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pillars and crosspieces. The hall, the gallery, and the wooden frame that supported it were all washed by the wind and rain. They gleamed pure white like a skeleton. When the leaves were in their full blaze of autumn color, their red tints blended beautifully with this white skeletal structure; but at night the blanched wooden frame, dappled by the moonlight, looked mysterious and bewitching.
    The deserter was apparently hiding in the hall above the stage. The kempei intended to capture him by using Uiko as a decoy.
    We, the witnesses to the impending arrest, hid ourselves and held our breath. Though the cold air of the late October night wrapped itself about me, my cheeks were burning.
    By herself Uiko climbed the one hundred and five limestone steps. Proudly like some madwoman. The beautiful white of her profile stood out between her black dress and her black hair.
    Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness—amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery. This girl was qualified to walk alone up those white stairs, proudly throwing out her chest. Her treachery was the same as the stars and the moon and the pointed cedars. In other words, she was living in the same world as we, the witnesses; and she was accepting the nature that surrounded us all. She was walking up those steps as our representative. And I could not help thinking breathlessly: "By her betrayal she has at last accepted me too. Now she belongs to me!"
    At a certain point, what We call events disappear from within our memory. The Uiko who was walking up those one hundred and five moss-covered steps remains before my eyes. It seems to me that she is walking up those steps eternally.
    But from that point on, she became someone entirely different. Perhaps it is that the Uiko who climbed those steps betrayed me, betrayed us, once again. From that point on, she no longer rejected the world in its entirety. Nor did she entirely accept it. She surrendered herself to the order of mere passion; she lowered herself to the rank of a woman who has given herself over to one man alone.
    It is for this reason that I can only remember what follows as though it were a scene depicted in some old lithograph. Uiko walked along the gallery and called into the darkness of the temple hail. The silhouette of a man appeared. Uiko said something to him. The man pointed a revolver at the stone stairs and fired. The return fire from the kempei came from behind a nearby bush. The man was getting ready to shoot once more when Uiko turned towards the gallery and started to run. He fired one shot after another into her back. Uiko fell down. The man put the muzzle of the revolver to his temple and fired once again.
    First the kempei, then all the others, pushed their way up the steps and rushed toward the two dead bodies. I remained hidden quietly in the shadow of the autumn leaves. The white wooden frames of the temple, piled on top of each other in every direction, towered above my head. The sound of people's feet as they walked along the wooden boards of the gallery above me came fluttering down lightly. The criss-crossing light of torches passed over the railing of the gallery and reached the red-Ieaved branches of the trees.
    My only feeling was that all this was taking place in the distant past. Insensitive people are only upset when they actually see the blood. Yet, by the time that blood has been shed, the tragedy is already completed. I dozed off. When I awoke, I saw that everyone had left. They had evidently forgotten all about me. The air was full of the twittering of birds, and the morning sun shone directly through the leaves of the surrounding trees. The skeletal buildings above me seemed to revive as the sun