Attendants then entering, the screens were drawn aside for their guest, and he passed into the adjoining chamber, which had been prepared as a sleeping apartment. Sinking to rest among the silken coverlets and luxurious quilts, he was soon lost in heavy slumber.
[Illustration: His beautiful hostess, seating herself beside the _koto_ began to sing a wild and beautiful air.]
Suddenly, in the morning, he was awakened by a cold wind blowing across his face. Day had broken, and the rosy dawn was flushing the horizon in the east. Slowly returning to his senses, he found himself lying on the ground beneath the very cherry-tree that had inspired his poem of the day before; but his wonderful adventure, his charming hostess, and her waiting maidens were no more! Shunko, lost in wonder, recalled over and over again the glowing memories of the preceding evening, but the vision had been so vivid that he felt assured it must have been something more than the mere phantoms of a dream. An overpowering conviction crept over him that the lovely maiden had her living counterpart in this world of realities.
From his earliest childhood he had always offered a special devotion to the cherry-flowers. Year after year, in the springtime, he had taken special joy in visiting some place noted for their blossoms. Could it be that the spirit of the cherry-tree, to whose beauty he had dedicated his poem, had appeared to him in human form to reward him for his life-long fidelity?
At last he rose and stretched his cramped limbs, and musing only on the vanished wonders of the night, wandered aimlessly along. At length he regained the main road and slowly turned his errant footsteps towards home.
Although he took up his usual life again, he could not forget his experiences in the cherry-blossom valley, they haunted him not only in the silent watches of the night, but in the bright noontide of day. Three days later he returned to Koganei, with the fond hope of evoking once again the longed-for vision of the lovely girl who had so bewitched him with her beauty and her charm.
But, alas for human hopes! In those short days all had changed. What so ephemeral as the reign of the cherry-flower in the spring! Grey were the skies that had been so blue and fair; bleak and deserted was the scene that had been so gay and full of life; bare of blossom, and stripped of their fairy beauty were the trees, whose petals of blushing-snow the relentless wind had scattered far and wide.