In his favorite small smoking-room at the French Legation, crammed with motley Japanese and Gallic bric-a-brac, Count Ronsard fumbled nervously with his nether-lip.

"You sent for me, your Excellency?" said the secretary Mouquin, at the door.

"Allons! Entrez! It is the devil!—what our English cousins call 'the beastly bore.' But for his mother, the Princess Olga, I would wash my hands entirely!"

He went through the gesture, revolving one fat pudding of a fist about the other, and closing with an outward fling of both, and a shrug that made his body quake. "No news at all, Mouquin?"

"Nothing decisive, your Excellency. A mere hint, a hushed rumor, that Le Beau was last traced to the neighborhood of Prince HaganÈ's official residence."

"Sacrebleu! You should have probed."

"I asked a few questions guardedly. Your Excellency, one hesitates to put a match to a powder-train."

"Quite true, Mouquin. And when did the hushed rumor have it that he was seen,—what hour?"

"Before noon,—not long, in fact, after his mysterious escape from the nurses."

Ronsard's head dropped forward an inch. A sickly glow drove the usual gray pallor from his face.

"Doubtless," ventured the secretary, "Monsieur Le Beau will find his way sooner or later—to you!"

"Certainement! Certainement!" cried the other, finding relief in sarcasm. "He will come weeping to the arms of Mother France. Bah! I would that Mother France could greet him with the toes of these boots!"

He thrust forward pointed patent-leather tips, and stared at them, as if calculating the punishment they might inflict.

Mouquin, not being asked to find a seat, still stood by the door. The very air of the room held in solution, with its blue smoke, the dampness of foreboding. The first secretary's voice sounded thin.

"The doctors think this mad exposure means his certain death, your Excellency."

"Death! H'm! He'll take good care to stay alive till we're all involved. It's too late for him to die."

The other raised his brows but made no answer.

"Have an absinthe, Mouquin?"

Without noticing that Mouquin shook his head Ronsard leaned over heavily and poured a little of the liquid into a glass, filling it up with water. Without drinking, he stared as if he saw a vision in its milky depths.

"Just a chance—the air is thick with plots—Pierre might be feigning—the Princess HaganÈ—who knows?—perhaps connives, betrays—Pshaw!" Count Ronsard dreamed under his breath.

"No further orders, your Excellency?" asked the younger man, patiently, his hand on the door.

"No—yes! Bring me the first news of that wandering lunatic—and avoid the police!"

The words fell before a fury of feet that bowled down the outer corridor. The door burst open, nearly flinging Mouquin to the floor. Pierre Le Beau reeled in, crimson, panting, wild-eyed, hatless, and waved at the startled minister a large paper sealed with a red seal, round and clear as a Japanese sun. Ronsard in the millionth part of an instant recalled himself. He sat erect, but his eye gleamed beady and keen as a rat's. He was holding back with impartial judgment a riotous flush of hope. But Mouquin, as if hypnotized, locked the door and backed up against it. Pierre's eyes caught the cloudy green of the absinthe, still standing in the minister's glass. He tottered toward it, tried to speak, but merely pointed in jerks with his free hand. Ronsard silently held out the glass and motioned to an empty chair. Pierre drained the drug standing, then fell rather than sat. A sweat sprang suddenly to his skin. The fair hair plastered itself in little brown sickles on his white forehead.

"What is it, Pierre?"

Ronsard's eyes had not left the document half crumpled in Pierre's fist. His voice had a bracing echo. A returning wave of unhealthy strength warned Pierre to action.

"Yes!" he cried, swaying across the table, holding out the paper and shaking it up and down. "I've done it! What you wanted! Sold my honor to Hell for it! Quick! Quick! America! The war!"

Pierre's head, not yet balanced by the stealthy drug, reeled, and the large envelope dropped on the table. Ronsard recognized the great Cabinet seal. With a wolfish twitching at the corners of the mouth, which his utmost effort could not control, he slowly pushed his hand across the polished mahogany. Then two currents of thought met, and he paused. The fretfulness, the lax instability of flesh, were gone. He sat stiff, a compact mass, in his broad chair. One could see that behind the ample jowl stretched a great square bone.

"First, what is it, Pierre?" he repeated coldly.

Pierre rocked in his seat. "A state paper—of utmost import—signed by Grubb and Todd and all the Japanese!—It means alliance!—I saw them all as I crouched in the garden. Read it, quick! The wax is hardly set."

Ronsard's mouth watered, but his brain grew firm. "Wonderful! Past belief!" he said. "But tell me how did Monsieur—obtain possession?" He was measuring the depth of Pierre's insanity, gazing desperately for signs of returning judgment. "Is it safe for me?" he continued quietly.

