If previous days in the Onda household had been tense, those following were to reach the ultimate limit of nerve-endurance. Immediately after his last tempestuous scene with Yuki, Tetsujo had left the house. Yuki was minded to call after him, protesting that her promise given him on the first day of war did not hold indefinitely. She moved forward, the words nearly sped, when he turned on her a look and gesture so repellent that she cowered, and let him pass. It did not seem at all her father who now looked at her, but rather some angry Spirit of War, in temporary assumption of Onda's body.

War! War! War! The streets thrilled to it. The sparrows chirped it. The jinrikisha wheels rattled a pygmy fusillade. In this flare of national ardor all passions burned more hotly, and among them, Tetsujo's indignation against his only child. Iriya, being more inexperienced than Yuki herself in interpretation of men's fiercer moods, could not tell her that such caloric outbursts would die the sooner from their own exaggeration. Yuki moaned, and shut her hot eyes from a future where her father should always be angry, and her mother always trembling.

Early next day, after the reading of HaganÈ's letter, the women of Onda's house were surprised to find their domestic retinue silently increased by the addition of two grim, middle-aged men who called themselves gardeners. From their reading of all "War Extras" that the jangling bell of the newsboy announced, and from their sporadic and often devastating attacks on harmless shrubs, one might have doubted their skill in the professed art. Tetsujo disdained explanation, and gave the one order that they were to be suitably fed at meal-times in the kitchen, and treated with the consideration due to servants hired specially by himself. Iriya had not the heart, scarcely the curiosity, to question. All that day she moved about, a silent, timid figure of protesting obedience. Yuki understood at once that her mother had been told to ignore her. She understood, also, the meaning of the so-called "gardeners," and turned to her father slow, scornful eyes, which he refused to meet.

What the young seldom realize, in a case like this, is the suffering of those in authority, who, according to adolescent eyes, delight in imparting sorrow. Yuki was convinced that this strange changeling of a father revelled in his cruelty. She forced herself into defiant composure, chiefly in the hope of detracting from his supposed enjoyment. Her mother's white face was another matter. She looked on that just as little as possible. Old SuzumÈ and Maru grew to partake of their master's elfish obsession. Their peering faces and bright eyes, quickly withdrawn, maddened her.

No hope or thought of solution had come through the troubled night, nor, as yet, with the gray day. Tetsujo had gone, presumably, to convey the detested message to his prince. Yuki's one conscious determination was to send another message to Pierre, which should state clearly and comprehensively the new difficulty that had assailed her. Almost certainly her father had arranged that no more letters should go forth or be received. The gardeners and SuzumÈ would see to that. At times she had a wild fancy of attempting flight, urging Pierre to rescue her in the fashion of mediÆval romance, and to take her to the Todds, or to some Christian missionary, where they could be married and so set beyond the reach of HaganÈ and her father. But would it set her beyond the black tide of her own remorse? How then should she reconcile her fondest belief, that in a union with Pierre she might serve to bring closer French and Japanese friendship? This would be outrage, anarchy, at the start. Yet something must be done,—something at least to remove her, temporarily, from her father's loathing sight after she should have refused HaganÈ's proposition. In this, perhaps, Pierre himself could assist, or Gwendolen,—if she could only see Gwendolen. "Gwendolen!" She stretched out her arms to the sunless, vacant sky, and called her friend's name aloud.

Whether telepathy is a fact, or merely a pet child of some philosophers, whether or not the ether of the East holds subtler vibrations than our own, it is certain that exactly at this moment Gwendolen awoke in her foreign bed from hurrying dreams of Yuki, and lay awake, staring, a sudden weight of apprehension full upon her. The excitement of war may have sharpened American senses also. Gwendolen's mind ran back for the hundredth time to that strange, memorable banquet. Its meaning grew now more sharp and sinister. Something had taken place there, something intangible, but very real, something decisive, fatal, the effect of which would first appear in Yuki. Gwendolen had as her birthright some of her father's intuitive judgment of character. She had read that night the hatred of foreigners in Tetsujo's sullen face, and did not dislike him for it. HaganÈ baffled her; but she had noted how deep were the eyes fixed now on Yuki, now on Pierre. Neither of them would wish for Yuki to become the wife of Pierre, and neither did Gwendolen wish it. The girl smiled curiously at her feeling of distaste. It did not seem right for Yuki to marry a foreigner, even an utterly charming and immorally beautiful foreigner like Pierre Le Beau.

