Pierre's visible return was preceded by a great chatter of his voice, now in English, again in French. Evidently he had more than one companion. HaganÈ and Yuki drew apart. Pierre stood at the door which, with a wide French gesture, he had flung open. The tall figure of Minister Todd entered, followed closely by Count Ronsard. It was the latter who saw to the careful closing of the door.

"Mr. Todd!" Yuki faltered, under her breath. Here was a new and terrible trial. HaganÈ gave her a glance. He saw her slight figure stiffen, and her face grow still again. The light upon his stern countenance was almost as beautiful as her own.

Pierre began a hurried and vaporous explanation. "Mr. Todd was here, your Highness, as you were already aware. He desired greatly to come, and his Excellency, the count, wished it!"

"Entirely unofficial," Ronsard hastened to add. "It is a personal misunderstanding, nothing more. I have been assuring Mr. Todd that it is utterly unofficial!"

Todd raised his thin hand. Reassurance had already come to him. Yuki was safe, and HaganÈ had the look of an altarpiece. No personal harm, at least, was to be done. "Before this goes one step further I want to say for myself, that unless Prince HaganÈ is quite willing to have me, I leave at once. I don't pretend to understand what has happened, but I have full faith in Yuki and her husband. There, your Highness! I am through with my little stunt. Shall I strike roots, or reverse the throttle?"

"Unless against the wishes of Madame la Princesse, I desire you to remain."

"Madame la Princesse!" mocked Pierre, angrily, under his breath.

Yuki's dignity equalled that of her husband. "Kindly remain, Mr. Todd," she murmured, with a slight bow.

"Your Highness," said Todd, still addressing HaganÈ, "now tell us how many grains of wheat are in this chaff of foolishness Pierre is giving us! Something about your going to send my little Yuki off like a piece of broken china, for him, Le Beau, to patch together at his leisure. Pshaw! Of course the boy is out of his head!"

HaganÈ thought deeply before he made reply. His sobriety and deliberation gave unusual weight to speech always impressive. Each word was a nail driven straight into the lid of an abandoned hope.

"Madame la Princesse has offended in a way peculiarly Japanese,—difficult, I think,—too difficult even for your sympathy and kindness to comprehend. There is no need to dwell upon it. She leaves me of her own free will. She and I understand each other perfectly. That is all! We shall detain you two gentlemen but a moment."

"Entirely unofficial, your Excellency will observe," whispered Ronsard, nervously, to the American.

"Yes, yes, I made that much out for myself," said Todd to HaganÈ. "If you intend to separate, it is deplorable, but clearly none of my business. It's the other heinous suggestion, that of handing her over to another man, that makes me hot in the collar. Don't tell me I must believe this of your Highness!"

Neither HaganÈ's eyes nor voice faltered. "The man, Monsieur Le Beau, has a service to perform for Japan. He asks a certain price. Yuki alone can pay that price."

"It is simple enough, Mr. Todd," Pierre burst in. The discussion went in a direction distasteful to him. He did not wish the matter of the paper, and its means of acquirement, laid bare. "I can do the prince a service. For it, Yuki becomes my own, as from the beginning she should have been. This little talisman merely rights the mistakes of Fortune." He held out the document, shaking it to attract attention.

"The very paper I helped to sign, this day!" said Todd, wondering. "What, in the name of Beelzebub, are you doing with it? HaganÈ was to guard it with his life! There's something queer in this. I smell foul play! Did Yuki,—could Yuki have—?" He checked himself, reddening at the baseness of his quick suspicion. Yuki, facing him, gave no answering flush. She was white,—white beyond belief in a thing that lived at all. Her low voice gave each syllable full measure. "I was partly—to blame—that Monsieur Le Beau secured that paper. I shall pay his price."

Todd's eyes still hung on her, fascinated, incredulous. He could not believe her capable of vileness. He knew that no depth of personal degradation could begin to compare, in the Japanese mind, with an offence against loyalty. It was to them, truly, the sin against the Holy Ghost. Yet, by her own words, Yuki was condemned. His stung thought flashed to Pierre, and fastened on him. "Then, man, it is a double wrong! I do not know yet how you got the thing; but if she is implicated, you owe it to her, far more than yourself, to be decent! In the name of morality,—of honor,—do not sell the thing; give it back without condition! Your proposition is damnable!"

"His Excellency Mr. Todd was one who signed the paper; he pleads for its return," murmured Ronsard to the air.

