The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

impossibility, gambled his own life. He could meet her
if he met death too. Perhaps, in secrecy, Satoko too
knew of a time and awaited its coming. An ineffably
sweet well of memory flowed over the aging Honda.
That Keiko should be here with him was a little
incongruous.
He had rather strong doubts about Keiko’s
understanding of Japanese culture. There was
something admirable all the same in her expansive
half-knowledge. She quite avoided pretense. She
went her rounds of the Kyoto temples, and, like
artistically inclined foreign ladies stuffed with
misconceptions from a first visit to Japan, she would
shrill forth her pleasure at objects that no longer
interested most Japanese, and arrange them in false
nosegays. She was fascinated with Japan as with the
Antarctic. She would spread herself out with all the
awkwardness of a stockinged foreign lady as she
viewed a rock garden. All her life she had known only
Occidental chairs.
She was in genuine intellectual heat. She fell into
the habit of holding forth with her own peculiar notions
about Japanese art and literature, albeit neglecting a
detail here and there.
It had long been one of her indulgences to invite the
foreign ambassadors in turn to dinner. Now they