"I guess I must have been a Japanese in lots of my former incarnations," she said to herself. "Yuki declares it's so, and she should know. But—" here she stopped and drew out her long, unbound yellow hair in two diaphanous, glittering wings. "The fates certainly have put my Oriental soul, this time, into a misleading body!" She was dressing now, and stood before her pretty silver-laden bureau by a sunny south window of the Legation.

About two hours later of the same day Minister Todd and his secretary, sitting alone in the thrice-guarded sanctum of the former's private office, looked up in incredulous astonishment as a dainty tapping betrayed a feminine guest. Then Todd's thin smile widened. "Gwennie, I'll bet!—and on the war-path! Only that little rascal would have the cheek."

Dodge turned away to hide the glow in his brown face. Gwennie it proved to be. She entered, dainty, perfumed, exquisite, in tan-cloth dress and seal-skins that exactly matched her brows and lashes.

"I don't expect to be welcomed," she said aggressively, her little white chin high in air. "But I simply had to come."

"Well?" This was from the minister.

Before stating her plea, Gwendolen threw a bewildering look of entreaty upon the gloating Dodge. "Dad, I can't stand it! I haven't seen or heard anything from Yuki for a week. Pierre Le Beau is driving me mad; and last night I had the scariest dream about Yuki. I feel in my bones that she needs me. Let me go to her, dad! Dearest, darlingest diddy-daddy, say I can go!"

Todd put a loving arm about the supplicant, but at the same time he shook his head. "Can't you be patient just a little longer, girlie? Something is bound to turn up soon."

"If Prince HaganÈ is in it, it will be worse than a turn-up; it will be a heave," said Dodge, shaking his head also.

"But, dad, I have been patient. You know how I hate being patient. I'm perfectly on edge when I have to wait. Every little bit of me begs to be cut off, and allowed to run in scraps. Oh, don't look so solemn! I'm only a girl. I can't upset the earth. Everything has gone wrong this morning from the minute I stepped out of bed on a tailless cat. You can make it well, daddy. My heart simply tugs in me toward Yuki."

At mention of her heart Dodge gave a prolonged and envious sigh. Todd smiled, but Gwendolen only looked indignant. Tears stood in her pretty eyes, and Dodge felt himself to be a brute.

"Your Excellency," he said, "if I might be allowed to suggest, why not let me be Miss Todd's escort? If I am along, I think, perhaps—" He broke off with a significant intonation. The two men exchanged glances, and the elder, catching his chin with a characteristic gesture, walked away thoughtfully.

"Oh, when dad looks like that, he is going over the entire American Constitution before he answers," cried Gwendolen, in despair. "May I not sit somewhere, Mr. Dodge?"

There were but three chairs in the room, the two revolving desk-chairs, and one suggestively rigid and slippery, meant for visitors. Generally, as now, it was heaped with a tottering mass of papers. Dodge, with suspicious alacrity, leaned forward to wheel the minister's chair. Before he could reach it, Gwendolen had thrown herself into the other, and faced the open vitals of his private desk.

In the very centre, just out of range of the minister's eye, stood an unframed photograph of Carmen Gil y Niestra, a languorous Spanish beauty lately arrived in Tokio. The picture had come that morning by mail, and was only waiting to be carried to Dodge's rooms; but Gwendolen could not know that. She was humiliated and annoyed to feel a deep, dry sob rise to her throat. At another time, when her best friend was not in trouble, and she hadn't stepped on the cat, she would have made some bright remark about it; but now she dared not trust her voice.