"Good God, man!" cried Pierre. "Here I win you, with my life, perhaps, the very key to this war—to history for all time—and you prate about safety! Is war safe? Is anything safe?"

Ronsard's voice came low and stinging. "Tell me! Where—and how—did you get it?"

Pierre was too over-wrought to lie, even had he dared. He swaggered. He stretched forth a hand and snatched the paper defiantly. "I took it—yes, from the body of Prince HaganÈ! Glorious, wasn't it? Mon Dieu! Think of it! In his official residence!"

"It means the Cross of the Legion of Honor," said Mouquin, weakly, against the door.

"HaganÈ!" Ronsard had exclaimed in spite of himself. He knew it meant the utmost of something, but which—glory or dishonor? Either was incredible. "Yes, yes, Pierre," he said soothingly, as to a child; "HaganÈ's body—I understand. But why—didn't—HaganÈ stop you?"

"Why? It is droll—he could not! He was tied, tangled. His feet were tangled—yes, tightly entangled! He was too busy with that to follow."

Pierre's laugh turned Ronsard sick.

"What or who entangled him, Pierre?"

"You keep her name out of this, damn you!"

Ronsard's pendent underlip went gray to the root. "Then she will die, too." He breathed it to himself.

Whether Pierre heard or not, his tense attitude relaxed. He cowered back in his chair. Mouquin, thinking he had fainted, ran forward.

"No! No more absinthe! No medicine! Coffee! For God's sake, coffee! That may keep me up."

A new thought flashed to Ronsard. "Mouquin! Ring, and yourself receive the coffee—just outside the door."

His words rang quick and clear. "We must think, now, like gods or demons for swiftness," he went on to Pierre. "HaganÈ will be with us at once! How did you keep ahead? You must deny, deny! Don't you see, it compromises France?"

Pierre raised his eyes sleepily. "HaganÈ—come? No, Excellency! he did not see—"

"Madame will tell him, fool."

"Never! She will die first."

"Ah, allow me, then, to congratulate you," Ronsard permitted himself to sneer. Then swiftly, "You have been seen! The servants! The police—"

"Your Excellency," chattered Mouquin, darting a ghastly face through the door, "Prince HaganÈ is announced. He is coming down the hall—he is here!"

"I thought I heard footsteps. Hold him, just a moment." Ronsard rose to his feet. With a low whisper that stung with the lash of a knout he bent to Pierre. "Stand, you fool! And if you have never known what it is to be a man, try the feeling now! Hide the paper in your breast. There! Smile, though your face crack!"

Pierre thrust the document into his coat and rose to greet HaganÈ, who entered calm, dignified, and stately, not a fold out of place, nor a hair ruffled. If any characteristic were intensified it was in deliberate tardiness of advance, an undue rigidity of self-restraint. He bowed deeply to Count Ronsard, ignoring, for the moment, the presence of the younger men.

"Your Excellency will be surprised, perhaps annoyed, at this unceremonious call. It concerns a personal matter which could not be delayed. There is nothing official, you understand. It lies between Monsieur Le Beau and myself." He turned now to Pierre with the slightest inclination of the head, and then bowed more deferentially to the flaccid Mouquin by the wall.

"Anything that brings your Highness is an honor," returned Ronsard, himself placing a chair for the great man.

HaganÈ seated himself with the same painstaking calm. As he did not speak, his host continued, with obvious effort at composure, "What does slightly surprise me, your Highness,—if you will allow me to say it,—is—er—your seeming so certain of finding Monsieur Le Beau here, when your efficient police have been searching—"

"Le Beau has been here for some time," put in Mouquin, who was so nervous that he should have been elsewhere.

Ronsard winced. A sombre fire flickered in HaganÈ's eyes. "And am I to infer that the efficient police, of whom his Excellency so kindly speaks, have failed to keep in touch with Monsieur's Legation?"

The two young men crossed glances of dismay. Quickly HaganÈ turned his eyes to Pierre's flushed face. Each moist curl burned it like a scar. "And similarly, I suppose, I am mistaken in thinking that Monsieur Le Beau has but just arrived in great haste."

Before an answer could be found, footsteps and a timid knock made interruption. Mouquin craned his neck around to the aperture of the door, altering but slightly the position of his body.

"A servant says, Excellency, that the American minister, Mr. Todd, telephones from his Legation that he must see you immediately."

"Go, Mouquin, and stop him," said Ronsard, glibly. "Say I am out. But if he is already started wait for him at the door, and be careful to usher him into the small drawing-room, and keep him there till I come. Conciliate him. Your conversation, you understand, is to be on the high C of flippancy."

