The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

ivy blackened by the night.
Tōru was ushered in by a white-gloved butler past
the circular domed hallway to a parlor in the rich
Momoyama style, and there seen to a Louis XV chair.
He was rather ashamed to find himself the first guest.
The house was brilliantly lighted but still. There was a
large Christmas tree in one corner. It seemed out of
place. Left by himself when the butler had taken his
order for a drink, he leaned against the old-fashioned
paned window and looked out through the trees at the
lights of the city and a sky turned purplish by neon.
A door opened and Keiko came in.
The brilliant formal dress of the septuagenarian
before him quite robbed him of speech. Sleeves
trailing to the hem of the skirt, her evening dress was
beaded over its whole surface. The shifting colors and
patterns of the beads from the neck down over the
skirt were such as to dazzle the eye. At the bosom,
the wings of a peacock in green on a gold ground,
waves of purple over the sleeves, a continuous winecolored
pattern down over the waist, purple waves
and gold clouds on the skirt, the several boundaries
marked in gold. The white of the organdy ground was
set off by a threefold Western pattern in silver net.
From the skirt emerged the toe of a purple satin
slipper, and at the always proud neck was an emerald