"Never mind that!" flashed Todd. "The paper doesn't trouble me a little bit! I am thinking of Yuki!"

"But—Mr. Todd—Yuki, she wish to pay that price. She wish to be given—so—to Monsieur!" said the Princess HaganÈ.

Pierre flashed a look of triumph into Todd's dazed eyes. Defiantly he went to Yuki, caught her hand, and kissed it. "You see and hear her for yourself!" vaunted Pierre. Todd appealed dumbly to HaganÈ for extrication from this amazing skein of tangled interests. HaganÈ brooded on his wife with tenderness,—with the ache of love,—as over a dying child. Yuki drew her hand from Pierre and went to the minister. "Don't try to understand," she urged him, piteously, "don't defend me! You cannot understand,—not even Gwendolen could understand!" She caught her breath sharply, with a new and untried pang, "Oh, Gwendolen, my dear one!" she moaned, "I had forgotten you. Gwendolen—Gwendolen!"

"If I might be allowed to say a word in behalf of France," ventured Ronsard, hesitatingly.

"Your Excellency," interrupted Pierre, "let us have no further discussion. I cannot be interfered with, even by you. The thing is done! I have agreed! Prince HaganÈ protects us all! All are satisfied. Cela!"

"Yes, yes," echoed Yuki. "Everything is settled!"

"Here's one thing that isn't!" flared out Todd. "I say to you men, French and Japanese alike, damn you for a set of cold-blooded, fanatical politicians! Out of the bunch I respect—no, I despise a little less, Le Beau, for though an egoist and a fool, he is at least on fire with love. As for you two statesmen, there's something rotten in your refrigerators! I know what Le Beau has to sell, of course; and it is not worth the sacrifice of this poor shivering child! Ronsard, speak up for France, without permission or apology. Where is your honor, where that little cross with the red ribbon, that you stand by and see this wedge of opportunity driven by a boy's lust into sand!"

"Your Excellency!" thundered HaganÈ. "Though you signed the paper, it is not yours. I claim it—for Nippon! I alone am responsible!"

Yuki cowered an instant, pressing both hands against her ears, then she rallied, and crying, "Do not interfere,—it is HaganÈ's concern and mine," went up to Todd, and seized his arm for emphasis. He pushed her off. "It may be HaganÈ's business, but I make it mine! God! These are not the Dark Ages. I'm not the man to stand aside and have a woman burned at the stake of political exigency. I'll turn traitor myself! I'll tell the purport of the paper! I'll wire my resignation to Washington next day! But I won't keep still!" His lean figure flashed with indignation like a gleam that plays along an unsheathed sword.

Yuki, wheeling back to him with incredible swiftness, caught down the upraised hand, and strained it to her breast. She threw herself against him, praying, it would seem, for eternal life. "Oh, my friend, you are noble, but you make the terrible mistake! You will kill my soul, which has but just come alive. Let me go to Pierre, as is now planned. You think, maybe, that I do some great sacrifice for my country, like that good girl, Jeanne d'Arc. But you think too high. I am bad! I am the cat! I have no love for Nippon or for HaganÈ! No, I have the one wish now,—to go to Pierre—to Pierre! I was close to him a moment, and now you come to drag me away. Keep me not from Pierre!"

Todd scrutinized her from between stiffening, half-closed eyelids. The gathering corner-wrinkles had the effect of sparks. "It's no good, Yuki!" he said quietly. "It don't work a little bit! I've known you too long!"

"Oh, but I is bad, very bad! You didn't know, of course not! I was sly to hide everythings. Pierre and I have arrange so that, in spite of cruel father, and Prince HaganÈ and all, we comes together at last! Ah, push me off again!" she cried convulsively. "That is right! I care not if I lose you, and Mrs. Todd, and Gwendolen, and my good name,—everything! if only I can go to Pierre this night! Just let me do what I wish, as all have agree but you. Try not to prevent!"

At the wild light in her eyes, the impassioned ring of her voice, Todd, his faith for the moment quailing, had pushed her off a few shuddering inches. She clung still to his hand. By this he drew her near again, and probed. Before his first word, she must have surmised the change, for she swayed in his hold, shuddered violently, closed her lids, and let her lips form a few dumb words of prayer.