In the short interval Pierre had regained self-control. "Lord HaganÈ, in what way can I serve you?" He made a great effort to be nonchalant.

HaganÈ leaned slightly toward Ronsard. "Perhaps you have heard, Excellency, that a few moments since, Monsieur Le Beau picked up, in my humble home, quite by accident, a private letter that I had carelessly let fall."

"A private letter!" Ronsard turned with well-feigned astonishment to his subordinate. "Oh, no! Monsieur Le Beau is the soul of honor!"

Pierre could not think how to weigh the naturalness of indignation against a gentlemanly magnanimity. "The prince is mistaken," he said weakly. "It must have been another man."

Without a flicker of anger or impatience HaganÈ, still facing the count, inquired, "Does the young man act with your authority?"

"Mon Dieu, your Highness! No. Monsieur Le Beau has a certain official connection—but in such a private matter"—Spread hands and a shrug completed the thought.

"Were you not at my villa this morning?" HaganÈ had turned suddenly to Pierre.

What could the Frenchman say? "No," came the pliant lie.

"Come now, Prince HaganÈ!" began Ronsard, genially. "You see it's all a mistake. Forgive the boy his embarrassment. He is ill. To accuse him of purloining a private letter! Mother of God! In France it means a duel—"

"Not purloining, your Excellency," corrected HaganÈ. "Taking by accident,—quite by accident. That is different. If our young friend was suffering from delirium he may have forgotten. Ask him to feel in his pocket."

"It's a damnable lie, hatched for some personal reason," said Pierre.

HaganÈ slowly rose. It was as if bronze moved. Ronsard instinctively imitated him, watching closely. He was convinced, now, that HaganÈ knew; but could not guess his next move.

"My time is valuable to-day," said the Japanese, drawling a little. "I must speak with Monsieur Le Beau alone."

Blank silence fell on the group. HaganÈ looked from one to the other, a slight shade of contempt growing in his eyes. "Is Monsieur Le Beau afraid?" he asked politely. "I assure you, gentlemen, I am unarmed. Even so, he might feel safer with a knife, a pistol. I regret that mine is at home, or I would be pleased to lend it. Perhaps one of these gentlemen can accommodate you."

Pierre's face was growing white in a circle about his mouth. He stepped to Ronsard's desk, took out a revolver, a pearl and silver toy, and slammed it on the table between himself and HaganÈ.

"Go, your Excellency!" he said, with eyes on Ronsard. "I, too, desire private speech with him."

"Pierre! Pierre! remember France," cried Count Ronsard.

HaganÈ bowed to the speaker.

As Ronsard hesitated at the door, Mouquin pushed it open cautiously and brought in the coffee. "Not yet, Excellency," he said. HaganÈ waved his refusal of a proffered cup. Pierre poured himself three cups in succession, draining quickly each scalding draught.

HaganÈ bowed again to Ronsard. "Now," he said simply.

"Get out, Mouquin. Remember, Prince, the boy is ill."

"I can take care of myself," Pierre said, his boyish head thrown back.

Left alone the two men faced each other. Pierre leaned with one delicate hand on the table. Nervously exalted and chafed by silence he hurled words at his sombre opponent.

"If your time is really valuable you waste it, my Lord. I advise you to inquire elsewhere."

"Let us be seated," said HaganÈ, with a pleasant smile. Pierre, as at a physical thrust, went backward into a chair. "Now, shall we smoke?" continued the other, his tone deepening in friendliness. Its suavity had the effect of smothering. Pierre fought it off with a rude weapon.

"Certainly, your Highness. Cigarettes or opium?"

"Ah! Do you keep the latter luxury?" inquired the prince, with interest. "Have Frenchmen adopted this—vice—also?"

"I meant for you only," explained Pierre, foolishly.

"You must be a new-comer, unaware that I, myself, had the drug excluded from Japan. You Christian Europeans had already forced it on China."

Pierre did not look up or try to answer. He felt his every move a false one. The steadying of the coffee did not come fast enough. He was in a hurry to get in some telling thrust. He must defend himself and Yuki. Count Ronsard should, after all, acknowledge him a man. The smooth, cool tones of the other now flowed like a refreshing liquid through his brain.

"Am I right in thinking this your first visit to Japan, Monsieur?"

Pierre, half dazed, answered, with instinctive politeness, "My first, yes. But I have for years been interested."

"May I venture to ask what special phase of our civilization has been honored with your interest?"

Pierre's demon nudged him. "It's woman," he said, with a short, ugly laugh.

HaganÈ's smile grew almost fatherly. "In that you are no exception to the majority of your countrymen, Monsieur."