Dodge, carefully removing the papers to the floor, seated himself on the visitor's chair, and let his eyes rest with a curious, half-triumphant look upon Gwendolen's downcast face. This young man, unlike others to whom she had chosen to show favor, had not hastened to throw himself at her feet, pleading to be sat upon, trod upon, built upon, anything but the one obvious suggestion that he rise and walk away. He had never tried to take her hand; never once said that he loved her, though the girl until this moment had felt certain of it. Sometimes she had tried to flatter him into the declaration; again she would pique and goad him. The result had been the same. Dodge followed her everywhere, paid her all possible attentions, and said everything but the one thing she had determined to hear. With an instinctive coquette, the desire is not so much to overcome her quarry, as to feel that there is no quarry she cannot overcome. But even from the seductive moonlit decks of the steamship Dodge had escaped, uncommitted. The situation was both piquant and exciting.

"Well, Dodge," said the ambassador, at length. "I am willing to take your suggestion. Is the carriage ready, Gwen?"

"It's been at your door for hours."

"I'll let you go, since you seem to feel so set on it. But be careful of what you say or do, and don't promise anything. Give little Snowflake my love, and tell her I miss her about the house."

Gwendolen, without a word of thanks, walked toward the door. "Now, Dodge, remember," warned her father, in a semi-whisper.

"If Mr. Dodge is being sent along as a sort of diplomatic nurse, or a keeper to an idiot, I won't have him," flashed the girl.

"Nonsense, child!" said her father. "You'd better run along in a hurry before I change my mind. I don't know but as I'm weak—"

Without waiting for more, the girl literally ran from the room. Clerks and visitors in the outside offices looked up in wonder. That dry sob in her throat had stirred again. Even her dad, on this horrid day, was cross.

Outside the sun had begun to shine brilliantly. The high winds, those scourges of the Tokio winter, were, for the time, at rest. The people in the streets appeared contented and happy enough, trudging along on wooden clogs, or trotting with noiseless, straw-sandalled feet between the shafts of vehicles. The small boys wore miniature flags in their caps.

When again she felt mistress of her voice, she said, with an attempt at her usual gay levity, "Now, Mr. Dodge, I intend to know what all that mysterious interchange of glances in the office was supposed to convey."

Dodge seemed to think. "I should fancy you'd know by instinct," he answered. "Japan and Russia are at war. America is neutral."

"Yes," challenged Gwendolen, "and the earth goes around the sun, and the moon around the earth. But what is that to Yuki and to me?"

"You are the daughter of the American minister, and Miss Yuki is under the protection of Prince HaganÈ. It's the bother of marriage. You must see that she can never marry Le Beau. The worst of it all is that Le Beau's such an ass!"

"I don't consider my friend, Mr. Le Beau, an—er—animal," said Gwendolen, all the more stiffly that her statement was not quite true.

"I beg your pardon," said her companion, meekly, and relapsed into careful silence.

Gwendolen fidgeted. This did not suit her mood at all. She wanted to quarrel. "Yuki and Pierre are frantically in love, poor things! But of course an incipient diplomat doesn't take into consideration anything so trivial as—love."

Dodge smiled into her petulant eyes, a sort of elder-brother smile that stung her. "If I am the incipient referred to, you have missed your mark."

"You pretend to be Pierre's friend, but you never did like him."

"When have I pretended?"

"You are jealous because he is so good-looking. All men are that way."

"Aren't girls sometimes that way too?" asked he, with elaborate innocence.

The shot told. She reddened angrily. "You are very disagreeable this morning, Mr. Dodge."

Again fell silence.

"Come," said the girl, changing her tactics swiftly. "It is I who am beastly, I know it. I'm going to try now to be good. Tell me honestly, as a friend, do you think that Pierre has absolutely no chance of marrying Yuki?"

Dodge studied the restless eyes for sincerity before he answered. "He has a chance. If she is willing to throw over her parents, her Emperor, and her native land, in order to run away to him,—they may find protection. But if I know Japanese character at all, Miss Yuki would die first—and she ought to. The one decent thing for Le Beau is to release her."