"Yuki!" Todd began, in a voice so low that the others scarcely heard. "Yuki, this is a part you are playing. Eternity is your stage, and tragedy your curtain. The room smells of it. You are not bad. You harbor now a heroic design. I cannot understand, but I believe it to be supreme! Before God, look into my eyes, and tell me the truth. I will not betray you!"

She lifted calmly, now, the great, dark orbs. He gazed down into them, to the thought that lay, like a white rock, in the clear depths. In absolute moments the human soul has a speech of its own and an ear to listen. Her lips moved no more. She was not conscious of further effort to make him see. Without grosser statement, knowledge came to him. This life of earth already had lost its hold on her,—Pierre was less than a shadow on a stream. Todd knew that she was to die,—that the discarded shell of the thing he loved would be Pierre's prize. By the same ghostly prescience HaganÈ knew that certainty had laid her cold touch upon the American. He averted quickly his dark face from the sight. Ronsard, who was nearest, saw a mighty shudder blow upon him; then the face, now twitching, lifted toward the light. His lips moved. Ronsard could not surmise the trend of the broken, muttered words; but Yuki, who had neither heard nor seen, knew that he was praying.

Todd loosed the girl's hand now, not in rebuke, but as one incapable of sustaining longer the fragile burden. The alertness, the eagerness went from him. All at once he was a middle-aged man. "And I must stand by and do—nothing!" he whispered, half to himself, half to her.

"Oh, you can still do much. You can believe in me,—and Gwendolen will not need to scorn me. I will thank you always, if only for what you have just understood."

"Come!" said HaganÈ, sharply. "A woman's endurance has a limit. The paper, please, Monsieur Le Beau."

Ronsard touched Pierre's arm. "Not until you have received your price."

"When Yuki comes to me to-night, and not before," said Pierre, valiantly. He was pleased with the sound of his own bravado.

Yuki threw a piteous glance toward her husband. "Then shall I accompany, now? I think I can do all, alone."

HaganÈ did not answer her. He held Pierre in a hard gaze. "To-night?" he questioned. "How can I be sure that the seal will be intact?"

"Sir!" said Pierre, indignantly, "your suggestion is an insult!"

"Ah! do thieves who enter other men's homes to rob them still wave the flag of honor?" Pierre drew back, flushed and scowling, with a muttered curse. Todd gave a great start. It was the first time he had heard the specific charge. How then, if Pierre were a mere common thief, could Yuki be involved? Again he was baffled. He shook his head sadly, and kept silence. HaganÈ had begun to speak again. "I am willing to refer the matter to arbitration, but shall not consent to the document remaining here. Let it be put into the hands of a third party, until to-night."

"Yes," said Yuki, eagerly. "Mr. Todd will keep it. All trust him!"

Pierre and Ronsard exchanged apprehensive glances. To refuse was impossible. "An—an—excellent plan," said Ronsard, with a watery beam. "But, since Russia is our ally—"

"Utterly unofficial, you know. A purely personal misunderstanding," reminded Todd, not without a gleam of malice. "In your present attitude, Count Ronsard, you can scarcely claim anything further. France's honor hardly rests on—felony! I am willing to hold it; and, if the prince should fail to drive in the sacrificial lamb, otherwise Yuki, France gets the paper, I presume."

"Exactly," said HaganÈ, and Ronsard in a breath.

"Only," interpolated Yuki, in her low, clear voice, "no sacrificial lamb is to be driven, your Excellency,—only a woman gaining her soul's desire."

Pierre triumphed in glances about the room. Couldn't the fool American see that Yuki was simply dying to get away from old HaganÈ and come to him! Why this continued talk of sacrifice? It sounded like the Japanese themselves. Pierre sent an ardent, encouraging look to the girl. To his surprise, her face was set steadily upon HaganÈ, and in his answering gaze was the same embarrassing rapture.

"Well," said Todd, sharply, "am I to keep the paper or not?"

"My dear colleague," stuttered Ronsard, paddling the air with gestures of concession, "of course, in your keeping it is as safe as—say—in my private desk. Pierre!—" There was a sharp tang to the name.

The young man reluctantly handed the envelope to Todd. He took it with a crooked smile. HaganÈ and Yuki remained calm as statues.

"Madame," the host said, with fictitious gayety, "perhaps, as a matter of delicacy, congratulations are not in order; yet allow me to assure you of my good-will and homage!"

Yuki met his look. Her face was still expressionless, like a Japanese painting of a high-born lady where repose is the desired essential. Something underlying the white calm disturbed him. After her few gentle words, "I thank your Excellency," he was glad to turn away.