"To be accurate I should have said—a woman."

The nobleman took a long whiff at his cigarette before remarking thoughtfully, "It is an unending source of wonder to our students, Monsieur, that you of the West, even your greatest thinkers, take women so seriously. Now with us, apart from the one function of becoming the mothers of our sons, they are to men as playthings to children,—as flowers, or bright-colored birds."

"Am I to infer, then, that to your Highness one woman would be about as desirable as another?"

"Ah, Monsieur! You are caustic. Not quite that, I protest. There is discrimination, even in playthings. And we must always take into account the effect of physique,—and character,—upon possible sons."

At repetition of this sickening thought Pierre's rage gave a convulsive bound. The veins in his temples burned the skin. His delicate hands clenched themselves into steel. He grasped the pistol, brandished it wildly, and putting his face close to HaganÈ hissed, "Leave out the name of Yuki, and your satyr's thoughts of her, if you expect to live!"

The prince's raised hand concealed an expression of amusement. Sadness, not altogether convincing, took its place. Pierre sank back to his chair sulkily, ashamed of his violence.

HaganÈ's eyes lowered themselves, as if in embarrassment, to the table. He toyed with the brittle stem of a wine-glass. "It is unfortunate you are so excitable. For it was just about—Yuki—no, never mind the pistol—that I was thinking to take you into my confidence."

Le Beau stared. The prince continued thoughtfully: "You have been her friend—"

"I am her friend!"

"Exactly. I thought you ought to be told. After to-day there will be—no Princess HaganÈ. She leaves my roof and must publicly relinquish my name."

The prince spoke blandly. Pierre's eyes seemed to protrude. The shock of this menace counteracted the coffee. "She is innocent—" He corrected himself. "Why? What has she done?"

HaganÈ smiled pleasantly. "Her innocence, as you call it, is too dangerous. My duties, you know. She distracts me, tires me. A mere child!"

"You never cared for her. You took her from me to show your hellish power. Now you will cast her out, dishonor her—relentlessly, for a new whim!"

"Monsieur should know best why I cannot trust her."

A wild thought leaped like flame about Pierre's distorted fancy. "Can you mean that she goes utterly free—free to be happy—back to her father's home?"

HaganÈ lowered his eyes. When he spoke his tone was conciliatory, even regretful.

"Onda, being my kerai, will scarcely consent to receive her."

"Monsters! both of you. I see—I might have known. But the Todds, thank God, are her friends!"

HaganÈ half lifted heavy lids. "Minister Todd,—who has signed that stolen paper,—may—er—hesitate."

"Mother of Christ! What will you have me think? What is to be her fate? Some foul black thought still bubbles behind those reptile eyes of yours! Out with it! Is she to be cast forth helpless, friendless, at the mercy of the first charitable stranger—"

HaganÈ lifted a hand. "Now we approach reason though by a somewhat frenzied path. You are the succoring knight. Merely return to me, with unbroken seal, the document I saw you take, and for reward I ask you to receive free, and untrammelled, the person of the present Princess HaganÈ."

Suspicion drove back into shadow a host of eager thoughts. After one incredulous look Pierre burst into a clamor of mirthless laughter. "So it is a bribe! What fools you must truly think all foreigners. Give the princess to me bodily? This is melodrama. Even had I the paper and should return it—I still deny, damn you!—you would take powerful precaution that she did not come."

"Do you so greatly distrust your powers of attraction?"

"No, nor her love, God bless her! But I distrust you and your Oriental subtleties. She would come—she loves me—but you would not let her. What guarantee can you offer?"

HaganÈ looked pained. "No one has ever doubted my word. But if you need it, take Japan's most sacred oath—by the life of our Emperor! Prevent her? Oh, no. I shall urge—compel."

Pierre struggled to preserve his balance. "Even in this barbaric country—have even—you—such power? Can you not be called to some account?"

"I regret the necessity of being vulgar," said HaganÈ, in a composed voice, "but I see I must explain. It is my—what you call position—my—er—rank. It might not be possible to every Japanese, Monsieur. But as things are, the woman is as much mine as a French spaniel would be yours. Again I assure you, by the life of my Emperor, she will come. Again I ask, Do you accept my bargain?"

Pierre whispered to himself Count Ronsard's words, "Remember France!" He tried to keep his reason, but the wave of hope had surged high. He saw as in a vision Yuki, disgraced, rejected, wandering alone through the wind-swept streets. He saw her face sheltered upon his arm,—that little face so pure, so delicate, so well-beloved. Her desolation touched him for a moment with an unselfish grief. "She is proud—she is brave!" he cried aloud. "Even at your orders will she come?"

