it folded neatly on a rock. I removed my coat and put it in the same spot. We entered the water together. She died. I was saved. The incident was treated rather prominently in the press, no doubt because I was a college student. My father's name also had some news value. I was confined in a hospital on the coast. A relative came from home to see me and take care of necessary arrangements. Before he left he informed me that my father and all the rest of my family were so enraged that I might easily be disowned once and for all. Such matters did not concern me; I thought instead of the dead Tsuneko, and, longing for her, I wept. Of all the people I bad ever known, that miserable Tsuneko really was the only one I Loved. A long letter which consisted of a string of fifty stanzas came from the girl at my lodging house. Fifty stanzas, each one beginning with the incredible words, "Please live on for me." The nurses used to visit my sickroom, laughing gaily all the time, and some would squeeze my hand when they left.
They discovered at the hospital that my left lung was affected. This was most fortunate for me: when, not long afterwards, I was taken from the hospital to the police station, charged with having been the accomplice to a suicide, I was treated as a sick man by the police, and quartered not with the criminals but in a special custody room. Late that night the old policeman standing night duty in the room next to mine softly opened the door. "Hey," he called to me, "you must be cold. Come here, next to the fire." I walked into his room, sat on a chair, and warmed myself by the fire.
