Returning home from the princely banquet side by side in the double jinrikisha, not a word had been spoken between Tetsujo Onda and his child. The master went at once into his little study, banging shoji and fusuma close around him.

Yuki, forcing back her sad thoughts, related to her mother and the eager servants an account of the many beautiful dishes at the feast. For their amusement she even told a few of the queer foreign mistakes. Some of these were received by Maru San in gasping horror.

"Ma-a-a-a!" she cried once. "A foreign lady, rich and educated, leave—one—chopstick—standing on its head in a bowl of rice! Ma-a! But how can I believe that? Miss Yuki must be joking."

"Just think what foolish things you would do at a foreign banquet, with their awkward knives, forks, and spoons," said Yuki, smiling.

Maru shook her head. This revolution of the poles of etiquette was too much for her brain.

Each article of Yuki's attire, beginning with the heavy satin obi (sash), was carefully folded, pressed smooth by the hands, and put away lovingly in a lacquered clothes-chest. Sometimes Iriya performed this service, sometimes SuzumÈ. Yuki and Maru were both considered too inexperienced for such careful manipulation.

That night it was the old warrior's turn to remain awake, staring at the ceiling, spelling out the future by the andon's dim light, and planning ways to rescue his daughter from her mad attachment without inflicting unnecessary pain. For Yuki was indeed the pride of his heart. It was a humiliation as well as a sorrow that she should be willing to repudiate her nationality.

With his slow wits and somewhat rigid cast of mind he had not caught the full importance of the evening just passed, or the significance of the test in which the Red God had played so large a part. Yet in his daimyo's eye, as it rested on Yuki, he had seen something that stirred the blood in the old samurai's veins. Surely not even the ladies of the golden Fujiwara age had been more beautiful than Yuki-ko. Then, HaganÈ was not indifferent to beauty in women. Could it be possible— But no! Tetsujo dared not let this fancy spread. His skull would split with it. Groaning, he turned on his wooden pillow and tried to sleep—but in vain.

Meanwhile his daughter, not twenty feet away, behind her silver fusuma, lay in dreamless quiet. The certainty of HaganÈ's implication, and the tremendous opposition it involved, steadied and concentrated her. She knew what she had before her and deliberately willed the sleep that should bring strength.

In the early dawn, within the sound of her father's restless tossing, she crouched against a shoji, and in the faint pink glow wrote an English letter. Every motion showed care. The rustling of the long sheets of Japanese paper would have betrayed her, so she wrote in pencil on a little pad that bore the name of a stationer in Washington. From time to time she consulted an open letter in a man's writing, a wild, illogical, despairing letter,—the one that Gwendolen had brought some days before.

"How will your thoughts be this gray morning, my dear?" she wrote to him. "Last night you were as one stung by happy madness. You would not see nor hear my warnings. Now you will be realizing why I wished to make warnings. Lord HaganÈ is with my father against us. They wish me not to marry with a foreigner. That terrible painting was a test, and I have betrayed us by my woman's soft heart. Now they are sure that the one I love is in Tokio they will take stronger care against me. Dear Pierre, I do not think there is any hope! We can wait,—or we can die!—just now I believe nothing else is possible. O Pierre! If my weakness offend you, and if already it seem to you far beyond any help,—if you, being the impatience, have not heart to so long wait,—let me go! Forget poor Yuki! Indeed, I should not have promised at all. I belong to my country, as in previous time I said. I must not make sad your bright life. Rather would I be forgotten than bring you to grief. Your Yuki-ko."

This letter she addressed to Pierre at the French Legation, stamped, sealed it, and slipped it into the long, hanging sleeve of her kimono, intending, at the first opportunity, to get it into the hands of a postman. After this she arranged her hair and obi quickly and went out into the kitchen where already she heard old SuzumÈ and Maru San at work. Hardly had she entered when the front gate opened and the newspaper-boy ran in, his small copper bell clamoring on his hip. His bovine face was crimson with suppressed joy. Beside the usual morning sheet he held out a printed extra, shaking it toward her.

