And I can't complain. After all, only women are able really to love.

But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.

A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.

The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?

I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.

But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.

They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again.