Prince HaganÈ sat in the place of honor, his back to the tokonoma, where new flowers bloomed and incense perfumed the space. His robes, of the usual magnificent quality of silk, had to-night a deep bronze color. The candles, placed one on each side of him, threw down a yellow light, which took the wrinkles from his scarred face and some of the sadness from his mouth. To Tetsujo's feasting eyes he appeared as a god; not the meek, forgiving Buddha whom women and children adore, but some splendid old war-god of Shinto tradition, young with the immortality of youth, yet old as the world in wisdom.

The outer shoji stood well apart, letting in the chill, wet sweetness of the night. The storm had now quite died away. The air of the room was so still that the candle-flames stood like balanced flakes of topaz, and the white smoke of the burning incense hung like a silver cord from the gloom above.

The moment that Yuki entered, HaganÈ, with his trained vision, saw that some great spiritual change had taken place. The look of miserable defiance he feared was not there. Iriya had waited for her. The two women advanced to the great visitor, and bowed before him three times, then went back modestly to the far end of the room. SuzumÈ brought fresh tea, and two new balls of charcoal for the hibachi. As the servant left, Iriya asked of her husband, "Shall I also withdraw?"

"It is according to our lord's will," answered Tetsujo, his eyes turning to the prince.

"What would you prefer, Yuki-ko?" HaganÈ's voice was kind.

"I should prefer my mother to remain," answered Yuki, without hesitation.

"Madame Onda, I beg you to honor us with your presence," said HaganÈ, with a slight bow.

Onda Tetsujo frowned. If his loyal nature allowed him to make one criticism of his daimyo, it was of a certain lax, foreign politeness toward women. The fault seemed to increase with years. Whether Prince HaganÈ suspected this disapprobation or not, on this occasion at least he made no attempt to modify it.

"I have come in person, little Yuki-ko, to hear your thought. No, do not speak yet!" he interpolated, with a slight lifting of the right hand. "Wait until I give you questions to answer! At the beginning there must be quiet discussion between us four, with no haste or opposition on the part of—any." He looked, with these last words, directly at his old retainer.

"My Lord, my Lord!" fumed Tetsujo, "shall I be able to contain myself while you condescend to bandy words with a mere girl?"

"If I command it, I think you will contain yourself," said the prince, easily. Tetsujo rocked on the matting, gripped his arms tightly, and was silent.

"The gods seem to have decreed no happiness for me in marriage," said HaganÈ, impersonally, to all. "Perhaps they have only new mockery in store, if now, in my old age, I dare take to myself this fair flower. Yet am I tempted; by the good for her, as it seems to me; by my friendship for you, Onda Tetsujo; and by the need for an official mistress of my house. I can give her unusual opportunity to serve Nippon, as in my letter I wrote."

Iriya, in her corner, put her face to the floor. "My Lord, even that you have thought it, makes richer the traditions of our house—through ten succeeding generations."

"I would not have the child consent because of family honors, my good dame," said HaganÈ, a little sadly.

"Shall I speak now, Lord?" asked Yuki, in her sweet, steady voice. Tetsujo ground his teeth, but managed to keep silent.

"Would you speak of the young Frenchman, whose mother is a Russian?"

Yuki's eyes fell and her chin quivered. "Yes, your Highness."

"Speak!—fully!" said he, after a pause.

"He offered me marriage many times, your Highness, and I refused, saying that not without my parents' consent could I answer. Then, at one hour, being weak, I promised. In the foreign land, where you and my father sent me, such promises bind,—even as the oaths of men. I have been bound."

"Gods of my ancestors! Must I listen to this cat-mewing?" groaned Onda.

"Be quiet! The girl shall speak. Yes, Yuki," he continued, his eyes softening as they returned to her white face, "I felt that you had promised. And so, in my letter, if you will recall, I assured you that you were not bound."

"Your Highness!" ventured the girl, at length. "It was your noble thought, your decision, not my own. I am bound."

HaganÈ looked at her in mild wonder, with the faintest touch of a smile. "And not even your daimyo's word can free your childish promise? You have courage."

"The mad lynx! Let me deal with her!" panted Tetsujo.

"He, my father, so speaks and thinks of me!" broke in the girl, with passionate protest and a wide-flung gesture toward Onda. "In that country no shame is felt for such a promise. Yet my father treats me as an outcast, a blot upon the family name! I ask you, Lord, who are great and strong, to help me!"