"I think so, Monsieur. She might possibly consider it a last chance to serve the country she has wronged."

"Yes, and she might prefer to die."

HaganÈ sent a curious, cold look to search the young man's thought. "Do Christians dare—to die?"

The acid scorn bit deep. "Yes," raved Pierre. "And they dare to live, and, sometimes, they dare to slay! I do not consent, remember. I believe it yet to be a trick, a mockery. If I find it so, I swear in the name of that Christian God whom you blaspheme—if I find that you are holding out the one bribe that you know I would sell my soul to the devil for—thinking to gloat over the new deviltry of snatching it away—I'll—I'll—" He broke off, mouthing for words that would not come.

His hand unconsciously fingered the cold surface of the pistol. Again HaganÈ looked bored, and made a gesture of distaste.

"Don't sneer like that, you toad of hell!" shrieked his companion. "You think this bluster,—but I mean it. I mean it terribly!" A sudden sound in the outer hall cut short the threat. Footsteps, in stockinged feet, or in the Japanese tabi, came swiftly. Both men by instinct fixed eyes upon the door.

Yuki walked straight to her husband and stood still. Their eyes met. "I thank the Gods that you are safe," she said aloud. Her glance moved quickly to Pierre, surprising on his face a hurt, incredulous expression.

"Monsieur, be comforted. It is for the country, not for me," mocked HaganÈ.

"And now, Madame," he said, with bloodshot eyes on Yuki, "have you explanation for this new act of disobedience, of affront to my dignity?"

Yuki did not hasten to reply. Whether the power had grown from without or within that childish form, a new strength was now hers. She had the look of one who, after long wandering in a dangerous forest, has spied a path.

The gray robe, hastily caught back to decorous lines, showed traces of rough handling. Over her head she had thrown a light wrap called a dzukin. It hid her forehead with a nun-like band, was crossed under the chin, and knotted loosely behind the head. Not a strand of hair emerged. Her face, in the dull silver setting, gleamed like a long white pearl.

HaganÈ observed the change in her. The repulsion left his eyes. He waited in patience, and with some curiosity, for her answer. "I came, your Highness," she vouchsafed at length, "because without me you cannot get the paper."

HaganÈ's eyes went instantly to Pierre.

"Yuki, for God's sake are you mad?" cried the Frenchman. "I know of no paper. I have assured him that I do not know of it!"

"Give him the paper, Pierre," said the girl, gently. "Through me it was lost, and if I am to have a human soul hereafter—give him the paper."

HaganÈ sucked in bitter triumph from Pierre's discomfiture. His eyes crucified the boyish face. Like a brood of dark vultures his conjectures swooped down to the cowering prey. Yet before Yuki's entrance he had, for a moment, felt talons at his own breast. Instinctively Pierre had clutched at his coat, where the document lay concealed. HaganÈ said softly, "Perhaps it is as well, Madame, that you have disobeyed. Yet on your lover's countenance I do not observe signs of joyous welcome."

"I came looking for no welcome, Lord, nor has personal desire directed me. I have done great wrong. Again has my weakness proved my enemy. But a hope of partial atonement has not gone altogether from me." She stretched both hands to Pierre. "Pierre, if you have known love, give me the paper."

"I do not understand," stammered Pierre. "Are you against me for that man? Here is the chance of our revenge,—our passport to happiness. I have not harmed him otherwise. Would you take this one possible chance from me?"

"I am not against you, Pierre. I am not for HaganÈ. It is myself, my wretched, shivering self, for which I plead. No, you cannot understand. I am Japanese. I must regain the paper. Through my cowardice you won it. At any sacrifice you can name I must get it back."

HaganÈ saw how she labored to keep her voice gentle and soothing. She had the accents of a suffering mother who tries to coax a sick child. The husband saw more in the calm, ashen face. "You have yet patriotism," he said, so low that she alone heard.

To these words she gave no recognition. She watched the Frenchman as HaganÈ studied her. The folds of her dzukin, heaped high and light about the slim throat, stifled her. She tugged nervously at it until one end came loose and fell. By inches the flexible fabric crawled down from hair to shoulder, then down her body to the floor. The disorder of the thick hair, one blue-black lock almost hiding her left temple and streaming to her breast, gave her an unfamiliar, a weird, even a supernatural appearance.