"Look at this! Honorably read these headlines, o jo san! Banzai Nippon!" he cried.

Yuki reached forward for the hand-bill. "It is war! War! Togo has fired!" she read, in a low, tense voice. "War with that great brutal nation, and we have fired! O Nippon! O my Emperor! The ancient gods be with you!"

"Three ships already sunk! Three!" screamed the boy, wildly, and tossed up his foreign jockey-cap.

"Kwannon preserve us! What has happened—an earthquake?" cried old SuzumÈ, hastening from the well-curb, and wiping red hands on her apron as she came.

"War! War, nurse! Our country is at war this minute, and three Russian battle-ships are already sunk!"

"We'll teach the bears that we are not to be trampled—Banzai Nippon!" boasted the paper-boy, as he hurried back to the street.

Iriya, not quite dressed, thrust her head from the parted fusuma.

"War, Mistress! War, Master! The honorable Mr. Togo has sunk all the Russian battle-ships and beheaded all the generals with his own hand!" shrieked SuzumÈ. Maru began to cry.

"War!" faltered Iriya, and shrank back into the dim room.

"Banzai! May our Emperor live a thousand years!" roared Tetsujo. Those outside could hear him hurtling about the narrow room. "Tell them to hang the flags above the gate, woman! Quick! Every moment wasted is a sacrilege! Gods of my Ancestors, at last we fight! Would that I were with Togo!"

Iriya, after giving orders for the flags, threw herself before the family shrine, where lights burned always in small, steady, pointed flames. "Ancestral spirits of our home, old deities of this land, give strength to our soldiers and sailors!" she whispered.

Tetsujo brushed past her, fully equipped for walking. His old face twitched with eagerness.

"Do you not wait for your worthless breakfast, honorable master?" ventured SuzumÈ.

Onda gave a loud laugh and tossed the old dame a handful of coin.

"Breakfast! I'm eating and drinking food of the gods! Here! Take this money, and all of you women go to your temple and make offering! I seek the public places where men assemble." Suddenly he halted. HaganÈ's last words came to his ears. His face turned black, and he slowly walked into the house with bent head. "I had forgotten—I cannot go. Serve the breakfast as usual," he muttered in the voice of an old man. Stumbling into the main room he said under his breath, "Hachiman Sama, help me to endure! On a day like this—I, Onda Tetsujo—I a warrior of HaganÈ's clan—I must be held here like a tame cock in a bamboo basket! Had I not seen the look in his Highness's eye—I might hurl all aside and take the risk—"

Soft footsteps had been following him. He wheeled, to face Yuki. Her eyes were gleaming and steady, though her face had crimsoned with shame. "Father," she began proudly, "I know the reason of your return. All your heart burns to be with other men, and to hear full news of this mighty event. Go, I entreat you! There is no fear of what—you and Prince HaganÈ think."

The old warrior himself now showed embarrassment. He would not meet her gaze, but let his eyes move restlessly about the floor as he answered: "Yes, my old heart strains like a bowstring to be gone—and I do not dare! You defied me once,—my blood grows hot at the thought of it."

"Still, I am your daughter," said Yuki. "And I think you will believe me when I offer you my pledge that, from this moment till your return, even though it be a week hence, I shall not leave this house and garden, shall not admit a foreign guest to it nor listen to foreign speech."

"I believe you," said Tetsujo, with great relief in his face. "You will neither go nor admit a foreign guest—nor write and receive letters?"

Yuki caught up her sleeve. Onda's face darkened. Deliberately drawing forth the letter she offered it to her father, saying, "Here is one I have already written and shall send. Will you not trust me even further and be the one by whose hand it goes?"

"Me post it? Me put it in a box?" he asked in amazement.