"To what shall I help you, little one? To marriage with an alien?—repudiation of a country that I serve?"

"No, Lord; for of myself I could not marry him, now, with my dear land at war. When I first knew him, war had not become even a threat. Only against—misunderstanding—and, Lord,—being forced—!"

HaganÈ interrupted her with his slight gesture. "You will be forced to nothing!—not now, nor so long as my voice can use the speech of living men! Your decision is valueless unless it be your own. It may be even harmful; for the young branch, held down by force, slashes heaven in its rebound. Nay, child! I would have you bend slowly to my proffered opportunity, weighted by your own ripening desire for loyalty and service. To compel you would be impiety. Believe yourself protected by my word, and by my faith in you! Be calm and think seriously, for upon this hour depends more than you can fathom!"

His deep voice boomed into a silence long maintained. One of the tall candles sputtered and flared. Iriya rose quickly to mend it. Tetsujo's arms, within short blue cotton sleeves, were folded and pressed tightly down upon his chest, as if to keep back straining utterance. Through the stillness his quick breaths ran. The girl gazed out now, motionless, beyond HaganÈ into the wet blankness of the garden. Familiar outlines of rock and bridge and pine kept there, she knew, their changeless postures. Only a fallen darkness hid them. So in her heart must be immovable shapes and living growths of heroism and selfless devotion. An Occidental training superimposed upon a child's fresh fancy; a foreign love, jealously guarding for its own purpose the tissues of new thought,—these things hid the garden of her heart as night now hid her father's garden. HaganÈ's look and words were bringing dawn, a dawn perhaps of sorrow, a day dragged up from an heroic past, and trailing its own hung clouds of tears.

HaganÈ spoke again. His deep voice calmed and satisfied the unstable silence. He changed his position very slightly, facing Yuki more squarely. He raised his massive chin, and a smile played on a mouth that seemed made for stern sadness. Quite irrelevantly, he began to relate to his small audience an incident of his crowded day.

"Do you remember, Tetsujo,—Yuki also may recall from her childhood's impression,—that, as one stands on the jutting corner of my Tabata land, by the large leaning maple,—a corner so steep that it must be upheld by the hewn trunks of pines,—exactly at foot of the cliff stands a very small cottage, with roof patched by the rusted sides of old foreign kerosene cans?" He paused for an answer. Yuki's eyes would not leave the dark mystery of the night.

"I remember most clearly, your august Highness," murmured Onda, with a respectful inclination of his head toward the great man, but an indignant scowl in the direction of Yuki.

"An aged woman and her only child, a son, live in that house. He is a good son, for though hot with the desire for military service, he has kept steadily to his labor as under-gardener on my place. There seemed to be no one else with whom his mother could find a home. Of late the boy has looked ill. I have overheard the servants say that his soul was attempting to leave the chained body and go off, as it wished, to the battlefield. Such agony as this repression, I believe only our countrymen are capable of experiencing or of enduring."

Now, at last, Yuki turned and fixed her look on HaganÈ. He did not notice this any more than he had seemed to observe her previous indifference.

"The youth dutifully kept this longing from the old dame. But she questioned, and through her slow round of domestic services she pondered. Then she came to understand. Perhaps the young soldier-husband, dead for thirty years, had returned—to whisper. Whatever the cause, she came—to—understand." He paused an instant, as if to take a firmer hold upon his voice. "To-day,—scarcely an hour ago, Yuki,—the youth, returning from labor, found his mother—dead—before the family shrine. She had used her husband's short sword. It will be buried with her. The smile upon her old face had gained already the youth and glory of a god's. She left no message; the smile told him all.—To-morrow the son takes passage for Manchuria."

Yuki's dawn had come. It hurt her, like the birth of a soul. HaganÈ saw the same look which, for one fleet instant, he had evoked from her at Washington. His strong heart reeled toward the girl. Iriya was sobbing softly. Tetsujo sat square like a box. He envied the mother and the son. He saw no pathos in the tale, only victory. Those two would be together on the Yalu; while he, Tetsujo, famed warrior, skilled swordsman, must pine at home and listen to the pulings of weak women!

The glory grew on Yuki. Above the flowers of the tokonoma, above HaganÈ's head, hung a tattered battle-flag of their own clan. She recognized it now. Her hands trembled. She lifted them toward HaganÈ.

"Onda Yuki-ko!" he almost whispered, so deep and tense his voice became. "This year, this day, this very hour, may be the pivot of human history upon this planet! And is not the diamond-point on which that mighty turning rests, the Spirit of Japan?"

