So, without further preparation or experience, was the little Lady Yuki, fresh from her American school, not yet completely readapted to her native environment, installed as mistress of a great, official mansion.

The servants, of course, were strangers. A few of these bore to Prince HaganÈ the relation of "hangers-on," impoverished families of soldiers and retainers left from feudal days. Others had official connection with the place, and remained unmolested through various administrations.

For the first twenty-four hours the young wife moved in an atmosphere of dazed unreality. Her first conscious interest was in the mail. She began to watch for letters from her mother, or Gwendolen,—perhaps from that one whom she must forget. The thought of their last interview remained with her as the cruelest of all her wounds. No letter came. Pierre would not, in any case, have written, believing that HaganÈ had given orders to have all letters pass first under his inspection. The silence of Iriya and Gwendolen had another cause. Her new and exalted rank necessitated from Yuki the initial step. She did not know this, and HaganÈ, plunged deep already into affairs of state, had not thought to tell her.

She lived now almost an isolated existence. Only the head butler dared personally address her. Even he, in requesting orders from "her Highness," bowed and smiled with a sort of deprecating commiseration, as though he recognized her bewilderment. Of her husband she saw little. The longing for her mother and her friend grew poignant. Through the great high-ceiled rooms she wandered. The face of the great dark Buddha often loomed above her. From every shadow she shrank, fearing that Pierre Le Beau might be in hiding. Three miserable days dragged by. On the fourth, HaganÈ was present at the breakfast-table. News of a great victory had come. The Western world was just beginning to realize the true mettle in the Japanese soul. HaganÈ read aloud several editorials from English and American papers, and made comment upon them, as though his listener were a man, and his equal. He had ordered a foreign meal, and the coffee and excellent food stimulated the girl. Her husband's companionship and condescension exhilarated her. It was part of a brightening future that, even before their meal was over, the butler should announce, "Madame Onda, mother to her Highness."

Yuki gave a small cry of pleasure. HaganÈ lowered his paper, and paused to smile upon his young wife. He did not give a hint that it was through his direct agency that the visitor had come. "Ah, your eyes brighten at this news more even than at victory!" he laughed. To the servant he said briefly, "Conduct Madame Onda to us here."

The servant hesitated, "Your Highness, there is with her also an old attendant, a dame called SuzumÈ, who—talks."

"Shall we bid the chatterer enter, Yuki?"

"If your Highness permit," laughed Yuki.

"Admit both," said HaganÈ, and returned to his editorials.

Yuki rose to welcome her guests. As the door was flung back Iriya hesitated for a moment on the threshold. Without a glance toward Yuki she hurried to the Prince, and, prostrating herself, bowed again and again, with audible, indrawn breaths. SuzumÈ, at her heels, followed suit, excelling her mistress in the rapidity of repeated bows, and the power of audible suction.

"Nay, little mother of my Yuki," said HaganÈ, reaching down a hand, "rise now, I pray. Such extreme of deference is not seemly in the mother of a princess. Kindly be at ease in greeting your daughter, and converse as freely as if I were not present."

Iriya allowed herself to be persuaded to perch on the very rim of a leather chair and sip at a cup of coffee, while she and Yuki exchanged compliments and inquiries as to the health of the members of their respective families. This is always the first social duty in Japan. It takes the place of "weather."

No notice whatever was being taken of old SuzumÈ, who had continued genuflections and inspiration to the point of vertigo, when Yuki at last came to her assistance. Nothing would induce the old dame to sit on a foreign chair. "She had tried them once," she protested. "They felt like a pile of dead fish on a kitchen bench." Her post, self-assigned, was the extreme corner of the red and green Axminster carpet. While her superiors conversed, she let her keen, sunken eyes dart like dragon-flies from one piece of furniture to the other, from ceiling to floor, from curtain to framed oil-painting, until the very texture of these things must have been photographed on her busy retina.