HaganÈ still held a cigarette in the death-mask of his face. He took it out now carefully. "You speak of revenge, Monsieur, meaning, of course, the personal revenge. Europeans conceive all offences to be personal. You weaklings have your code,—your jumping-jack ethics. Something touches a spring, and your honor leaps up and crows. You could hardly understand the language we now speak, though our words were purest French. I will attempt to elucidate. This woman refers to an—essence—underlying all personalities and all time. It is a stratum of substance which boils and seethes in our sun, which sets the planets swinging in their steady paths, which ebbs and flows, a thin, resistless tide, down through the world of ghosts. We call it 'En.' You have no better word, I think, than 'Necessity.' This woman had a trust and failed. Sometimes the sabre slash of fatal weakness lays bare a hidden source of strength. I believe it to be so with her. The gods have smiled a ritual of sacrifice! No,—you do not understand. If I sang an obscene song your eyes would sparkle,—now they are bits of dull blue clay.—Onda Yuki-ko!" he said in another tone, and with a voice slightly raised, "have you the thought that, in winning back for your land this stolen document, you become worthy again to be my wife,—to bear my name?" Yuki's head went up a little. If Death himself could smile he would perhaps own the gleam which for an instant lighted her dark eyes. "Lord, we agree that I have failed. There is no deeper degradation. As for resuming your name,—you should have understood, before this, that I shall not need it."

Pierre wrinkled his forehead. The three stood. Pierre leaned against the edge of a massive table, and sometimes steadied himself with hands upon it. He bore upon the oaken surface now. The drift of their conversation, though in careful English, was indeed beyond him. HaganÈ did not menace Yuki. In her look toward him was no hint of fear. Yet between them, across from each to each, in all the space around them, the spider—tragedy—hurried unceasingly, and wove a closing web. They stared out from the black net with faces of calm nobility. An influence shook the Frenchman, vibrated through the particles of his brain, shrank and inflated his soul in its clay vessel. In bewilderment, as one reaches out in the dark, his voice cried, "Is this your sorrow, Yuki? Do you wish still to be his? If you bid me, perhaps I too can sacrifice. Shall I buy his mercy for you with this paper?" He snatched it out, but instead of presenting it, held the white rectangle again against his breast. The seal glared and winked like the inflamed eye of a pygmy Cyclops.

This was Pierre's supremest moment. Never again did he reach an equal height. The altitude turned him cold and dizzy. Blood surged in his ears, and tears of self-appreciation, of self-pity, sponged with a misty blur the room and its occupants.

Yuki, catching her underlip between her teeth, and bruising her slim hands together for control, went nearer. "Pierre, I thank you. I shall never forget this greatness,—in another world or this. You do much to restore what you, too, have lost. But I cannot bid you sacrifice. HaganÈ would not take the paper at that price. I myself must find a way to win it."

HaganÈ sat like a mass of clay new fallen from a cliff. Yuki's voice trailed off. An angelic sweetness hung about the echoes.

Now the clay was troubled. It stirred heavily. HaganÈ rose with his usual massive deliberation. "Tell her, Frenchman, the price I had already offered you."

"I shall not do it with that pure face before me, HaganÈ."

HaganÈ bowed. No hint of sarcasm cheapened the salutation. "Then, Yuki, I must speak it. I offered him in exchange for the paper your fair, white body to be his, as a dog is his, as a snatched blossom. That was my bargain."

For an instant she swayed and leaned one hand on the table opposite from Pierre. HaganÈ placed a chair for her. Before sinking to it she spoke, her eyes set on her husband, her voice grave and contained. "Then, Lord HaganÈ, you have revealed a depth of degradation below the uttermost punishment which I should have thought you willing to bestow."

"Also," continued HaganÈ, "I ventured to declare, and to believe, that you would go to him willingly." Pierre quivered under this insult to the woman he loved. But Yuki did not look ashamed. Pushing back the hair from both temples she bent her eyes upward, as though invoking strength from unseen powers.

"Yes, Yuki, darling," cried Pierre, coming to her. "He will free you honorably. You shall be mine forever, and we shall soon forget these horrors of the past. I will give him the paper if you wish it. What do I care for Ronsard or for France if I, with this, can buy your life-long happiness?"

Yuki shivered in all the length of her limbs. HaganÈ turned away. His face could not be seen with the utterance of his next words. Curiously enough they sounded apologetic.

"It was the only way I saw, Yuki, the only bribe that such a man might take. Your body, soiled already, have I offered. Do you understand?"

Pierre's gaze, too, had fallen. Shame weighed all lids. An abnormal silence came to the little group. Yuki broke it with a long, long breath, as of relief and comprehension. The men looked toward her. HaganÈ clenched a brown fist to a cluster of throbbing veins. But the Frenchman gaped, incredulous, and gaped again. For Yuki was smiling at something far away. A light already not of earth lay on her waxen brow. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now, at last, I understand. You will not force the gift, HaganÈ. It must be mine. Why, Pierre, look not so strange because, at last, I understand. You cannot know yet, poor Pierre, but soon you will know too. I must be yours, of course. Have you not planned, and spied, and—stolen for this?"