"To-night at eight," said HaganÈ, moving toward the door. "Can all be present at eight?"

The three men bowed gravely. Ronsard for once had forgotten etiquette. He was allowing his visitors to leave alone. Yuki, with no further look for Pierre, prepared to follow her husband, but Todd came to himself with a queer, choking little sound. In two long strides he overtook her.

"Yuki,—how can. I stand it? You are like my other child! I am in a bed of nettles, and you have tied my hands! I have agreed to take this paper chiefly on the hope that I may stir Le Beau to a nobler issue. You must agree,—you must—to a less awful price."

Yuki's lifted face was whiter now than any death, but somehow, under the icy surface a flower was frozen. "Pierre will not agree, because I have said I wish to go to him. You have understood the Japanese heart strangely; but even yet,—there are spaces you have not dreamed. I pray God for you to fail, dear Mr. Todd, but I ask his blessing on your kindness. Give to those dear ones at your home, my Sayonara, and my undying love!"

Todd writhed as if stung by an unseen serpent. "And yet, within my bounds of confidence and honor, I must reason with Pierre, must speak more fully with Ronsard!"

"I trust you utterly," said Yuki, as she faded through the doorway.

Ronsard, recalled perhaps by the mention of his name, hurried forward now, and accompanied the noble guests to the portico. Left together, Pierre and Todd eyed each other. On the younger, more beautiful face, vanity and self-satisfaction were spread as scented unguents. The hour was his. He had triumphed! Yuki, in spite of all these grave men, was to be his own. Oh, he would make her happy!

It is said that the colorless color 'white' is merely a cunning admixture of all hues. In the same way, the iridescent struggle of contempt, pity, incredulity, disapprobation, whirling together in the American's mind, coalesced into blankness,—the consciousness of a situation hopeless, irremediable. Without a word or exclamation he sank to the nearest chair, put his long, lean arms out upon the table, and laid his face upon them. So the two men remained, until the heavy footsteps of Ronsard came back into the hall,—until he entered, and, casting an eye on the prostrate form, asked of Pierre, in a whisper, "Is his Excellency ill?"

"No," said Pierre, irritably. "He is not, but I am. Nobody seems to think of the strain I've been under all this time. With your permission, Excellency, I'll have one of the servants telephone for a physician. This hellish fever is on me again. I must keep my reason until this night is over!"

Ronsard, without answering, waddled to a chair, moved his short legs outward, and let the attraction of gravitation do the rest. The room shook with the impact, jangling empty cups and glasses on the table. He drew out a silken handkerchief, and with it odors of violet and vervain.

"Oui, oui," he made answer at length, "have your physician. You will need him before you are through. And when the servant comes, kindly order tea, sandwiches, coffee, liqueurs, anything which may strengthen. Bah! It is vaudeville tragedy!" He settled himself with grunts and short groans of distaste. Todd was deliberately overlooked. The silent form gave both observers a sense of uneasiness.

Pierre's orders given, strength suddenly deserted him. He went to a couch, where pillows in Japanese brocades were heaped. "With your permission, gentlemen," he muttered. He threw himself down upon his back, bending his head upward into the soft squares, until the profile was drawn thin and clear, as that of a mediÆval figure on a tomb. All day long, ever since his escape from the hospital (and could it be possible that his flight had taken place since dawn of this very day?), illness had toyed with him as a jungle tiger with its prey, letting him go free for a moment, only to spring back, fastening deeper claws. Now the fever held him, and moved like a tumultuous sea across which was hung a molten, blinding sheet of brass. Down in the valleys of the waves it was dark, and cold, and terrible. Sea-creatures grimaced at him, holding out long, wavering arms. Oh, the valleys were terrible indeed! But up on the swelling crest was far worse, for there he burned. Sometimes his brain went wild in the torment of flame. His lips blistered and cracked. Once, when he threw a hand suddenly upward, a pink finger-nail split to the flesh. The intervals had a rhythm, a relentless, horrible recurrence. He knew in anticipation the agony of each moment just before it came. Now,—now he was beginning to rise, to be borne up from the liquid, icy trough toward a plane of fire. He groaned aloud, and cowered. Soft footsteps went around the room. Porcelain or some such brittle substance went clashing gently. To him it was as shells of the sea, caught up with him in the wave; caught up from slimy depths, like him; torn from a nether world of cold despair and whirled upward, as he was being whirled! Soon they would crack, too, and the pretty colors be burned and blackened. A voice came out of the water. It sounded like Ronsard's voice. "Look at the young Monsieur! Diable! Fever is gaining. I would he were safely back in the hospital."