After a few pleasant if perfunctory questions and replies, Prince HaganÈ rose, saying that he had work in his private office, and afterward must leave the house. "I hope you will remain with Yuki just as long as your domestic duties permit," he had said last of all. Immediately upon his closing of the door, Iriya began congratulating her daughter upon her splendid fortune, and retailing congratulatory messages from relatives and old friends. The little lady's feet, as she sat on the high dining-room chair, did not quite reach to the floor. The draught on her bare ankles just above the tabi (digitated socks) sawed like ice. With a little gesture of entreaty to Yuki, she hurried over to a comfortable sofa, where she nestled, and drew her feet up under her. Yuki smiled at the naÏvetÉ of it. Already she felt years older than her mother. She took her place on a chair, drawing forward a tabouret with smoking outfit, and urged her willing guest to the luxury of a small pipe. A sense of freedom, of delight in this sweet companionship, swept for the moment Yuki's hovering responsibilities.

"Okkasan, dear Okkasan (honorable mother), I am so happy to be with you! But why did you wait so long?" Her voice was rich with tender reproving. "Three long days! Long as the castle moats when the mud is showing. The prince is in this house but seldom. I have been lonely, mother."

"Your father forbade me to write or visit you until official request was made us. Now you are a princess, dear, and far outrank Sir Onda's wife."

Yuki flushed. Her eyes sank in embarrassment. "Oh, I had not heard of the strange fact. I beg your pardon, my mother. I am ashamed that it is so."

Iriya laughed. "Do you beg my pardon for being a princess, for making your father proud and happy, when—when—he was threatened by such disappointment?"

Now Iriya, too, became embarrassed. She had intended not to refer to unhappy topics of the past. Yuki was thinking deeply. "It must be honorably the same cause which keeps my Gwendolen away." A great relief followed the thought. The fear of coldness, of censure, was gone. She smiled into the air before her, thinking of the letter she soon should write.

At first, unnoticed by her companions, old SuzumÈ had risen from her corner and was trotting stealthily about the room. She touched now, softly, each marvellous object within her reach, and talked to herself, the while, in a queer little sing-song monologue. "Ma-a-a! the honorable, huge room, and the wonderful things, all belonging to our Yuki-ko! Foreign carpets with many-colored vegetables painted on them. Strange, puffy beds, high up on legs, like horses (here she patted a French sofa). High tables,—Ma-a-a! with little carpets on them, too, all ravelled at the edges. Big glass wine-cups (here she lifted an iridescent flower-vase)—merciful Buddha! No wonder the august foreigners are so often drunk! Gold is all about, on walls and furniture,—even the pictures have little fences of gold around them! I see a big singing-box (piano) over in the corner. That alone costs hundreds and hundreds of yen. How rich our o jo san must be!"

Iriya and Yuki, by this time, had begun to notice the antics and to smile at the crooning of the old woman. She saw it,—nothing escaped the arrow of those jetty orbs,—but it pleased her now to pretend unconsciousness of observation. She placed herself in front of Yuki, as if the young wife were a large dressed doll, and could not listen. "Ma-a-a! Our o jo san, last of the Onda race. There she sits, straight and slim in her foreign chair, just like our Gracious Empress herself when her photograph is taken! Now she is a princess, but once she was only a little girl, carried to school on old SuzumÈ's bent back. Tee-hee! My back is crooked now as Daruma,—but a princess helped to crook it!"

"Don't say such things, SuzumÈ!" cried Yuki, quickly. "They hurt me!"

"Why should it hurt you, Yuki-ko,—I mean, your Highness, when old SuzumÈ is only proud?" chuckled the beldame, with almost malicious enjoyment. "Let me be crooked, by your favor. Let me hump over like the lobster of long life. A princess curved my back, tee-hee! Ma-a-a! Will your kind eyes moisten for such a thing? ArÀ! I have ceased. Behold me now, your Highness,—straight and slim as a young willow down by the moat." She threw back her shoulders and swaggered comically.

"That is better. How is it that little Maru did not come to-day?" asked Yuki, determined, if possible, to change the current of the old soul's thought. Her effort was strikingly successful. Simultaneously SuzumÈ's face and hands fell. "Ma-a-a! I am a fool. Moths have eaten my memory! Maru crouches yet outside the street gate, waiting for permission to enter."

"And I, too, forgot. Kwannon, forgive my selfishness," murmured Iriya.

"Oh, poor, poor Maru!" cried the hostess, her face a bright tangle, now, of smiles and tears, "the cold wind blows down that street. Go quickly, SuzumÈ. Fetch her, instantly!"