"The meaning it bears is not against your desire, father. Rather may it destroy an evil that already lives. I ask you to take it."

"To bargain thus with a mere girl—" the samurai muttered. Then he threw his head back. "My blood is in your veins. I trust you. Give it."

Yuki, choking back a little sob, fell at his feet and touched her forehead to the floor. She heard his quick and heavy tread shiver through the house. Then followed, coming in her direction, the gentler steps of Iriya.

Yuki lifted her arms. "Mother, mother!" she cried passionately, "why could I not have been born a man? To die for one's country, in battle, with the thought of the Emperor like a cooling draught at the lips! To stand on the great black ship, smiling in storm and snow and fog, driven in like fate itself to glorious chances! Oh, that is to live! But to be a woman—"

"Yes," said Iriya, quietly seating herself. "The fortunate are those who know, in this incarnation, full expression of a burning heart."

"Do you feel so too, mother?—you, who are always so tranquil and so dear?"

"I too am a samurai's daughter. In the strife of Restoration days I saw my father and my brother die—I saw my mother live."

"Oh, dearest one, how selfish we young souls are. We are like green fruit that has no mellowness. You have suffered so deeply—and I never guessed."

Iriya, with half-closed eyes on the garden, uttered words which until the hour of her death never quite loosed their echoes from the girl's heart. "Young souls are indeed unripe in the ways of love. That suffering of mine was mere indifference to the grief I shall know if, at an hour like this, with Nippon in the throes of re-birth, my only child should become the wife of her enemy."

Yuki cowered back. She could not look her mother in the face. Up to this moment she had never dreamed that Iriya had been told anything. The sense of comradeship and of interdependence between a Japanese husband and wife is very strong; but in this case, where Tetsujo's angry violence had been so out of keeping with the whole tenor of his life, Yuki was perhaps justified in feeling that he would prefer to maintain a sullen reticence.

Iriya's words, and the way she spoke them, showed not only that she was conversant with the whole threatening situation, but that she had thought and prayed deeply. It did not seem at all the every-day domestic Iriya that spoke, but an older and more impersonal spirit, issuing from borrowed human, lips.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Iriya sat rigid and upright, as a silver image in a Buddhist niche. Little Yuki, feeling very small and young and human, crept noiselessly to her own room.

Tetsujo did not return until the following day. He showed evidences of strong excitement, and could not for a while be seated, but strode up and down the matted floor of the house, throwing off ejaculations and phrases of war-news. He had much to tell in his irritating, disjointed way. But Japanese women do not show impatience. They knelt out of range of his feet, but within good hearing, following his motions with feverish eagerness, and snatching at his words as at whizzing fireflies. Names of those killed, quotations from foreign newspapers, reports from the Tokio war-office, maledictions upon himself that he was too old to go,—all came in a scurrying swarm from the samurai's lips.

"Refused me—they refused me,—those grinning, foreignized apes at the war-office. Even my daimyo will not help me. An age limit? Gods! Trained men must twirl their thumbs while boys with soft hearts and flabby muscles defend the Emperor! Would that I had ten thousand lives to give, and that each life in passing held the agonies of ten thousand deaths. Even that would be but a handful of blown petals to the whirling majesty of Nippon in the breath of the Eternal.—But wait! There are many young men now, there are hills of powder and river-beds of shot; but when that powder melts like snow in a spring rain, when the last shot stings the air, then may the sword-arm leap to usefulness. The Cossacks cut and slay like demons,—why not we? For whom then will be the cry but for old Onda? Onda Tetsujo! who has cut three bodies through with one slow, steady stroke; who has bared a living bone so swiftly that the slain creature turned inquisitive eyes on death! Bah, I babble and rave like a Meiji actor."

"Yet, Lord, it may come,—it may come," whispered Iriya, aloud. "Daily I shall pray and sacrifice that this desire of our hearts be granted." Yuki looked upon these heroic beings that had given her life, and knew the pangs of self loathing. What was she, their only child, now doing for the land they loved? Planning ways of remaining faithful to a foreign lover! She drooped her head still lower. Alas! Had Pierre not taken that promise from her unguarded soul! If Pierre even now would give her up—would understand.