"Then why not take the responsibility of sending him there?" drawled the American's voice,—that thin, nasal, self-confident voice that Pierre hated. It lashed now, like sea-nettles, in his face.

Pierre writhed, and tried to toss aside the pillows. "I won't go back! You need not plan! You cannot force me!" he tried to scream. His parched lips opened. A hissing noise came from his throat. He thought he had really screamed the words, but the quiet, uninterrupted flow of conversation, behind the wall of the wave convicted him terribly of delusion. He gnashed his teeth, struggling to rise.

"Good God!" cried Todd, reaching him at a bound. "The man is in convulsions. A doctor, quick, or he'll die here!"

Ronsard pressed a bell in frantic haste, and sent all the Legation servants forth in search of physicians, warning each to go in an individual direction. As a natural consequence, they went in a frightened phalanx. Police-officers, seeing the confusion, hurried in. Everywhere was dismay and disorganization. Todd alone retained a little judgment, giving the sick man ammonia to smell, and bathing his forehead with cold water.

It was a young American practitioner who first gained the house. Had it been a German (of whom there are several of world-wide reputation resident in Tokio), he, in behalf of his reputation,—not to mention common sense, would certainly have insisted upon sending the invalid back to Yokohama, where, indubitably, he belonged. The American being younger, more imaginative, and with less reputation to jeopardize, might lend himself the more readily to the unusual. Ronsard and Todd, each in his own way,—both, of course, intensely desirous of getting Pierre safely in hospital walls,—nevertheless advanced persuasions to keep him away from the desirable haven until the following morning. The physician was evidently puzzled by the presence of conflicting motives. As a final statement of his own position, he said, "I insist that you gentlemen recognize the measures I must employ to give him an interval of strength and lucidity must take away at least fifty per cent of the patient's chances of recovery!"

Todd answered for both. "We understand. It is the dickens of a thing for us to have to decide on; yet, since the man, if in his senses, would consider us traitors to shut him up before eight to-night, I don't see anything else but to let you dose him until that time."

"Exactly," corroborated the French minister.

"And, doctor," added Todd, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "it is a mess. We can't explain. Mum's the word, you know."

"Oh, I knew before you told me," said the young doctor. Then he went to work.

An hour later Pierre, gasping, and pouring out from his entire frame the very sap of vitality, still lay on the sofa, his fever gone, his mind clear, uplifted, pellucid, as it had been on awakening in Yuki's tea-rooms three hours before.

The doctor had departed. Neither Todd nor the French minister had left the room. The two politicians tacitly understood that neither trusted the other, yet, strange to say, neither resented it. The issue at stake was too big for personal irritation. In the reaction of his excitement Todd pondered anew, with ever deepening foreboding, upon the thing that Yuki's eyes had told him. Ronsard, overflowing in his cushioned chair, brooded of France and her already humiliated ally, Russia.

"Le Beau," said Todd, at length, rising and walking in the direction of the sofa, "you're too sick a man to be pounded by all the arguments I have been getting together for you, but there are just a few things I must say, and which his Excellency Count Ronsard here should hear me say."

"Speak," said Pierre, languidly; "it will make no difference at all, Monsieur, but I shall listen."

"I want you to return that paper quietly, as a gentleman should, and I want you to go back to the hospital, as a rational being should. You are precipitating a crisis that Napoleon in his best days might shrink from, and you are too ill to stand on your feet. You don't know yet what you are doing. Rely on stronger men, just now, and in all your future life you will thank God that you listened!"

Pierre shifted his position slightly and tried to smile. Ronsard placed himself at the other end of the couch. His eyes held Todd. "Before Pierre tries to answer, it is but right to him, to France, that I should speak, your Excellency." He went close to Pierre and touched him. "Pierre, I urge, with all the fervor, all the loyalty, all the passion of a son of France, that you give up—not the paper; that is ours,—but the woman. None but a coward and a sensualist would sell away from his country a paper which commands so terrible a price."

"I am impaled upon the diameter of widely differing opinions," said Pierre, sarcastically.

