“The flower’s colour, has faded away, while in idle thoughts my life passes vainly by, and I watch the long rains fall” “not a very great example of manly frankness, is it,” she said. Matsumoto laughed. “And if I tell you that our word for colour is the same as our word for love?” Grace read the poem again. “Still trite” she said.”
“Embarrassingly, theirs was hanging in the parlour beside a sketch Thaniel had made of the Kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem. Mori had rescued it from a wastepaper basket and then hovered with a packet of watercolours and a hopeful expression until Thaniel had painted the other movements too. (…) He was coming to the very gradual conclusion that Mori hadn’t only been being polite, but really wanted it. Why was still a foggy point.”