“Elder Sister (3), so much do you look like a person whom I knew long
ago, that I was startled when you first entered this room. Pardon me,
therefore, for asking what is your native place, and what is your
name?”
Immediately,—and in the unforgotten voice of the dead,—she thus made
answer:—
“My name is O-Tei; and you are Nagao Chōsei of Echigo, my promised
husband. Seventeen years ago, I died in Niigata: then you made in
writing a promise to marry me if ever I could come back to this world
in the body of a woman;—and you sealed that written promise with your
seal, and put it in the _butsudan_, beside the tablet inscribed with my
name. And therefore I came back.”...
As she uttered these last words, she fell unconscious.
Nagao married her; and the marriage was a happy one. But at no time
afterwards could she remember what she had told him in answer to his
question at Ikao: neither could she remember anything of her previous
existence. The recollection of the former birth,—mysteriously kindled
in the moment of that meeting,—had again become obscured, and so
thereafter remained.