Observing Miya without appearing to do so, Yukitomo gradually realized that whether she was at home or out it was the times when Michimasa was not there that showed her cheerful youthfulness at its most radiant and allowed her to be herself, as gay and carefree as a butterfly. When her husband Michimasa was with her, and Tomo and the others thoughtfully went away in order to leave the young couple to themselves, she would look disconsolate and, finding some excuse to leave him before long, would go and join Suga and the others in attendance upon Yukitomo.

On one occasion Yukitomo deliberately sent Michimasa to replace him at a garden party given by a cement firm, and in his absence took Suga and Yumi, and Miya with them, to see the irises in the famous garden at Horikiri, leaving Tomo to take care of the house.

The spacious lake of the iris garden was crossed by numerous bridges of narrow planks arranged to form zigzags across the water, and the entire surface was covered with the dark green leaves of the irises whose gay purple, white, and dappled blooms swayed in the breezes of early summer. Swallows skimmed the surface of the water with flashes of their white underbellies. The beauty of the three young women, in their varying hairstyles and with their kimonos of many cloths and colors, was so startling that it drew glances from the other visitors they passed on their way.

‘It’s like looking at an old color print,’ said one old woman gazing at them enthralled, ‘to see three such fine women standing together among the irises.’

Of the three it was Miya who frolicked most gaily of all; when the planks of the bridge creaked beneath her clogs it was she who cried ‘Oh! It’s going to break!’ in exaggerated alarm and clung fearfully to Suga and Yumi. When they went up the bank again, Yukitomo helped Miya up, almost lifting her light body in his arms and recalling as he did so how once among the apprentice geishas of Shimbashi there had been a girl with just such a lithe body as this.

‘The young mistress doesn’t seem a bit lonely even when she’s away from the young master, does she?’ said Suga casually that evening in Yukitomo’s bedroom. ‘She looks younger, in fact – almost like a young girl.’

In the ten years that she had served him as mistress Suga had learned the art of probing in the most innocent way possible into the secret recesses of Yukitomo’s mind. Perhaps he did not sense the subtle inquiry concealed in Suga’s words, for he made no reply but sat with an ambiguous smile playing about the corners of his mouth.

‘What are you smiling at? Stop it!’

‘It’s all right – it’s not you, it’s Miya.’

‘The young mistress? What about her?’

‘Doesn’t her face when she laughs remind you of something?’