"But to run away, by night perhaps, in actual danger of her life—oh, how romantic!" sighed Gwendolen, clasping her hands. It was done to irritate, and it succeeded.

"Romantic? Damfoolic!" sniffed Dodge, before he could stop himself.

"Mr. Dodge!"

"By George, it slipped out! I beg your pardon, Miss Todd, I should not have said it."

"For what do you ask pardon—the expression, or the thought?"

"The expression, of course. I was a mucker to use it in your presence."

"Am I to understand that the thought underlying your remarkable utterance is unchanged?"

"Why, er—that such a step would be foolish, and—er—unworthy?" stammered the wretched youth, now as greatly disconcerted as even Gwendolen could wish; "why, of course I still think it. I have to think it!"

"I approved of it openly. I demand retraction of the thought also."

Gwendolen's chance had come. Here was a bone,—a flimsy cartilage, it is true, but still a thing to pick her quarrel over. In the making-up she might find compensation for other recent chagrins. Gwendolen liked to make up. The magnanimous yielding, the condescension on her part, added to the humble gratitude of the recipient, brought a sense of pleasant power.

"You demand retraction of the thought," repeated Dodge. He faced her slowly. She was deliberately studying the two American flags embroidered between the blue cotton shoulders of the carriage-driver, high on the box. The delicate profile, uplifted in sunlight, had a translucency in the outline like the petal of a rose. Dodge gazed with hungry heart, but deepening frown. "You didn't mean that." He said it soothingly. "You couldn't insist on anything so utterly childish as the retraction of a personal thought. I've apologized for the words."

"Do you refuse, then?" said Gwendolen, with a toss of the head she had seen Julia Marlowe give.

"You really mean such a thing?"

"I mean it."

"Then—I refuse."

The girl turned. This time it was Dodge's somewhat ragged profile held against the sky. "You dare to refuse me?" she gasped. Her hazel eyes grew inky; they seemed to shoot off sparkles of jet.

"I am at your service for everything else," he said steadily.

No other word was spoken until they reached the foot of Kobinata Hill, where the betto, springing lightly to earth, preceded the galloping horses up the slope.

"You know," said Dodge, slowly, "this may mean to me giving up every hope of happiness. And it's such a nasty little cause,—like having one's eye put out by a spitball."

"Yet you prefer it to retracting one rude, silly thought!"

"For God's sake!" cried the badgered youth, "how can a man retract what he still thinks? Do you want me to lie, and say I don't think a thing when I do think it."

"Yes," said Gwendolen, with a strange glint in her face. "Lie! Say that you do not think it. I shall be satisfied with that."

"I'll be damned if I do!" said Dodge. "I'll lie to please myself, but I won't lie at the bidding of another,—not even you! Shall I stop the carriage and get out?"

Gwendolen, with a little choking sound in her throat, turned away. Her gesture seemed an assent. Miserably the young man realized that he was bound by Mr. Todd to remain with her, and overhear the conversation that might ensue. In a moment more he helped her from the carriage in silence, allowing her to precede him to the Onda gate, and up the garden stones to the door.

Old SuzumÈ answered the knock. She parted the entrance shoji very craftily, one bent eye to the crack. Her left cheek could not have been two inches from the floor. This gave an uncanny look, as if a severed head, or one of those long gourd-necked ghosts of Japanese mountains, had appeared to receive them.

Gwendolen said, "Oh!" and retreated. Dodge stepped forward boldly, and put one gloved hand into the crack. The old dame shivered at this, and seemed to cower for a spring. A swift, soft rush of feet came through the house, and Yuki, flinging both doors wide, sent a crooked smile toward them.

"Come quickly," she panted; "I pray you wait not to remove the shoes. My father is absent. I have prayed for Gwendolen; there is great thing to be said."

