“You were doing more than just talking in the summer house, when you thought I was asleep,” the samurai said.

She put a hand to her throat. “How-how did you find out?”

“You let him touch you and possess you,” the samurai said, ignoring his wife’s question. “You loved him the way you once loved me.”

Always fearful of his temper, she cowered. Panic glazed her eyes, which darted as she sought a way to excuse herself. “It was only once,” she faltered. “He took advantage of me. I made a mistake. He meant nothing to me.” But her lies sounded shrill, desperate. Now she extended a hand to her husband. “It’s you I love. I beg your forgiveness.”

Her posture turned seductive; her lips curved in an enticing smile. That she thought she could pacify him so easily turned the samurai’s anger to white-hot fury.

“You’ll pay for betraying me!” he shouted. He lunged toward his wife and scooped her up in his arms. As she emitted a sound of bewildered surprise, he flung her overboard.

She fell sideways into the lake with a splash that drenched the boat. Her long hair and pale garments billowed around her, and she flailed her arms in a frantic attempt to keep from sinking in the deep, black water. “Please!” she cried, sobbing in terror. “I’m sorry! I repent! Save me!”

A lust for revenge prevailed over the love that the samurai still felt for his wife. He ignored her and took up the oars. She grabbed the railings of the boat, and he beat her hands with the wooden paddles until she yelped in pain and let go. He rowed away from her.

“Help!” she screamed. “I’m drowning. Help!”

Rockets boomed, louder than her cries and splashes; no one came to her rescue. While the samurai rowed farther out on the lake, he watched his wife grow smaller and her struggles weaken, heard her gasps fade. She was a water lily cut loose and dying on a pond. She deserved her misfortune. Triumph exhilarated the samurai. His wife’s head sank below the surface, and diminishing ripples radiated toward the circle of light cast by his boat’s lantern. Then there was silence.