Tetsujo, still fuming in a noble rage, cut the floor in cross-lines of hasty striding. He turned at intervals, catching back his flight, raising himself up to silence as if he heard a bugle-note, staring, unseeing, into the garden, then clenching his fists, muttering new imprecations, and throwing himself again into his restless walk. The essence of Yamato Damashii breathed from him. One listened for the clank of steel and shark's-skin armor. His right hand felt incessantly for the vanished sword-hilts. All at once he stopped directly before Yuki, transfixed her with fierce, tormented eyes and cried, "Onda Yuki, you are a samurai's daughter."

Yuki met his look. "I am a samurai's daughter."

"See that you forget it not."

For an instant longer he glared into her upraised face, then flinging himself away he muttered, "Oh, that I had a son to offer,—one son only to serve my land! They would not let me go." He seated himself at last; folded his arms within the short, blue, cotton sleeves; and sank into a brooding revery.

With a few days the first frenzy and tumult of the war were over. The nation settled into a state of watchful and sober patriotism. Men turned to practical work, raising money for the war fund, for all knew that it was indeed a struggle for life or death.

Yuki had received by mail another letter. Tetsujo was present when it came. She read and re-read it slowly, under his very eyes, and then tore it into scraps, letting them fall in small white flecks upon the red coals of the hibachi. Onda stared at her, fascinated, but found nothing to say.

The note was in Pierre's most appealing vein. He urged her, for the sake of both, to be a heroine. He forgave her, a thousand times over, her hint of betrayal of the night before. Again he congratulated himself and her on his foresight in compelling the stricter pledge. "You must see now, my poor, sorrowful darling, that it is the only thing to hold us back from despair." Yuki's heart sagged within her. She attempted no reply. She wondered dully how so flaming a love failed to illuminate reason. Pierre simply could not understand. Well, she must be calm and clear enough for both. Her deepest fear, but half admitted, was that Tetsujo, with Prince HaganÈ behind, would now attempt to end the matter by marrying her to some young noble of their acquaintance. She hardly dared face the thought of what her home life might become after her repudiation of such an offer.

Gwendolen remained apart, and Yuki rightly guessed that it was at Minister Todd's instigation. She never for a moment doubted Gwendolen's loyal affection. This restraint was a proof of it, as also of Mr. Todd's clear judgment.

Pierre began now, in his restless misery, to haunt the streets immediately surrounding Yuki's home. Apparently he wished to establish, as a signal, a certain little quaint air from Carmen that he loved. He would whistle a phrase and pause, evidently expecting her to continue with the answering melody. At twilight, one day nearly a week after "the banquet of the Red God" (as she always thought of it), she was standing alone beside her plum-tree, now almost bare of flowers. The sky stretched low and heavy, as a giant tent hung with unspilled rain. No sunlight had come with the day. The wind pinched and stung with dampness. As she stared mournfully upon the falling petals, holding out a languid hand to stay their flight, a few large flakes of snow came down.

she quoted aloud from a classic.

Her parents had been talking together in the main corner-room, where now a servant brought lights. On the closed paper shoji, just beside her, the silhouettes of two beloved forms sprang into sudden vivid blackness. Tetsujo's stern, Indian-like profile was turned, while Iriya showed only the outlines of her coiffure, with the droop of slender shoulders and the flower-like poise of a delicate throat. His attitude,—all dignity, self-assertion, manliness; and hers, concessive, yielding, and full of feminine grace,—symbolized to the girl the true relations, in Japan, of man and wife. "And is it not better?" she thought to herself. "Are the aggressive American women happier or more beloved?" She thought of the domestic scandals, the unhappy marriages openly discussed at Mrs. Todd's table. Here, at least, though such sad things did sometimes occur, they seldom became topics of general conversation.