Dodge shut his teeth together. He was to be needed. Without a look for him, Gwendolen, obeying Yuki's injunction as to shoes, sprang up the one stone doorstep and followed Yuki along a dim corridor. Dodge, more deliberately, motioned SuzumÈ to remove his shoes, standing first on one foot, then on the other, and balancing himself by the aid of a shoji frame. The untying of shoestrings was a difficult task for excited old fingers. Her beady eyes darted incessantly back into the house.

"No harm can be done. I am from the American Legation, and was sent to accompany Miss Todd," said he, in Japanese, pitying the old dame's nervousness.

"Hai! hai! Sayo de gozaimasuka?" mumbled she, greatly relieved. She loved and was proud of Yuki; she adored her mistress; but there was a single voice in that house, and it belonged to Tetsujo.

Dodge went alone into the house, guiding himself by the voices. They had reached the guest-room. All fusuma and shoji had been closed. Without knocking Dodge pushed aside a silver panel painted with birds. At the same moment Iriya entered by the opposite wall of the room, a mere white ghost of propriety.

Yuki, almost in Gwendolen's arms, was pouring out rapid, disjointed, incorrect phrases of English,—sometimes with a whole sentence in her own tongue,—so that the listener could catch the meaning only in fragments.

Dodge, after a bow to Mrs. Onda, walked straight to Yuki, took a seat near her, and by his quiet eyes compelled her attention. He began to speak in slow, deliberate Japanese that the mother also might understand. Whether interpreting through his careful pronouncing or divining from his emphasis, Gwendolen, too, seemed to follow him.

"In allowing Miss Todd to call this morning, Miss Onda, her father, Minister Todd, has commissioned me to say to you—"

"Don't you believe him!" cried Gwendolen, flinging herself bodily before Yuki. She turned flashing eyes upon the speaker. "The poor child has enough to bear already, without your giving more!"

"I must deliver your father's message, Miss Todd. And I shall do so, though I have to wait until Miss Onda's father comes."

At sound of that dreaded name Gwendolen's courage for the moment fell. Dodge quietly resumed, in Japanese, "While Mr. and Mrs. Todd have only the most affectionate feelings toward Miss Onda, they beg to recall the very delicate international questions raised by the present war. America being neutral—er—Miss Todd's official position—"

"Miss Todd's official fiddlestrings," interrupted Gwendolen. "There, Yuki! He's through! That's all he had to say! Now can't we go into your bedroom, or out to the garden, and finish our conversation in peace?"

"Gwendolen, dear,—no!" said Yuki, pressing her hand. "It is most terribly serious time with all. I am glad to have Mr. Dodge here; he will not prevent any help,—he will give it. I must now relate, Mr. Dodge," she went on, very brave and self-possessed, "the new, strange circumstance—" Suddenly she flushed the color of a peony, dropped her face in her hands, and murmured to Gwendolen, "Yes, you must say it, Gwendolen. It is such immodest things for Japanese girl to speak! You tell him."

"I'm not sure that I understand very clearly myself," said Gwendolen, with a puzzled frown.

Iriya stared on, white, motionless, unsmiling.

"As far as I can make the trouble out," said Gwendolen, flinging her words to Dodge, rather than speaking them, "Prince HaganÈ backs Yuki's father, utterly, against Pierre. They won't consider the possibility of her ever marrying him. Worst of all, while her heart is sore with this, they are trying to force her into marriage with some rich old man,—some influential relative, I believe, of HaganÈ. Isn't he a relative, Yuki?"

"No-o! He is not the relative," said Yuki, from behind sheltering hands. "It is himself—he—the Prince HaganÈ!"

"Prince HaganÈ! Prince SanÈtomo HaganÈ?" cried Dodge, in incredulous surprise. "Good Lord! Why, he's the biggest man in this kingdom, next to the Emperor and the Crown Prince! Has—has he made your father a formal offer of marriage for you, Miss Yuki?"

Yuki nodded "Yes."

"The old sport! So this has been his game," muttered Gwendolen to herself.

