girl,’ Suga would sometimes say admiringly to Tomo, with the hidden implication that Ruriko’s nature was not like her mother’s.

However many favors Yukitomo might bestow on Ruriko, Tomo had no fears on that score at least, though when she thought of Takao it was undoubtedly a relief to know that Ruriko by nature was so wanting in her mother’s conscious desire to charm.

Takao, who that summer had in the natural course of events gained admission to the history department of Tokyo Imperial University, had come back to the house at Gotenyama; he had been given the room upstairs in the annex as his study and traveled every day to the university campus in the Hongo district. Ruriko had left women’s college and was going about taking lessons in the tea-ceremony, flower arrangement, and the piano, so that sometimes she would find herself accompanying Takao on his way to or from the university. One evening as he alighted from the rear exit of a streetcar he saw her, wearing a kimono of printed silk with an arrow-feather pattern and carrying in one hand some flowers wrapped in a piece of oiled paper, leaving the front exit of the same car. He did not hail her, however, but walked along behind her at a distance of some two yards.

‘Miss Shirakawa – I bet you don’t know you’ve got the young master walking after you!’ The voice that hailed Ruriko on the slope that led up to the big house belonged to Tomoshichi the foreman, who was wearing a workman’s jacket with the name ‘Shirakawa’ in white on the dark blue of its collar.

‘What? Really?’

She turned and recognized Takao who was screwing up his eyes as though dazzled by the light.

‘The young master’s a wicked one all right,’ cackled Tomoshichi. ‘It’s lucky it’s your sister, or she’d be annoyed. Walking like that just behind an attractive young lady without saying anything…’

Tomoshichi, it seemed, had just been given a drink at the Shirakawas’, and his eyes in his neat-featured face were faintly red around the rims. How pleasant it would be, he thought, if only Takao could take a joke, but Takao, surly-faced, made no response at all so Tomoshichi hurried on past with a disgruntled air.