“You’re thinking of your own country, aren’t you?”
Then the naval officer, with a smile in his eyes as always, looked round at her quietly. And instead of saying “ Non ,” he shook his head like a child.
“But you seem to be musing on something.”
“Guess what.”
Just then among the people on the veranda arose again for a time a noise like a wind. As if by agreement, Akiko and the naval officer stopped talking and looked up into the night sky that pressed down heavily on the pines of the garden. There a red and blue firework, throwing its spider legs out against the darkness, was just on the verge of dying away. To Akiko, for some reason or other, that firework was so beautiful that it almost made her sad. “I was thinking of the fireworks. The fireworks, like our lives,” said the French naval officer, looking gently down into Akiko’s face and speaking as if teaching her.