The bell of the front gate rang out through the gray air. Yuki, with a sudden leap of the heart she could not account for, threw an arm about the tree and clung to it, listening breathlessly. Through the paper-walled house came clearly the sounds of old SuzumÈ as she opened the door. "Hai! Hai! Sayo de gozaimasu. Hai, danna!" (Yes, yes. It is augustly so! Yes, master.) Even the sharp indrawn breath was audible. Surely it was a visitor of importance,—and not a foreigner. In an instant a third silhouette was added to the two in the room. This bore a small parcel in its hands, and bowed very deeply before Tetsujo.

"A messenger direct from the august Prince HaganÈ!" said SuzumÈ's proud voice.

Yuki saw the shadow of her father snatch the package and toss aside the cloth furoshiki in which it was wrapped. She saw the shadow open a letter, start, bend his head nearer. She saw strong shadow-hands tremble, and heard a voice, which strove in vain for steadiness, give the orders: "Fold the furoshiki carefully, and return it done up in clean paper. Give to the messenger my respects. There is no immediate reply. Offer him fresh tobacco, tea, and cakes—the best we have."

"Hai! Hai! Kashikomarimasu" (Yes, yes! I hear and respectfully obey), murmured SuzumÈ's voice. Her shadow bobbed once, twice, to the matting, and vanished.

Yuki gripped the tree hard. A messenger from Prince HaganÈ! and that deep, triumphant note in her father's voice! What could it mean?

The shadow of Iriya was now reading the note. A cry came. "O my husband! It is too wonderful—too splendid. It will solve all difficulties. I must not believe—"

On the cowering girl white snowflakes, her namesakes, fell now quickly, dotting her dark hair. One, falling on a cheek as white, melted slowly, and pretended that it was a tear.

"Call the girl!" said Tetsujo. Iriya rose in haste. Yuki sped back along the narrow veranda to her own room. "And summon the two serving-women also!" came Tetsujo's voice, on a higher note.

Yuki entered with what calmness she could. The two servants already squatted like bright-eyed toads in the doorway.

"Here, girl! Read this letter from his Highness, Prince HaganÈ," said Onda. "Bow, as you receive it into your unworthy hands."

The girl bowed obediently. She read the letter through without a flicker of change on her downcast face. Folding it with scrupulous care she returned it, again bowing, to her wondering father.

"Well," he cried, "are your wits gone? What have you to say?"

"His Highness does our house too much honor," answered Yuki, quietly.

Iriya, watching breathlessly, saw what the puzzled Onda did not see, that, in spite of superb self-control, a slow, sick pallor was stealing into the girl's face. Behind Iriya the two servants, drawn closer as by a magnet, vibrated to suppressed excitement.

Onda caught the look of their faces. "SuzumÈ!" he said, "your young mistress has just been asked in marriage by his Augustness, Prince HaganÈ, daimyo of our clan."

"Ma-a-a!" breathed the women in unison, and fell forward on their faces.

"You see what they think of it," said Tetsujo, with a half-contemptuous wave of his hand.

"Oh, my daughter," cried Iriya, "it is an honor so great that I cannot yet meet the thought of it. You will be like a Princess of the Blood. Our sacred Empress will meet you face to face as a friend."

Tetsujo broke in. "You can serve your country, girl! That's the best of it. The opportunity is incredible. It does not need argument. Well, Yuki! Will you write your humble and grateful acceptance in person, or shall I convey it for you?"

"I have not accepted yet."

Tetsujo bounded in his place. Iriya caught her breath, and stretched forth two pleading hands, one to each.

"Do not anger me, girl!" muttered the father, with visible effort to contain himself. "I am in no mood for violence."

"Nor I, father, being already spent with much contention," answered Yuki, wearily. "Indeed, I should attempt no speech at all, but that I see his Highness shields me by commands against rough argument, and the condition that I be given full time to decide."