Todd's next words were very quiet. They were addressed to Ronsard. "The advice of your Excellency is both just and creditable. You speak as a diplomat; I merely as a man. I know what was in the paper, and I know also that a man's honor, that nameless, indescribable essence which makes him a man, once blackened, with the stain eaten in, can never be brightened. Pierre has but an hour or two to change himself from a low thief to a man. Give up the paper, Pierre, and save the woman you say you love!"

"Bah!" Ronsard interrupted with a rudeness the others scarcely had believed possible to him; "you accuse Frenchmen of sentimentality, Mr. Todd. What is this desire of yours but sentiment, false sentiment, puerile, absurd? You spur the boy's honor in order to save a woman who probably does not wish to be saved. You play upon him! I see a tear in his youthful eye. He thinks of Madame, deserted,—in need of comfort! Who should condole with her but he? Pouf! If you yearn to be a hero, Pierre, make of that very desire a nobler sacrifice for France! Break your heart if you will, but with the shattered fragments trace the name of France! Upon this paper that you hold, the future of a great war may hang. It has written instructions,—values,—perhaps a secret treaty. Think what it may mean, not only to our own land, to Russia, but to you!" He leaned to finger a little red ribbon dangling from a cigar-box on the table. Pierre's eyes shot a dull gleam. "When HaganÈ comes, defy him,—break your word, retain the paper, but give back the wife he so easily discards!"

Pierre had fallen back in his pillows. "You don't know what you are talking of,—neither knows," he said, tossing his head feverishly. "You will set my veins on fire again with your chatter. Yuki, HaganÈ and I understand each other—" he broke off with a querulous gesture.

Todd had begun to bristle. Sneers were rare to him, but now his lean face assumed one. He caught up the red ribbon which Ronsard had let fall, and cried to him, "You scorned the motive of honor, of pity for a woman, yet wave the red flag of personal ambition. Pierre, can you not see for yourself how flimsy is his argument? You think you understand Yuki and her husband, but you do not. A terrific tragedy hangs over us all. I insist, I implore you, Pierre, try to reason this out for yourself, not as a Frenchman, a lover, or a diplomat, but just as a man,—a man, and what makes him a man, with a little fuse of God sputtering in him, and not an animal minus the fuse, made up of intellect, tastes, and inclinations! Think of that shivering, white-faced girl,—that Oriental Jeanne d'Arc who faced us all so bravely an hour ago. I tell you, man, if you loved her decently, you would turn sick at the thought of receiving her at the hands of her lawful husband. Boy, try to think for once in your life of some one besides yourself,—and may God have mercy on you and my little Yuki."

His voice broke on the last word. Ronsard jerked his body, and gave a low sound of irritation. Pierre flared up into feeble passion.

"And I tell you, Mr. Todd, that you talk nonsense! I have thought of Yuki,—only Yuki! I think now of no one but Yuki. I too pitied her, and did what I could. I offered to give the paper back into her hands, with the one condition that HaganÈ should pardon what he fancies her offence and should receive her back openly as his wife. They both refused!"

"You did what? HaganÈ refused what?" exclaimed Todd. He thought that the fever was again upon its victim. Ronsard looked concerned and felt Pierre's white forehead. He met their eyes triumphantly. He was pleased at the effect of his words. Something in his boyish face impressed the diplomats with the truth of the unbelievable statement just made. "Now, perhaps you will let me alone for a while," he said disdainfully, and turned his back.

The elder men exchanged glances of dismay, and by a common impulse left the couch. Pierre felt himself again a conqueror. His words, like a querulous barking, followed them. "I really do not feel able to endure more talk, or more tobacco-smoke, just now, gentlemen. The doctor said I must have sleep before to-night. If I could only sleep! After a fine deep sleep I should be strong again, the doctor said it! But they will not let me alone,—they talk and argue, but they are ignorant. Yuki and I understand each other." With little childish, spasmodic movements he settled himself among the sheens of brocade, keeping his face to the wall. Small sounds of discontent, passing into moans and feverish starts, came from him.

Todd stood, perplexed, by the table. Ronsard, in equal agitation, hovered near, and then with a side glance at the sick boy, crushed his cigarette into a tray. Todd's lean shoulders bent over as with a weight. "After that last," he muttered, "I guess I might as well clear out. Is there anything further to discuss, your Excellency?" he asked of Ronsard.

