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THERE were marsh lands and boggy rice-fields in the valley country along the Hayama, and during the season of White Dew (end of August) the river was low and scarcely seemed to stir.
In the early morning a white mist arose from it, eerily enshrouding the land like a veil of gauze, evaporating, and disappearing slowly. Sometimes, too, at night heavy fogs rose up even to the hills and obscured all sight of land. Oftentimes the traveller, even the native, lost his way. Tales were told of the smiling, languorous river, whose beauty, siren-like, lured her victims to destruction.
Even the villagers, whose homes nestled so cosily in the fragrant valleys, did not venture out on foggy nights in the direction of the river, unless attended by the Hayama guide, Oka, who boasted he could find his way blind-folded among the familiar paths of Kamakura, even to the very water’s edge.
Almost beyond sight of the village, above the heads of the sloping hills, the lordly castle Aoyama looked over the mists of the valley at Fuji in the sky distance.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon. A young girl sat by an open shoji, motionless and silent, staring up at the ghost-like hills. The descending mists told her that long before the darkness came all sight of the spot upon which she gazed would be obliterated. She lingered on in melancholy discontent, her chin upon her hand, her embroidery frame idle at her side.
Beyond a few servants of the household no one was at home save Masago. She knew that her thoughts and meditations would be free from interruption, and so she gave herself up to them unreservedly, with inward passion.
The Yamada house was situated on a rising eminence. From the maiden Masago’s casement the golden peaks of the palace Aoyama were visible. It was upon these points that the young girl fixed her eyes with a vague expression of suffering, wistfulness, and yearning.
What were the thoughts of Masago, fresh from the training of a modern and fashionable school in the old capital of Kyoto? The dreams that had stirred the apathetic mind of Ohano’s daughter into vague discontent had not been removed by the months of schooling, but were more definite, and therefore more painful.