"Banzai Nippon! Dai Nippon! Banzai! Banzai!" shouted Tetsujo, and beat his fists on the matting.

HaganÈ, with a smile that seemed to deprecate yet condone his kerai's vehemence, went on directly to Yuki. "Strange that Western minds—the astute American politician, the journalist, even the cleverest of Europe's statesmen—hardly claim to look forward more than a few years,—five, ten, at best half a century! They want results they shall live to see—after them the deluge! As they have forgotten the very names of their grandfathers, so they ignore their descendants. But we of the East count time in other lengths. We do not bound our horizon with personal aim or the catchword of a day. We owe,—we owe ourselves,—all, to a future that we may not comprehend, but have no right, in our ignorance, to cramp. What we are fighting for at this moment will not be fully realized for two hundred years. Then it will be seen as a great landscape in a valley. Your foreigners are like children that play now in that valley. But every Japanese patriot stands lonely on a mountain,—very lonely, very lonely!"

"Is one alone in a shining company of spirits, Lord?" asked Yuki, a wonderful glow now kindling in her long eyes. "Will that youth of whom you told us be lonely, though he stand singly against a squadron of Cossacks? Where is his mother's soul? O Gods of my country! O my dear Christian God! why was it not given to me to be a man?"

"Do you think that the soul of a woman who shirks would be less cowardly if put into the body of a man? Even your Christians could tell you better."

"Lord! Lord!" cried the girl to him in great stress, "am I indeed of the coward's heart? Is this thing I call fidelity but a shirking?"

"A Japanese has no fidelity but to his Emperor!" thundered Onda.

"Be quiet, Tetsujo! Listen, poor wavering little heart; I will try to make you understand. You cannot be allowed to marry this man, not because we wish to thwart you, but—"

"I said I would not marry him, now,—not now!"

"Then what will you do?" asked HaganÈ. "All are striving to their utmost. What will be your part? Do you intend to sit sullen and inactive here, at home?"

"The wench shall remain no longer under my roof!" raged Tetsujo.

"She will remain under your roof, good Tetsujo, and be treated with courtesy," corrected the prince.

"Let me go as a nurse! Oh, I could never stay with them! Their harsh eyes would flay me! I feel even now their hatred!"

"Not mine, my baby, my only child!" wailed Iriya. "Think not so of your mother's imperishable love!"

Yuki at last hid her face. The note of anguish in her mother's voice overcame her pathetic defiance.

"My official residence is cold and lonely," remarked HaganÈ, sipping slowly at some tea. "It sorely needs a mistress well acquainted with foreign etiquette. Foreigners are to be met and conciliated. The Emperor himself, and his shining spouse, would receive one who so served her land, and hear from her own lips impressions of America, and the sentiments of the people there toward us. A woman's intuition is keen, and penetrates farther than a man's weightier judgment,—just as the tendrils of a vine creep into lattices which a tree would only darken. It is in such a capacity, Yuki-ko, that you could do immediate good. My disorganized servants would again be set into grooves of usefulness. Another reason, which must not be spoken openly, as yet,—I may soon be called to the front, and the several residences should not be closed."

"Lord! You would trust with such responsibilities a weak, untutored girl like me?"

"Yes, little one, I would trust you."

"And I would be in all respects—your—wife?" asked Yuki, in a very low tone.

"Yes. Why not? What is the human body but a petal drifting in the wind? If, for a moment, the bright tint or the fleeting perfume please, is it not best to grasp the trivial pleasure? Yet it is to great things that I call you, Onda Yuki. Things of service, of the spirit, heroism perhaps, perhaps self-sacrifice,—for the flesh is stubborn. This shall be your proof of loyalty to your Emperor and to this land!"

"I would gladly die for them!" she cried.

HaganÈ emptied the few dregs of his teacup into the hot ashes of the hibachi, ignoring the ceremonial little bowl put near for the purpose. "It was in Washington, I believe, that once before you made that foolish remark. What use would death be, especially if you seek it as an escape from conditions that do not please you? Cowardice is a crime of the spirit! I see no chance for you to serve but this."

"But to be your wife, your wife—while yet he—that other—holds my pledge!" murmured the girl, piteously, under her breath. "I prayed for freedom, but he would not send it—!" Gwendolen's telegraphic words, "I would accept H." came to her like a little gust of refreshing wind. She looked again squarely into HaganÈ's noble face. For the first time Pierre's rose before her, a little weak, a little over-delicate, with incipient lines of self-indulgence.