The spoiled old servant cast a cunning eye to an electric bell set in its black wood disc. "August Princess," she whined, "deign but to put your smallest finger upon that white pebble yonder, and at once a fine man-servant will enter. Maru will be much comforted to receive her summons from a grand man-servant in foreign clothes!"

Iriya's face showed vexation at the old servant's forwardness, but Yuki laughed and touched the bell. She was beginning to realize, in a sort of glad wonder, that her heart grew lighter with every smile.

Maru came into the room sidewise. At every few steps her knees apparently gave way. She did not know, in a foreign house, just when she was expected to kneel and bow, so kept herself in readiness to drop at an instant's notice. Her face was round, like a dish. Her beady eyes snapped and sparkled with excitement. The small button of a nose, blown on by unfriendly winds, glowed in the centre of her countenance like an over-ripe cherry. At sight of Yuki, she found her cue and grovelled. "How is it?" asked Yuki of her mother, when Maru was at last persuaded to hold her head erect, "that, I not having yet written, you and the servants came to me?"

"Why, did you not know of it? Prince HaganÈ sent, last night, a special messenger."

"No, I had not heard. Prince HaganÈ is very kind."

At the curious tone Iriya sent a keen look to her daughter. She did not like the expression gathering on the down-bent face. "Come, my jewel, you have not shown us half the wonders of your new home. Shall not SuzumÈ and Maru be given bliss? We can stay but an hour."

"An hour!" echoed the young wife, in dismay. "That is already half spent. Oh, mother, one hour?"

"Such are your father's orders. You know we do not disobey him."

Yuki sighed. "I know. Well, let us see all that we can in the short space. This room is but the dining-room, where, as you have seen, we eat foreign meals. There is a Japanese wing and smaller dining-room, which I shall often use when my master is absent. Now let us go into the long hall, then into the zashiki, or drawing-room." In passing the hall-way she saw Maru's eyes fasten on the telephone box. It had, indeed, an unrelated, black look, set so squarely against the flowered wall-paper. Yuki felt the tug on an inspiration. "Come, mother; I shall not need to write to my friend. I shall talk to her through this! Like the old sennin (genii), who whispered to each other from peak to crag of far mountains, I shall talk clearly to the slope of Azabu!"

Iriya caught her sleeve. "I fear for you to talk in that strange way, my child. The gods may not like it."

"Ah, mother, in America I have talked for hours and was not injured."

"Our gods were not in America to see," murmured Iriya, and followed with evident reluctance. SuzumÈ and Maru came close behind. Yuki boldly pulled down the receiver and held it to her ear. The servants uttered short squeaks like mice.

"Moshi, moshi!" called Yuki, giving the Japanese telephone cry.

Maru shuddered. "Is it a deaf devil, that the o jo san speaks so loudly?"

"A whole nest of devils, Maru San," said Yuki, with mischievous and impressive gravity. "There are green and red devils like those that the lightning bolts bring down, and little foreign devils in boots and beards, and—"

"Oh, let us go! let us go!" cried the little maid, and clutched SuzumÈ's sleeve.

"America no Koshikwan," Yuki was replying, in apparent unconcern, to the devils. SuzumÈ had realized the situation. "Fool!" she said to the cringing Maru, giving a scowl and a light cuff on the ear, "the princess is only telegraphing in talk instead of writing. The house-servants laugh at you. We shall have no face!"

By this time the imperilled princess was talking rapidly in English. Her countenance quivered, brightened, changed, as if a person stood before her. In pause of listening she would nod, smile, listen again, giving murmured ejaculations.

The verisimilitude proved too much for Maru. In spite of cuffs fiercely renewed, and a desperate effort to keep her limp body from the floor, she sank from her mentor's grasp, clutching the thin old legs, and sobbing, "They are bewitching our Miss Yuki,—I know they are! Foxes are shut in that black box! She will get full of them, and then they will all fly out to eat our hearts!"

"They'd have a sop of sour jelly with yours, cuttlefish!" said SuzumÈ, kicking in disgust. Finally, in utter exasperation, she seized the culprit by the ear, sliding her bodily down the hardwood floor, and depositing her in a moaning heap on the back veranda beneath a water-cooler.

