The newspapers the next day reported that Chief Secretary Shirakawa had been returning from a raid on a secret meeting of the Liberal Party when he had been fired at by a number of its adherents; though slightly wounded himself, he had fired at one of his assailants with a pistol and killed him. Shirakawa had not told Tomo that he had fired his pistol, but the clearer it became that his coming to her after so many months had been but a way of giving vent to the murderous mental and physical excitement aroused by having killed a man, the more wretched Tomo felt.

The prefectural office and the whole town talked of nothing else for some time after, and Tomo could not fail to note that Suga’s eyes when she spoke of it to Etsuko showed not so much fear as a childlike admiration.

‘I really think the master was wonderful,’ she said out on the veranda as their pretty hands moved together deftly weaving a cat’s cradle of red cord.

‘Why, Suga?’

‘Well look at the danger he’d been through the other evening, and he didn’t say a word. The next morning I saw him washing his face in a funny way, using only one hand to dip his towel in the water. I asked him what he’d done, but he just smiled and said the muscle in his arm was stiff. He didn’t say anything at all about his injury.’

‘Do you think it didn’t hurt, then?’

‘I’m sure it did. I put a new bandage on for him this morning, and the wound was this big.’ Wrinkling her clearly marked eyebrows she shortened the string between her fingers to about two inches in order to show Etsuko. Etsuko merely thought that such a big wound must have hurt a lot, and was glad that her father had not been killed. But Suga, it seemed, was not content with this.

‘They say that a real man doesn’t show it when something hurts or worries him. The master kept it all to himself without a murmur. I think he’s wonderful.’