At the full name of HaganÈ, a wintry smile of pride had flashed into Iriya's set face.

"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Dodge, again. He could not get this wonder fixed. "I see now why your family is wound up like a spring, Miss Yuki. It's a superlative opportunity for you!"

Gwendolen sat so still that first Yuki, then Dodge, stared at her.

"What is it you think I can do with Pierre for you, Yuki?" asked the American girl, in a voice as strange as her silence.

Yuki was slightly disconcerted. "Only, dear, that I want to be sure the truth is known to Mr. Le Beau. I would have more peace to feel that he knows correctly. And he then will understand why I cannot write to him, or see him, or answer when he sings the song of Carmen I told you."

"You intend then to hold to Pierre, and throw over Prince HaganÈ, no matter what the consequences?" asked Gwendolen, curiously.

"I know not about 'throw over.' It sounds a disrespectful word to so great a man. But I am bound to Pierre, as you know, by the promise." Again her face flushed.

"I'll wager your father does not consider that promise binding," put in Dodge.

"No, not my father, and not Prince HaganÈ," said Yuki, simply. "But then, you know, they is not me!"

"I—er—presume not," answered he, absently.

Now that the conversation was all in English, the pale effigy of Iriya did not even turn its eyes from one face to the other. It was her duty to her husband to be present, and so she remained.

"Miss Yuki!" flashed out the young man, with new animation. "You haven't asked my advice, and you may not desire it. But let me say one thing. It seems awful to me,—even though I am an American, and can't know all the fine points of Japanese feeling,—to throw over a chance like this for a Frenchman! Is he worth it—?"

"How would it seem if you were in the place of Pierre Le Beau?" cried Gwendolen, angrily, before Yuki could speak.

The Japanese girl evidently was glad of the question. "Yes, yes!" she repeated. "How would you be?" She hung on his answer.

The young man's eyes were cool, his voice crisp and convincing, as he said slowly, "In the first place, I could not imagine myself having forced any binding promise from a girl so far from her home and friends. I might have let her see I loved her,—a fellow can't always help that; but I wouldn't have tied her up in her own words until she had the backing of her own people."

Gwendolen was all ready with a scornful word, but Yuki's small ice-cold hand upon her wrist restrained her. Yuki was leaning toward the young man, an eager gleam in her eyes. "Mr. Dodge, what was it that you meant by the su-per-lative opportunity—?"

"I seem to be turned into a sort of Information Bureau on other people's morals to-day," smiled Dodge. "But this is an easy one. I meant just what a Japanese would mean,—a rousing good chance for patriotism. Isn't that what you thought?"

Yuki's face fell, and her lips trembled. "Yes," she whispered like a child. "That is Japanese thought."

"How lofty and superior! A Confucius come to judgment!" cried Gwendolen to Dodge. His calmness, his power of thought, so soon after their fatal quarrel, irritated her. It almost seemed to make light of her influence. Since she could not command, she wished at least to sting him.

"And, Yuki, now I have advice to give. If I loved Pierre as you do,—if I loved any man so that the thought of another turned me sick,—I'd be faithful to him until those old moat pines turned somersaults and came up again as grass! I'd marry him, though Jimmu Tenno, with a new sword and mirror, came down to prevent! You say that Pierre goes by here whistling. What's to hinder you from going to him? The women here would not prevent. Some time like this, when your father is absent,—mind, I don't advise the doing it,—only, I say, if you were tortured and driven to despair—"

Yuki stopped her by a gesture. "Even that terrible thought has been thinked by me. But even if I wished it,—go to those garden shoji, Gwendolen. Open with some noisiness, and see what occurs."

Gwendolen obeyed with vehemence, placing one still booted foot defiantly upon the veranda. Instantly, as if by magic, the two blue-clad gardeners crouched, in threatening attitudes, on the gravelled path below. At sight of the tall blonde girl the men literally froze into grizzled gargoyles. Gwendolen drew back with a cry, then instantly realized the situation.