"Gwendolen, Gwendolen!" Yuki was crying. "I have just now learned, I think, why you have not come or wrote to me." (Pause.) "Yes, it was just that thing,—my rank, it is called. Alas, do you remember, Gwendolen, that poor little sea-maid how she feel when the proud grandmother beckoned eight large oysters to fasten upon her scales? Well, I have now the pinch of such oysters. But I will not care so much if only you will come!" (Pause.) "My mother is with me, and her servants, but they must go very soon. I will be alone.—Yes, he is to be absent all the day. Oh, come quickly,—quickly,—I cannot bear some more long waiting." Yuki wheeled from the telephone. "She will come, mother; my friend will come! Let us go to the long drawing-room and wait for her. I will send tea and cakes to comfort the silly Maru. Some other day we shall see all of this big house. It is very ugly, though costing much money. That is honorably often the case with foreign things. Oh, mother, I have been so hungry for you and my golden friend! She will be brought to us in the long drawing-room. We are in heart and soul, if not in race, true sisters. How kind she was to me at school! I have written you before. The other girls would tease me. They asked impertinent questions, and would always be tormenting me to dance. Gwendolen was the only one to see how I felt. She protected me, and would not let me dance until my heart began to sing. She knew that real dancing, like poetry, should come only when your heart sings,—not just because you are requested. Sometimes in homesickness I would dance, sometimes in joy of springtime flowers. Those girls tried, too, to dance,—the funny American girls! But they could never learn. Not even Gwendolen could learn, though I taught and taught and taught her!"

Excitement bred of the coming visit caught her up like a leaf. Prattling on, she moved swiftly into the long room, beckoning now and then for Iriya to follow. The mother kept at quite a distance, embarrassed by this lack of restraint in a married daughter. In the centre of the room the girl paused, and, as if impelled, threw herself into a pose of wonderful beauty, every bone, every inch of white flesh set, as it were, into visible expression of a poetic thought. "I did not know that ever again I should wish to dance like this," Iriya heard her murmur. "Yes, I am coming back to myself. Even that little soul that fled on the ship,—it may come back last of all, but it will come."

Half dreamily she passed into a second pose. The transition was music. Now her long eyes closed into a mere gleaming thread, her lips parted, and trembled. Almost without motion of her mouth she talked on, in broken Japanese phrases, uttering them in rhythms, which subtly related to the gestures of her body. "No, those girls could never dance,—never dance,—with their honorably stiff shoulders and their limbs like trunks of young trees. They attempted it with fervor, but they could not augustly dance. But I will dance again, and my souls will listen. I will dance the dance of the Sun Goddess and of morning, because my friend is coming!" She hummed, now, the tune and the words of a famous classic. Iriya, completely under the spell, sank to the floor in the attitude of a singer, caught up the rhythm, and sang with her:

The beautiful gestures flowed one into the next, like currents of living water.

"Hark! listen!" cried the dancer, and paused with arms outspread. It was as if winds stood still, as if a flower-branch, tossed in air, lost suddenly its power to return. Iriya caught her breath. She too rose. Jinrikisha wheels were on the gravel. "My hour is gone," said Iriya; "I know it from the shadows. I will now return home, taking the servants with me. You remain here, my child, and greet the friend who now enters."

"Yes, I will remain here, mother, my dear, dear mother, I will greet my friend," whispered the girl. The glamour of the dance had swept back and held her. Half in the world of poetry, half in the material present, she wavered. The dawn of her friend's coming shone through both. Iriya, with a last, tender look, slipped from the room. Yuki's lip quivered like a child's as she saw her mother go. But now, down the long hall, came the tap-tap of high-heeled foreign shoes. A new tremor stirred Yuki's lips, a little hint of fear hid in her eyes.

Gwendolen paused on the threshold. For a long moment the two stood transfixed,—gazing, searching, each the face of the other. Yes, a barrier had grown between them,—the mystery of marriage, the recollection (on Gwendolen's part) of unspeakable slanders, the ghostly, intangible stirring of race antagonism, to which they themselves could not have given name. Yuki began slowly to whiten, but Gwendolen, with a backward toss of the head like Diana on a hilltop, cried out aloud, "My sister!" and the two friends, crashing through phantoms, found each other's arms. They clung close, sobbing and swaying. Whispers started, but never found conclusion. Names were repeated with every intonation of deep love. "My friend,—my Gwendolen!" "Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!" A dozen times they drew back, looked again, and clung closer. Finally they succeeded in reaching a sofa, and sat down, with hands still intertwined.

