Her tone was casual but she itched with frustration at not being able to give voice to the angry thoughts that came thrusting up within her: ‘I can’t expect to do like the young mistress, any way’; ‘After all, you never taught me how to deceive men like she can’; ‘I don’t have that kind of skill, which is why I have to go on getting older, without a home of my own, under the thumb of a straitlaced woman like the mistress.’ Although she seemed to have her own way with him, Yukitomo was in a sense both father and master for her, too important a being in her life for her not to fear using sharp words that might strike home where it hurt.

When she called to mind Miya’s lighthearted manner, how she quite shamelessly made up to Yukitomo with her gay, cheerful expressions, her innocent fits of helpless laughter and the gentle, slightly nasal tone in which she called him ‘Papa,’ Suga was not free from jealousy of a kind, yet it did not seem like the jealousy of a woman whose lover had been lured into bed by another.

On the night before Yumi was to go back to her parents’ home the two of them with Yukitomo’s permission set out their quilts side by side in the same room.

As they talked they gazed nostalgically at each other’s faces looming pale in the dim light of the bedside lamps, their necks supported on wooden pillows to protect their elaborate hairstyles.

March was near its close. Outside, a drizzling rain fell silently and the night air was heavy with moisture.

‘It’s sad to think you won’t be in this house any more by tomorrow evening, Yumi,’ said Suga in a somber voice. Although she had known from the time of the first discussion of Yumi’s marriage that sooner or later she would leave them, now that the time for parting was upon them Yumi acquired in her eyes the daring air of a young bird flapping its wings before flying away from the nest, and the futility of her own life, left alone in such a situation, was borne sharply home to her.

‘There’s nothing to be sad about. You’ve got so many people here – I’m sure I shall be the one to feel lonely, alone in a small house with just my elder sister.’

Yumi spoke cheerfully as though to brighten her up, but Suga’s eyes remained steadily fixed on Yumi’s face, and she said as though speaking to herself:

‘No, that kind of loneliness is different. When you go I shall be the one left alone in the background, here in this big house – that’s what I mean, you’re more positive than I am, Yumi.’