Although for Seki’s sake she had seemed to accept the inevitable with such good grace, Tomo still put out her husband’s bed every night in her own room in case it should be needed. She got out the quilts herself after the maids had retired for the night, and put them away again early in the morning. Every night the bed lay unclaimed, well-ordered and chill beside Tomo’s.

One night Shirakawa, coming home unusually late, did not go to the new wing but came into Tomo’s room.

‘Send the women to bed … and bring some saké.’ His eyes were bloodshot and a blue vein pulsed at his temple. It was unusual for Shirakawa, who disliked saké, to order it at this hour.

‘Tomo,’ he said, rolling up his sleeve for her to see. The upper half of his left arm was bound with a white bandage through which blood was seeping. Tomo went rigid, the bottle of warmed saké she had just brought still poised in her hand.

‘Why! Where did you…?’

‘We raided a secret meeting of the Liberal Party. We arrested about ten of them, but the rest set on us as we were coming home.’ He laughed. ‘Lucky it was the left arm.’ His voice was high-pitched with tension and when he smiled his cheeks were stiff and tense. The opponents had been in earnest. He was lucky to have got home alive. The hand in which Tomo held the saké bottle trembled with the realization that it was to her he had come and not to Suga.

‘It was lucky you weren’t …’ She faltered then stopped, staring at Shirakawa with startled eyes. His gaze flashed with a fierce light, he drained his saké cup at a gulp, then, sweeping her towards him with his arm, he crushed her against his chest. Her hair fell loose. With her face still pressed to his chest she lost her balance, clutched momentarily at the air in vain and collapsed heavily against him. The saké from the bottle in her hand spilt over his chest and a smell of fermented liquor enveloped them as he tilted up her face and pressed his lips savagely to hers.

Shirakawa went back to the new wing at dawn. He had said not a word to Tomo about Suga, yet as she went back to bed alone it occurred to Tomo that he must have feared letting the young and still untouched Suga know the full force of his blood-smeared animality. And the knowledge that she had betrayed a certain passion with the husband who had rushed to her when he was wounded only heightened the hatred she felt for him, heightened it to the point where she could have clawed to shreds the face that seemed to sneer its perception of her foolishness.