"And you, little you, are the mistress of all this great house! You are to give receptions, and be the chief hostess. I suppose you will chaperon me, you chicken! Isn't it a joke?"

"It do seem joky," admitted Yuki, with another sigh of full content.

"Well, Madame la Princesse, may I give you now my first social commission? I want a prince of my own,—a Japanese prince. Let him be poor,—all the better,—but his trademark, I mean his crest, I insist on having it warranted as the real thing."

"What would then become of poor Mr. Dodge?"

"Mr. Dodge!" echoed the other, with greatest scorn. "You certainly never had any idea I would look twice at Mr. Dodge! Besides, he is making a fool of himself over that fat, ogling Carmen Niestra. Ugh! She reminds me of a huge suet pudding with sweet sauce. I always suspected Dodge of low sentiments."

"I know not of this Miss Carmen," said Yuki, in a troubled voice. "But I like Mr. Dodge, always, very, very much; and I am sure he loved you—distractionately!"

"That just about expresses it!" cried Gwendolen; and little Yuki never knew why her friend laughed so heartily, while the dark shadow of an unspoken pain still clouded her bright eyes. "Let's change the subject," the American said quickly. "Dad told me to give you lots of love, and to say that all of us were looking forward to that grand first reception of yours. Next Thursday, isn't it? No, Friday. We got our cards yesterday."

"You will come and assist me in the preparing, won't you, dear Gwendolen?"

"I couldn't be kept away!"

"And Mrs. Todd, too. Your kind mother, will she not come?"

Gwendolen averted her face. "The truth is, Yuki, mother takes Pierre's part. Nothing that dad or I can say has influence. That awful Mrs. Stunt owns mother now, body and soul; and Mrs. Stunt has no tender feelings to spare for her own sex."

"I am not surprised at your mother, or even greatly hurt. It is right that—he—should have friends to sympathize. Say to your mother, please, that I do not resent."

"I'll say nothing of the kind!" cried Gwendolen, indignantly. "It would please Mrs. Stunt too much. Oh, they will be waiting to question me about you. Mrs. Stunt's eyes will glare like those of a hungry hyena. I shall tell them that you are superbly indifferent. That will fetch them! Mrs. Stunt, as it is, will be the first to enter your reception-rooms,—the odious little painted ghoul!"

All brightness had faded from the young faces. Each stared upon troubled visions. "Since we are on such topics, Yuki," Gwendolen began, "I might as well tell you and have done with it,—Pierre himself is acting like a spoiled child, a cad. He wants to make trouble."

"His threat is to harm Prince HaganÈ, is it not?"

"Yes! But who told you?" She looked sharply at her companion. Yuki apparently had not heard. Gwendolen went on. "Dad simply laughs at him for a foolish blusterer. He says a cricket might as well shake its fists at a grain elevator."

"There is no rumor at all that Pierre may go home to France?"

"Absolutely none. Ronsard is using him as a cat's-paw. Since your marriage Pierre has been openly announced Second Secretary of the French Legation. A sinecure, but it gives him entrÉe to all court functions,—to official receptions,—to—your reception, Yuki."

"I have thought of this also," said Yuki. "He could not harm my husband in such an open place."

"No, but with that demon of a Ronsard behind him he could embarrass, perhaps mortify, both you and HaganÈ."

Yuki fell silent. Her slim hands clasped and unclasped nervously. Her eyes were fixed on a spot of carpet near her feet. "Of course it is certain that so great statesman as HaganÈ thought of all such dangers before he wished to marry me," she murmured, as much to herself as her companion.

"Good gracious, Yuki Onda!" broke in Gwendolen, with startling abruptness. "What are those fearful scars on your hands? Did they torture you after all?"

Gwendolen's shocked face and horrified tone expressed more than she would willingly have admitted.

