midnight
If it were given her to speak she would have cried , `` My husband ! '' Wherever she might drift , -- in the black ocean , in the Meido-land , yes , even in the smile of Buddha on his throne , -- she yearned for her lover as he for her , with a human love ; she stretched out arms of mist to him , and tinged the pale ether of the spirit world with love 's rosy flame . One such night , during the time of plum-tree falling , when the boy , tortured by the almost human sweetness of the flowers , had risen from his bed to flee memory across the wide , cold plains of night , he had left , in his hurried going , the doors and shutters of his room spread wide . Mata and old Kano , accustomed to these midnight sounds , merely turned on their lacquered pillows , murmured `` Poor tormented Tatsu , '' and went to sleep again . It had been a day of power for the young artist , but not a day of peace . The picture he had worked on he would have called one of his `` nightmare fancies . '' It showed a slender form in gray with one arm about a willow .