Working at her sewing in her own room, Tomo listened with chagrin to the note of innocent admiration in the words that the normally untalkative Suga used with such emphasis. In Suga’s dreamy gaze and the gentle curves of her body there remained none of the unnatural stiffness that they had had when she first arrived; in the easy girlishness that pervaded them now, she was little different from Etsuko herself. It had taken Shirakawa a good month to relax her to the point where she was as open and vulnerable as this. But he had nearly reached his goal. Already vaguely disposed to cling to a man who petted and spoiled her like a father, Suga had now discovered a new and more heroic Shirakawa and was yielding to the pleasure of the discovery as mist gives way to sunlight. The first flower of love had begun to grow within her. Just as the fresh green orb of the tightly folded peony bud is seen one morning to be tinged with a flush of scarlet, so Suga too had begun to change her hue, and the change disturbed Tomo deeply. Nevertheless, there was no physical relationship so far. Something emanating from a woman who had known Shirakawa physically always affected Tomo with a sense of uneasiness. In Suga’s case no such emanation had made itself felt so far.

Wondering just when and how Suga would give herself to Shirakawa, Tomo found herself even less able to sleep since Shirakawa had come to her room. Sometimes she could bear it no longer and getting up would push back the shutters, taking care not to disturb the sleeping Etsuko. Moonlight drifted across the grass in the garden wet with autumn dew, and the round window of the new wing flickered vaguely with the light of a lamp whose wick was turned low. In her mind’s eye she could see how the light now shone on the yellow silk bedding, picking out the round shoulders of Suga’s night kimono of purple striped silk as she lay peacefully sleeping; suddenly it seemed to Tomo that she herself was a great snake rearing its hooded head out of the light to stare at him and Suga, and hardly aware of what she did she clasped her arms tightly across her breast, shut her eyes tightly, and moved her lips as though crying out with her last breath, ‘Help me! Oh help me!’ Many times she dreamed that she was on a ship tossed in a violent storm, rolling about inside its hull, unable to breathe.

One morning, Suga stayed in bed in her room, saying she had a headache. When Etsuko came back from school and went into the anteroom of the new wing carrying colored paper for making origami, Suga exclaimed ‘Miss Etsuko!’ looking up from her pillow with eyes that were pleased at the familiar face but whose lids were swollen and puffy.