Yuki's eyes flashed once. She drew her hands within her sleeves. "How can you say such silly thing? Nipponese do not torture!"

Gwendolen, to hide her emotion (for she did not entirely believe Yuki's vehement asseveration) sprang up and began walking up and down the room, near the sofa where Yuki sat, watching her. "What is it that you were about to warn me of Monsieur Le Beau?" asked the latter, calmly.

"He is weak—silly—sentimental; bleating all over the place about his blighted hopes,—his ruined life. He makes me ill!" The girl was thankful to expend on the absent Pierre indignation to which she dared not ascribe the real source. Those gashes on her friend's small hands were burned already on her own heart. It did not occur to her that accident had caused them. In a time of such conflict, they must be, necessarily, the marks of cruelty and violence. Yuki guessed the pent-up fount of passion in her friend, for she remarked quite coolly, "I assure you, Gwendolen, those little scratches were made by me,—myself, on our garden hedge. I was the stupidity. No one caused but myself. You know I have never told to you an untruthful thing. As for Monsieur Le Beau, he has all reasons for saying that I have ruined his life."

"Ruined his grandmother!" cried the other. "There you are, looking meek again. No wonder that all men are bullies when we turn coward at the first frown. I thank Heaven it was no man, however, that made those scars on you. If it had been—" She stopped short, looking so fierce that Yuki had to smile at her. "Well, Amazon?" she asked.

"Oh, I hate all men!—young ones in particular. Pierre thinks his heart is bleeding, but, after all, it is chiefly his precious vanity. He don't like being jilted! Subtract vanity from the average man and you don't leave much beside the fillings of his front teeth. They are all alike! I know them!" She flung herself to the sofa and clasped her arms once more tightly around her friend. The outburst had relieved her; but a new sadness came. Yuki was still very pale. A little pathetic drooping had begun to show at the corners of her lips. Gwendolen was by nature the antagonist of resignation. She hated the dawning look of it on Yuki's face. "Yuki, Yuki, shall we ever be happy again as we were at school? Yet we were restless there. All our thoughts flew westward, far, far westward, and over that broad ocean, to your Japan. We could never be really happy, we thought, until we had reached, together, this country of your birth. Oh, it is beautiful, as you told me! Each day its beauty deepens. I know now what you meant by yama-buki fountains all of gold,—and the wide, still yellow lakes of 'na.' In our Legation garden the cherry-trees are crusted over with tiny pointed rubies, which soon—yes, very soon—must turn to flowers. All that I see is beautiful, and yet, Yuki, think in how short a time life has brought us both deep sorrow!" She drew a sigh, the long, luxurious, despairing sigh of untried youth. Yuki, having griefs more real, echoed it in softer cadence.

"Yes, the cherry-buds will open, and the fountain of your yama-buki toss, no matter what we are feeling! Is it not kind to be so? I have heard that your Legation garden is not very—harmonious. Will there be many bright spring flowers in it?"

"The garden is a blot, but it is a big blot, and things grow there, thank Heaven! Haven't you ever been to the American Legation at all? Yuki, I have an idea!"

"No," Yuki had answered. At the new sparkle of excitement in the fair face she unconsciously sat more erect.

"I have an idea!" Gwendolen repeated. "You are now your own mistress. Why can't you drive home with me, and give mother a surprise? Nothing would soften her like that,—the Princess HaganÈ to call in person!"

"Yes, yes, I will do that thing!" cried Yuki, taking fire at once. "How clever you are, Gwendolen! I would sit here mourning for the month and not have such bright idea. I tell you, listen! We will send your jinrikisha off, then you stays to luncheon with me, and after luncheon we takes the pumpkin and some rats and turn them into a great coach with horses, and drive off in splendor, like two little Cinderellas, to your mother's house! Oh, what jolliness! let us go upstairs and remove your hat!"

"What!" cried the other, in mock astonishment, "you have an upstairs, and beds for me to fling my wraps upon, and a brush and comb, perhaps, for me to rearrange my locks!"

"Come see!" challenged Yuki. They ran off together, Yuki darting up the steps, Gwendolen catching at her flying heels, both laughing, giggling, uttering short shrieks. "Well," panted the American, sitting prone upon the top step, "it seems that life is going to be worth living after all!"