"Vile spies!" she exclaimed. "Hired assassins! If there were a man here, he would drown you in that pond! Go away! Shoo!" she shrieked at the astonished natives. Without a word, they exchanged slow, wondering glances, nodded, and withdrew.

Gwendolen slammed the shoji together again. "No wonder you are pale, Yuki," she said, her voice trembling with excitement and indignation; "I never dreamed anybody would dare a thing like this!"

"But how intensely romantic!" remarked Dodge, in a low voice, to the ceiling.

Yuki did not try to answer. Her head drooped lower, lower, with each instant. Tears were coming in uncontrollable throbs to eyes that had, through deeper troubles, remained dry. This humiliation before friends of another world touched some secret personal spring of pride. She lifted first one gray sleeve, then the other, apologizing in low, broken sentences for the vulgarity of thus displaying grief. Gwendolen threw herself to the floor beside her friend, her own bright eyes becoming springs of sorrow. Dodge rose, standing helplessly near, and wishing himself somewhere else.

Upon this lachrymosal tableau entered Tetsujo Onda, and stood for a moment incredulous, in the parted fusuma, like some image of Ojin Tenno, the God of War, a scowl carved deep in his brow. Gwendolen first caught sight of him. Rising to her knees, she tried by looks to wither him away. She might as well have blown seed-arrows from an iron dandelion. Dodge, the diplomat, rushed gallantly to the fore.

"Good-morning, Mr. Onda," he began, bowing spasmodically. "Fine morning, isn't it? We were just making a little call in the neighborhood, and ran in to see your wife and daughter,—foreign custom, you know!—and the young ladies have to talk and weep sometimes over their happy, vanished school days!"

"Ugh!" grunted the unwilling host, scantily returning one of the many bows.

"Just so—just so," said Dodge, with increasing cordiality. "And now we must bid you good day. Miss Todd and I were just on the point of starting. This is the daughter—the only child, you know—of the new American minister to Japan."

"I know of her, and you, and the Frenchman, and much else," said Onda, with a disconcerting warp of the lips meant for a smile.

"Go! If you love me, make quick goings," whispered Yuki, with her arms around Gwendolen's neck.

"With nothing settled—no appointment for you and—"

"It is hopeless," put in Yuki, instantly. "Mention no name! They will guard me now much closer. Oh, it's my father's doing, not HaganÈ; he is noble!"

"Then I will see—the other, and tell him clearly. How shall I let you know?"

"A telegram. No one will keep that from me. Send it in English,—in hard words, you understand! And, oh, Gwendolen, send it to-morrow before twilight. Pray for me!"

Ignoring Tetsujo's increasing rage, Yuki followed her friend to the very door, pausing for a last embrace. "You are my good friend—my golden friend! Nothing between our hearts can ever come. Ne?"

"Never! Never! Ne?" answered Gwendolen, trying to smile.

Yuki turned, and went back as a prisoner to an inky cell.

Out on the street, at the carriage-step, two pleasing Americans paused, and eyed each other much with the expression of a pair of young game-cocks.

"Well!" said the tan-colored fowl, superbly, "why do you hesitate? Is it to beg paw-don of some one?"

"I beg paw-don?" echoed the other, in mild surprise. "No, certainly not! How could you fawncy such a thing? Do you?"

Gwendolen, with a muffled exclamation, sprang unaided into the carriage. "Go on! Hurry up! American Legation—Koshikwan, I mean! This beastly lingo—" she cried to the driver, and so far forgot herself as to prod him in the American flags.

The startled servant looked down and over her, to Dodge, for confirmation.

"It's all right, betto!" said Dodge, airily, in Japanese. "I prefer walking back. Take the august young lady home by a long, long road! She has become honorably overheated!"

Gwendolen gave the speaker one helpless glare, threw herself back in the seat, and was gone.

Dodge stood in the middle of the road, looking after the carriage until bamboo hedges closed in upon it, and the noises of its rattling wheels faded into the myriad sounds of the city below him.