"Yuki," said HaganÈ, in a deeply troubled voice, "if Monsieur Le Beau by any chance should give the paper—unconditionally should refuse the price—"

"No! no!" she cried, with a quick note of terror, and sprang to her feet again. "Where would be my atonement, my reparation? Think it not, Lord. See that your great mercy be not merciless. I shall go, gladly, gladly, to Monsieur Le Beau; my heart falters not for myself,—but him. It is a cruel deed to him."

"And well deserved," muttered HaganÈ.

"Being myself weak, Lord," said the young wife, "I feel that the deserving is, after all, the hardest pang."

Pierre dashed his hand across his brow, and went to a small sideboard for a liqueur. Again these strange people were talking their mystic gibberish. Yuki was more clear, indeed. She had stated openly to her husband that she wished to be given to another man. Neither seemed to feel the least delicacy or shame. In Pierre's fastidious thought this fact made a tiny stain for Yuki. The old brute evidently wanted to be rid of her, and she, eagerly accepting freedom, did not shrink from claiming at once a more desirable companionship. At the last moment should he, Pierre, refuse to grasp the prize he had turned criminal in pursuing? No, a thousand times no! Yuki's friendless condition demanded his deepest pity. It was with a faint touch of condescension that he leaned to her, saying, "Do not falter now, Yuki. Our goal is in sight. I will be true to you. I will yet make you happy!"

"Happy! happy!" echoed the woman in a ghost's voice. "All foreigners think and say only that one thing,—happy! Pierre, Pierre, I need so much more than—happiness!"

The pathos of her voice, her small face, touched him to a manlier emotion. She was so young, so white, so helpless!

"What it is possible for me to give you I live but to bestow, my darling," he said, and, kneeling, kissed a small, scarred hand. "I can promise love, protection, deep respect,—for the slime of this man shall not cling to you!"

HaganÈ snatched him bodily from the floor. His eyes blazed like a beast's. "Time will come for puling. A few things are yet to be said. Let us conclude the savory bargain. I must be gone."

"Yes, let us finish quickly," whispered Yuki.

"Gallant lover," continued HaganÈ to Pierre, "when and how do you wish to claim your prize?"

"Now, at once," cried Pierre, rallying a little under the scorn hurled toward him. "You have the eyes of a demon. She would not be safe alone with you. Take the paper now, and let me have her!"

Yuki shivered again, and hid her face in her sleeve.

"I shall not harm madame. This I can assure you. But the earliest possible hour for your ecstasy will be—to-night!"

"To-night—to-night!" moaned Yuki.

"It must be so. You cannot pass another night beneath my roof, and there is none who dares receive you but this brawny champion."

"To-night! It is an eternity away!" cried Pierre. "See, love, the sun already is low. I hear the moat-crows cawing. To-night we shall begin to live!"

"Kwannon Sama—oh, dear Saviour, help me to endure," said Yuki to herself.

"To-morrow I join the army in Manchuria. Whatever is to do must be completed before the dawn."

"To-night! To-night, this very night!" sang Pierre, like a schoolboy. "They called me sick, but I am already a well man! That was a marvellous draught you gave me in the tea-rooms, Yuki."

For the first time HaganÈ showed a puzzled frown. Yuki explained quickly. "Oh, I had forgotten that you did not know. Pierre wandered delirious into our garden this forenoon, your Highness, just after your instructions to me. I could think of no way to send him off, so I took him to the Cha no yu rooms and gave him a fever mixture and a sleeping-draught. I believed he would remain asleep until after the meeting."

"But I didn't," laughed Pierre. "It must have been the God of Good Luck that woke me when he did."

"I tried to tell your Highness before the meeting, although you had given me orders not to disturb your mind," went on Yuki to her husband in the same quiet way. "Perhaps you will recall my effort."

"I do," said HaganÈ. "It goes far to exonerate you. Tell me more in detail." Yuki closed her lips. She did not wish to be exonerated, at least by HaganÈ. This was her one supreme opportunity for full expiation,—for sacrifice. No one should wrest it from her.

"I woke in good time," babbled Pierre, to whose brain the liquor was giving a strange lightness. "I saw the statesmen come and go. They whispered and leaned down. I saw Todd, and Sir Charles,—and Yuki by the window. I saw my Lord HaganÈ come to her with the great paper in his hand. She was going to betray poor Pierre to him, but first the great lord must have his say. He told her of the paper—and then he made iron love—that old lord. I could hear his joints rasp. 'Yuki, you are my wife! When this time of stress and strain is over I shall teach you something of a brighter hue than duty!' Ah, ha! making love, like any schoolboy! She never kissed you as she has kissed me, HaganÈ. Oh, she cared for me in the little tearooms. We played we were married. Go there; you will find the cushions, the trinkets strewn around, the broken hairpin."