The Frenchman's eyes shifted. His protruding underlip trembled until he felt it shake, and raised a perfumed laden handkerchief for a screen. Todd saw the uncertainty, the battle between etiquette and fear in his colleague's face, and, with a dry smile, took the paper from his breast, slapping it down upon the bare table.

"My dear sir, my most valuable friend," began Ronsard, in his oiliest manner, "you tear my heartstrings with the implied doubt. Your honor is not to be questioned. Yet I would be glad to know just where you intend to remain this fateful afternoon." The contrast between his tone and the relief in his fat face were too much for Todd. He threw back his head to laugh. Pierre, already dragged far out in an undertow of sleep, did not turn, but Ronsard glanced up suspiciously. His half-buried eyes had a tinge of red.

"It's just this way, Count," said the other, easily. "I know what is in this little billet,—you don't. I assure you that the price is not big enough by half for the promised reward. Yet if it were a thousand times bigger, and if I dreaded and disapproved of the whole business ten thousand times more than I do, yet, having given my word to Prince HaganÈ and Yuki, and having accepted the—er—shall I call it confidence?—of you and Le Beau, I should keep strictly both to the letter and the spirit of my bargain. I can't imagine, to be frank, the inner workings of a man who could do anything else. I am an American. I have been a senator, and I now represent my Government in a land which fills me with the most intense admiration. Does that put any lubricator on your troubled waves?"

"My dear sir," purred the Frenchman, "let us be seated for a moment more. I thank your Excellency for these new assurances, and appreciate the generosity of them. This has been an afternoon of trial for me,—of deep humiliation. Your nobility adds but one more pang, and, in the name of France, I can bear it! I shall give five hundred yen to the poor of Tokio when this most detestable affair is at an end. It is my first experience of the kind, and shall be my last. Pierre's public dismissal from the service of this Legation will be in the morning papers. I shelter him no longer."

Todd made no comment. He had refused to take the proffered seat. "Your Excellency, I feel the need of fresh air. I must go. But before leaving you I have two questions to put,—answer or not as you think best."

"At your service, Monsieur."

"Have you any knowledge of the motive which prompts Yuki to take so strong, so vital a part in this hellish arrangement—and—do you know her offence?"

"I can answer both. The first is obvious enough. Madame has the natural desire to pass from the arms of winter to that of spring. The other query,—I cannot give a positive reply, but will share the data."

Todd waited in silence. Ronsard arranged his words with some nicety. "In the first excitement of Le Beau's arrival,—as he came in like a maniac, waving a white screed, and gasping out to me its nature,—I cried, 'Then where is HaganÈ? He must be close behind you!' Pierre, with a meaning glance, assured me that the great man could not follow, being—detained."

"Detained? Well, go on!"

"I marvelled, as you do, at the phrase. 'Detained,' Pierre said,—entangled, tied, quite cleverly, by Madame and her long gray sleeves. Did you not notice the disarray of Madame's toilette?" Ronsard looked up now full at his colleague, as if to enjoy the effect. Todd steadied himself. He would not give this man the satisfaction of gloating over new wounds. The whole terrible thing came clear to him. He saw why Yuki needed to die. It was no punishment inflicted by HaganÈ, but a last desperate self-atonement.

"Ah!" he answered Ronsard, with wonderful coolness, "I thank your Excellency for the elucidation. It is complete. Now, with your permission, and if your mind is entirely at rest, I will say 'Good-bye until to-night at eight.'"

"Certainly," bowed the count, who did not relish this acrobatic reversion to tranquillity. "The disclosure, I trust, makes no difference in your—sentiments."

"Heavens, man! how could it? I'm not a tin fish on a red barn, to wheel round with every wind! Don't you see it is as much to me as anybody else that the thing gets back, unopened, to HaganÈ?"

"Yes, yes, I presume so," muttered Ronsard, and accompanied his colleague to the door. The American went out on foot. Ronsard slowly retraced his heavy steps to Pierre. Stopping beside the sleeper, he stared down, first thoughtfully, then in growing antipathy and disgust. France, America, political acumen, possible distinction for himself or Todd,—all were blocked by this sick animal who lay, inert as a log, clear across the current of affairs. Well, endurance came with the thought that a few hours more would see the end!

Ronsard turned away at length, moved restlessly around the room, and at last, with a resigned sigh, took out a pack of cards, drew a table before a long pier-glass, and, solemnly dealing two hands, played piquet with his silent, gray shade, until the day went out, and the first purple waves of night came rushing in across a soundless shore.