"My child," said HaganÈ, almost in a pleading tone, "Japan must not lose you. Put your life into my hands, and let me wield it for our country's need. I believe my motives to be selfless. If indeed your young beauty blurs my vision, then will punishment rightly follow. But I take that hazard. Had I a son, you should be, more fitly, his wife."

"If your father's everlasting curse—" Tetsujo began; but HaganÈ stopped him.

"We need no curses, Tetsujo! You are showing yourself unworthy of this brave child. Be quiet, I say; and let her own soul speak to her!"

Iriya gasped, and Onda bit his thick lip to the blood. Yuki's lifted face had the pathos of dying music. "Will my soul speak, Lord?" she breathed. The sound of her voice was cold and thin, and touched with a mystic fear.

Almost as if gathered in to answer, from the far distance a muffled chorus of a thousand whispering voices quivered in the air,—drawing nearer, nearer,—until the sound seemed to press upon their very hearts. Now over the garden a soft, pale light began to dawn. It grew to a concourse of a thousand spirit-lamps, crossing, recrossing, flickering, then passing on. Feet moving softly, though by the hundred, went by in ghostly rhythm.

"Lord! Lord!" panted Yuki, wild-eyed. "What is it? Do you hear also? or is it only I?"

HaganÈ did not answer at once. He watched the girl's face as one watches a changing chemical. When the sound had grown unmistakably human, though of voices kept low and tense with unusual awe, he said quietly, "You have all heard of the brave young Commander HirosÈ, who died rescuing his friend, in the second attempt to block Port Arthur. This is a band of Koishikawa students passing down to the railway station to meet him."

He stopped, wondering how much the girl could endure. The glare of the white lanterns, borne aloft, ploughed a great soundless trench of light through the trees and houses that line the steep slope of Kobinata's hill. Light surged over the thorn and bamboo hedges of Onda's home, brimming the garden with a tender radiance, and revealing hillock, shrub, and tree as in a faint unearthly dream. It threw a deeper glow into the face of HaganÈ, and over the battle-flag above him.

As for Tetsujo, he listened to the passing of countless feet in sullen gloom. He hated the students that they were young. He envied the death of HirosÈ. It would be a clear personal joy to die that way, and have one's name blazoned as a new god. A nobler soul might have cared little for such posthumous recognition; but old Onda's generosity did not reach that height. To him, heaven was a place where spirits swaggered, and bore the two swords of the samurai.

HaganÈ, looking only at Yuki, continued softly: "A hundred thousand lanterns of the dead will be carried this night, for the brave boy. It is but a fragment of his flesh, that was found with a bit of uniform clinging to it; but the precious relic will have—friends, to bear it to the temple. There his young widow, smiling like a statue of Kwannon, awaits it; and his little son, calmly proud that his father has become a great spirit. No heart in Nippon, to-night—but worships—HirosÈ!"

HaganÈ's voice had been even enough, and calm; but something in it loosened Yuki's soul from the flesh. Again she stared at him, as if mesmerized. Then suddenly she half rose, leaning toward him, and hurled herself face down on the mats, within reach of his hand.

"All that I have to give is dust! The body is nothing! The gods have released me! Take me, great-hearted man, and use me to my country's need!"

The shifting footsteps all had passed. The faint reflected glamour of the lanterns spread far below along the level stone road by the Arsenal. The garden was plunged again into blackness. Onda stared, as if dazed, after the lights, then brought his eyes to Yuki's prostrate body. His slow wits could not seize, at once, the realization of so ineffable a hope. Iriya muffled her sobs in her sleeve.

HaganÈ, to reassure Yuki, had put a hand lightly upon her thick hair. No one but the spirits—if they were near—saw a dull red tide of passion surge up to his broad face, swelling his neck into purple veins, and twitching at the sinews of the powerful hands. But his voice, when he answered, was that of a high-priest. "In our Emperor's name, my child, I accept the gift. May the gods assist me to use it worthily!"

Tetsujo, half crawling, reached the tea-tray, and drained a stale cup to the dregs. Yuki lay so still that Iriya took fond alarm. The joy and triumph faded from her face. She met HaganÈ's look with a slight appealing gesture toward her child. HaganÈ nodded. She crept to Yuki, tugging at her sleeve, and trying to push her up from the floor. HaganÈ leaned forward, and picked the girl up like a toy. She put out a faltering hand and touched her mother.