"Bah," cried Tetsujo. "Even a god must have some small weaknesses. Pity to women has always been his.—Well, when shall your answer go—to-night, in the morning, on the first rays of the sun? Speak! for my choler trains me hard!"

But Yuki did not hasten to reply. Behind her rigid calm a thousand frightened fancies sped. No thought could be followed to a conclusion in this first whirl of atoms. They went by her in a soundless hurricane,—torn bits of hope, filaments of fear, thin flakes of readjustment. She saw that time must be gained—time, and the opportunity to think. An unqualified refusal would bring upon her immediately consequences and new conditions which she was neither physically nor mentally able to combat. She must achieve an armistice.

After an interval that seemed long to her but interminable to the quivering Onda, she raised her face, saying quietly: "After a space of three days, at the hour of twilight, I will myself deliver an answer to Prince HaganÈ. Will you kindly convey this message?"

"She will answer in three days! Lord of Hell! she will condescend to answer my daimyo in three days! This bit of spoken offal—must I present to a deity who burdens himself with you—that your family may be honored, and your cheap foreign attainments used! His magnanimity is inconceivable. To a lesser man it would seem impossible. To marry you openly,—make you a princess,—you, a shivering wench he could have for the taking!"

"He could not have me for the taking, and you know it!" said Yuki's low voice, that held an undercurrent of his own. "You shame yourself and me by such raving. If you insult me further I will refuse at once."

"Come, Yuki! Come quickly!" whispered the terrified Iriya, dragging at her daughter's sleeve. "Your honored father will strangle in his rage. Never, never, in all our married life have I seen his eyes glare thus! Hasten!"

"Yes—hasten—drag her away!" gasped Tetsujo, throwing back his head and clutching his collar. "She is not my daughter! Would that my bones had crumbled—" His words broke off in a gurgle.

In her little room Yuki stood gazing down moodily upon the convulsed form of her mother. "I know I ought to feel more pain to see you weep so bitterly, my mother," she said at length. "I tell myself that I should feel, but I cannot feel. Somehow I seem to be wearing armor inside instead of outside. Think of it, mother, what it means to me! I love a man who loves me honorably. I do not ask a sudden marriage,—I would wait patiently until the war is over, and perhaps your heart and father's would be softened toward my hope. I will work for you,—I will go out and be a servant, a teacher,—anything to relieve you of my burden. All I ask is to remain uncompelled toward other marriage. Yet here my father, and an old man older than my father, are trapping me,—they condescend to trap me! Prince HaganÈ cannot possibly wish me for his wife. He has seen me but twice since I was a child. A man like HaganÈ does not know love in the sense I have been taught it. Oh, I am like a bird ensnared in chains—in chains so heavy—that I can scarcely stir a link! Being a samurai's daughter I cannot even die."

"Yuki! Would you indeed disgrace us by marrying—a Russian?"

"Not so long as it seems to you a disgrace. But that will not last forever, mother. This war is to change many things. Can I not belong to myself, just for the time of this war, mother? Will you not plead with father for this boon?"

"I dare not! I dare not!" shuddered Iriya. "I fear your father, for the first time in my life.—There! He is calling. I must go." She caught one of the girl's dangling hands and pressed it convulsively against a tear-wet cheek. "May Kwannon soothe your bewildered heart, my loved one!" she murmured, and was gone.

"I prefer you to have as little as possible to do with that hardened and ungrateful wretch!" came Tetsujo's voice, as Iriya entered to him. Yuki knew that it was raised purposely for her to hear. Iriya evidently attempted some conciliatory reply, for he burst out angrily, "Don't defend her, woman! It is disrespect to me. I tell you she shall consent, whether she wishes it or not!"

Yuki smiled the smile that leaves a taint upon the soul. "There are a few things that even a father—even a Japanese father—cannot do!" she said aloud.