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will. There was no doubt that it had been a great victory of the will, even granted that she had had an amount of preparatory training, for her to learn complicated airs from only a score, and presently go through them from memory.
    To Shimamura it was wasted effort, this way of living. He sensed in it too a longing that called out to him for sympathy. But the life and way of livingno doubt flowed thus grandly from the samisen with a new worth for Komako herself.
    Shimamura, untrained in the niceties of samisen technique and conscious only of the emotion in the tone, was perhaps an ideal audience for Komako.
    By the time she had begun her third song—the voluptuous softness of the music itself may have been responsible—the chill and the goose flesh had disappeared, and Shimamura, relaxed and warm, was gazing into Komako’s face. A feeling of intense physical nearness came over him.
    The high, thin nose was usually a little lonely, a little sad, but today, with the healthy, vital flush on her cheeks, it was rather whispering: I am here too. The smooth lips seemed to reflect back a dancing light even when they were drawn into a tight bud; and when for a moment they were stretched wide, as the singing demanded, they were quick to contract again into that engaging little bud. Their charm was exactly like the charm of her body itself. Her eyes, moist and shining, made her look like a very young girl. She wore no powder, and the polish of the city geisha had over it a layer of mountain color. Her skin, suggesting the newness of a freshly peeled onion or perhaps a lily bulb, was flushed faintly, even to the throat. More than anything, it was clean.
    Seated rigidly upright, she seemed more demure and maidenly than usual.
    This time using a score, she sang a song she had not yet finished memorizing. At the end she silently pushed the plectrum under the strings and let herself fall into an easier posture.
    Her manner quickly took on a touch of the seductive and alluring.
    Shimamura could think of nothing to say. Komako did not seem to care particularly what he thought of her playing, however. She was quite unaffectedly pleased with herself.
    “Can you always tell which geisha it is from the tone of the samisen?”
    “That’s easy. There aren’t twenty of us all together. It depends a little on the style, though. The individual comes out more in some styles than in others.”
    She took up the samisen again and shifted her weight so that her feet were a little to one side and the instrument rested on the calf of one leg.
    “This is the way you hold it when you’re small.” She leaned toward the samisen as though it were too large for her. “Da-a-ark hair.…” Her voice was deliberately childish and she picked out the notes uncertainly.
    “ ‘Dark Hair’ was the first one you learned?”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head girlishly, as nodoubt she did in the days when she was still too small to hold the samisen properly.
    Komako no longer tried to leave before daybreak when she stayed the night.
    “Komako,” the two-year-old daughter of the innkeeper would call from far down the hall, her voice rising in the mountain-country lilt. The two of them would play happily in the kotatsu until nearly noon, when they would go for a bath.
    Back from the bath, Komako was combing her hair. “Whenever the child sees a geisha, she calls out ‘Komako’ in that funny accent, and when she sees a picture of someone with her hair done in the old way, that’s ‘Komako’ too. Children can tell when you like them. Come, Kimi. Let’s go play at Komako’s.” She stood up to leave, then sat down lazily on the veranda. “Eager people from Tokyo already out skiing.”
    The room looked from high ground directly south over the ski runs at the base of the mountain.
    Shimamura glanced up from the kotatsu . There were patches of snow on the mountain, and five or six figures in black ski clothes were moving about in the terraced fields. It