"Come, come, my treasure!" whispered Iriya. "Let us go together to your little room, where quiet will best restore you!"

"One moment, dame!" said HaganÈ. "I must speak with Tetsujo, in your presence." The old kerai was on his knees, bowing, his exultation only exaggerating his humility.

From the impersonal ring of HaganÈ's orders, he might have been outlining a Manchurian campaign. "Let there be no delay! Since at any hour I may be ordered to the front, I wish the ceremony over, that I may instruct Yuki in certain official duties before I leave. And remember, this is no time for expenditure or display."

"Your will is mine, Augustness."

"This is Friday. Next Wednesday, then, at my Tabata villa! All shall be in readiness. Is this as you wish, Yuki-ko?"

"Your will is mine, Lord," whispered Yuki, echoing unconsciously her father's words.

"The child trembles. May I not conduct her to her chamber?" asked Iriya of the prince.

"Yes, dame," replied he, kindly. "And, brave little one, farewell! I am overcharged with duties, and may not see you again till Wednesday, at noon. One instant!" The two women paused, Iriya facing him expectantly, Yuki with head hung low. "I want to say, here, in the presence of my too-zealous Tetsujo, that Yuki is to be treated, from this moment, with the respect and dignity that becomes a Princess HaganÈ. There is to be no espionage; no opposition; no suggestion of restraint of any kind! My entire confidence is with my future wife. Do you understand that, Onda Tetsujo?"

"Yes, Lord," growled Tetsujo, crimson with mortification; but he did not forget to bow.

In her own room Yuki stood staring, dazed, ignoring her mother's frequent suggestion to be seated. "No! Let me breathe! Let me learn to breathe again!" muttered she at last, and caught her mother's arm as she stepped to the tiny veranda. From the guest-room beyond, where the two men talked, a soft light gleamed, throwing the pebbled paths of the garden into little Milky Ways of light. The shrubs lay round and dark, like a flock of little clouds. Beyond all rose the tall black hedge of bamboo and of thorn.

"My child," said the mother, "you have brought to us great happiness and pride. Surely reward will come to you, even in this incarnation. I will pray ceaselessly to Kwannon in your behalf."

Yuki leaned closer to her mother. The cool wet smell of the garden already stole away some of the hot bewilderment from her brain. The angry waves of indecision, girlish longing, and patriotism, which had raged so furiously together, now began to recede, leaving bare at last a small white strip of thought. She was safe now, pledged, not to personal joy, but to heroic service. The greatest of all men was to be her teacher, her helper, her—husband! Well, what of it? Nothing was too great a sacrifice for Nippon. And if Pierre would only not misjudge too cruelly! Even in this first vicarious shudder of Pierre's grief, she could not feel that he would suffer long. His agony might at first be intense and uncontrolled, but, through its very exaggeration, would the more swiftly pass. For her sake, now, he must leave Japan. This was the last boon that love should ask of him.

From the street, from the other side of that inky bamboo wall, came the low notes of a foreign song,—a strain from Carmen. The girl shivered once, and was still.

"Oh, what is it?" cried Iriya, herself on edge, and looking about in terror.

Again came the song, soft and clear. The singer stood, evidently, just beyond the bamboos. Yuki's lips writhed together. Her fingers tore and twitched, one hand in the other.

"Yuki! My Yuki!" came a voice. "Is it too late?"

Suddenly wrenching herself from Iriya's arms, the girl sprang down the two stone steps and plunged into the shadows of the garden. As one fiend-driven, she sped over paths, shrubs, rocks, and prim garden-stakes, until, at the hedge, she hurled herself upon it, beating at it with frantic hands, and sobbing.

"Oh, go! Go, beloved! Never again come here! Never sing that song again, or—I cannot live at all! I have promised—promised—a new pledge—stronger than the other! It's of my free will I give myself to him! Go home to your native land! Go! go!"

"What sound is that? What do I hear?" cried Tetsujo, from the guest-room balcony.

"It is our Yuki, walking in the garden," came Iriya's placid voice. "Disturb not your honorable spirit, Master! I am with the child."

Tetsujo returned, to be met by a chiding, half-contemptuous remark from his deity. A moment later, Iriya's ashen face was in the kitchen. "SuzumÈ! Maru! For the love of Kwannon, come quickly! Miss Yuki is in a dead faint, against the thorn hedge! Her hands are bleeding!—Make no noise! The master and Prince HaganÈ must not know!"