was no mistake. The girl was Taki and the boy was indeed the viscount's son. The intruder saw her sit up astride him and cry out for joy, upon which the boy raised himself and embraced her madly. The tunic fell from their shoulders, revealing practically their whole bodies under the light of an electric bulb.
* * *
The south wind had stopped blowing, and the day passed pleasantly with no wind at all. Keijiro and his wife spent all day in the garden cleaning up dry leaves and twigs.
"Can I help with anything?" offered Tachibana.
"Don't be ridiculous!" replied Keijiro, glaring at him. "You're taking a chance just coming out onto the veranda. You'd better get back inside."
"Oh, it's all right. Nobody will see me," laughed Tachibana. Confident he was safe, he didn't mind having a little fun with the old man. He had been hiding here for three months, and all the tranquillity was beginning to bore him. He could no longer believe the eyes of the authorities might find him all the way out in this lonely village deep in the mountains. Just once, several men from the Nagano City Police had come and searched every corner of the house, but they had completely missed the secret room. It had already been two months since that search, and Tachibana was sure that the army and the military police must have forgotten all about him.
"Tomohiro! You shouldn't be here!" exclaimed Taki in a shrill voice behind him.
"Oh! You scared me!" He made a show of jumping. When he turned around, however, her look really frightened him, though it did not express anger, but rather fear.
"Okay, okay," said Tachibana, making a joke of it as he withdrew into the room. Taki quickly slid the door shut and came up to face him.
"Why can't you understand how worried we are about you?" she said, crying. Taki was subject to sharp and violent swings of emotion.
"There's nothing to worry about. I know what I'm doing."
"Then will you please stop going out onto the veranda? It frightens me terribly."
"Okay, since you feel that strongly about it. But you sure are a worrier, you know," Tachibana laughed.
Taki didn't even smile. She just stood there looking at him for a moment, then suddenly fell to her knees and began to topple over forward.
"You'll hurt yourself!" he cried, dropping to the floor and catching her in his lap, where he put his arm around her. She clung to his neck, her face close to his, crying wordlessly. She would not tell him what was wrong. She had done many strange things, but he had never seen her like this before. He spoke to her as he would to a small child. "Now why don't you just tell me what's making you so sad? If you won't tell me, how can I do anything about it?"
"When you go, it will be all over for me," she managed in fragments, beginning to sob convulsively.
"Me? Go? Where? Where is it you think I'm going?" he asked gently, rocking her in his lap.
She began to shake her head in time to the rocking. He knew this was her way of saying that she didn't know. The fear that had overcome her was a vague one. With hardly bearable pity, he held her close. "I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I'm always going to be with you."
But Taki's fear was beyond the reach of Tachibana's protestations of everlasting affection. Apparently frightened by some sort of premonition, she seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into melancholy. Tachibana had been seeing that melancholy ever since he received word from his father in Tokyo that the red draft slip had come for him.
At the time, unable to believe the authorities would have sent a red slip to him, the eldest son and heir of a viscount, a college student, and one presently taking a cure for tuberculosis besides, he had thought there must be some mistake. Although he told Taki cheerfully that he would be back in no time, she had warned him emphatically not to go and had given him a lot of trouble. Tearing himself away from her and going to Tokyo, he had found a hard reality awaiting him. His draft deferment had been canceled, and his father the viscount, apparently on extremely bad terms with the military, had apologized to him with a look of fear that Tachibana had never seen before, and which frightened him to the core. He was sure that if he were ever sent to the battlefield, he would die before an enemy bullet ever hit him.
But Tachibana did not want to die, and his father's fainthearted look told him it was all right to run. The elder Tachibana must have known what that would mean for the rest of the family, but thought it preferable to having his whole family line cut off. "This war can't last much longer," he said finally, avoiding the expression of any personal feeling before turning abruptly and walking away.
Having gotten the message that he should not throw away his life, Tachibana had run. The day before he was supposed to report, he had taken the morning train from Ueno and arrived in Nagano that evening. Avoiding the bus, he had headed for Togakushi along the winding path that led from behind the Zenko Temple to the old road. Hurrying through the night on an empty stomach without a stop at either of the two teahouses along the way, solely concerned with getting to his destination, he had reached the Tendoh house in the dead of night, and been startled to find Taki waiting for him beside the door. Keijiro and his wife were up as well, happily preparing a bath for him.
"Taki was sure you would be here, and here you are! Now don't you worry about a thing. We're all ready to protect you," said Keijiro, alluding to the secret room. He and his wife were crying for joy, unconcerned that Tachibana was betraying his country.
That night, Tachibana had slept with Taki for the first time, at her instigation. She had come into the secret room behind the closet in her shrine-maiden's dancing costume and put something that looked like dried weeds into an incense burner. When he asked her what it was, she had answered only that it was hemp, as she put her head coquettishly against his chest. The bluish smoke rising over the incense burner had filled him with a miraculous feeling of exaltation, such that all his fears and troubles and self-hatred gave way to an expansive feeling that the only people in the world were himself and Taki. His time of joy and fulfillment passed in a dream, and before long, he had fallen into a deep sleep.
And now, three months later, Taki had another such premonition. He could reason it away, but seeing how unhappy she was, he could not rid himself of the uneasy feeling that she might be right. As evening approached, her state became really alarming. At supper, she did not touch her food, but kept looking around her restlessly, throwing her arms around him from time to time. Infected by her fear, Keijiro and his wife were both nervous and kept getting up to make sure all the doors were locked.
After sunset, the north wind began to blow, and the evening cold belied the comfortable warmth of the day. Taki made Tachibana retire early to the secret room, staying right beside him all the time, too rigid to speak and crying incessantly. She could not tell him what was frightening her. She knew only that something evil was approaching.
Around nine, they heard the sound of a car coming up the slope and stopping in front of the house. She held her breath, and he could feel her clinging ever harder to him. Voices came from the entryway, Keijiro asking who was there, and a very loud voice answering. Tachibana did not recognize the name given, but he was relieved to realize that he did know the voice. Keijiro must have been just as relieved, because he released the lock and opened the door.
Simultaneously with Keijiro's scream, they heard an unfamiliar, angry voice, followed by the rude clump of street shoes approaching down the hallway. "There!" said the first voice, and they heard the closet door open. Something fell, and then the wall was yanked open in front of them. A young military officer stood there, gripping his saber. Seeing his military police