A dull purple tide rushed upward to HaganÈ's face and stayed there. No battle-wounds could sting and torture like the mincing mimicry of the Frenchman's words. His control was superhuman. He leaned an instant nearer the fireplace to flip off a cigarette ash, then faced his companions coolly. "I must remember to investigate the scene of romance."

Yuki bowed. If she had craved martyrdom, here were assuring circumstances. Pierre's thoughtless words, HaganÈ's passionate calm, were prison manacles. They snapped on wrists already scarred. She welcomed the cold compulsion.

"Well," Pierre hurried on, "let us get back to business. To-night, you say? I agree, but where?"

"Should the noble count permit such base use of it, the most suitable spot would be your Legation," said HaganÈ.

Pierre gave a hiss. His head was on fire again. He must hurry and have things settled before the full conflagration came. "More melodrama! I feel the sincerity of your suggestion. Shall I summon the noble count to be asked?"

"Certainly. I shall await him here. Kindly hasten, as the day already wanes."

Pierre fell back a little, half in derision, half in apprehensive credulity, like a harlequin in two shades.

"You really mean it! Well, I shall go. I will get him if he is to be brought. He must come,—I shall be in need of him. It is all a dream, a fever dream. Will you give parole to stay here till I come back,—you and Yuki?" His bright eyes shot suspiciously from one to the other. There was still so much he did not understand.

HaganÈ sighed. He assumed the expression of one who has had an insect light upon him and whose dignity forbids him to brush it off.

"Answer the Frenchman, Yuki-ko."

"We will remain, Monsieur Le Beau," said Yuki.

Left alone, the husband and wife instinctively drew nearer. After gazing for a long moment HaganÈ suddenly put out his hands. Yuki thrust hers within them and lifted wide eyes. Her face had a look of blurred moonlight. Out of the mystic whiteness her eyes gleamed like deep spiritual wells, where hopes and possibilities, already death-shadowed, drifted in a spectral sheen. HaganÈ tightened his clasp, and at the same instant let his own soul come full into his face. Yuki shivered. Her lips parted. Virtue flowed in upon her from his touch. She thought, as in a vision, of the Kioto statue worn smooth by the touch of dying men. What ghostly comfort that image could have held was but a feeble emanation beside the blinding power of this living god.

"All things are not yet clear to me," said the man. "Something is hidden, and you jealously conceal the hiding-place. Yet you sheltered that spy. You prevented me from following. Speak your whole heart, Yuki."

"If I have a secret, Lord, it is one which aids to purify and consecrate my sacrifice. I long for that sweet hour, Lord. My parched spirit strains toward it."

HaganÈ's lips twitched once. "Yuki, as to the ear of your ancestral gods, tell me, should this paper be regained by means less terrible,—are you worthy to be my wife?"

Thinking of her weakness, her great and not ignoble efforts doomed always, it would seem, to failure, and with the knowledge of this man's greatness full upon her, Yuki answered simply, "No." Her very innocence betrayed her and sealed the doom of death.

HaganÈ had a man's thoughts. Pierre's boast—the disordered rooms of the tea-house—the broken hairpin—lashed him with a fiery hail. He groaned and dropped his face.

"Yuki, Yuki!" came a voice as though from a mangled soul. "Did you not begin to feel it? I love you! From that first instant in Washington—I have loved you more dearly than I ought. The Gods punish me for my infatuation!"

Yuki's cheeks grew faintly tinged. "Once, nay, twice, Lord, my heart bespoke it, but I dared not listen. If a star had slid through the night to my hand, I would sooner believe that I dreamed, awake, than that the heavens had lost a star."

"A soul—a face—a heart like thine, Yuki—to be befouled by a Frenchman's love!" he cried in agony.

"Dear Lord," whispered the girl, "perhaps by suffering greatly in this life—perhaps in my completeness of expiation—I shall, in the next life, be near thee!"

HaganÈ could only groan. The black spider busied itself about them. A strange stillness fell on Yuki. She put up a hand to her husband's shoulder, drawing him closer. "My soul is like a quiet pool, my husband. Gaze in, softly, and see your own face there. Nay, break not the shining by thy tears. You must help me to suffer greatly. Let no interference come. This last treachery to the weak boy who has loved me is part of the pain. He will forgive me and forget. He will even be happier than for me to live on as your wife—your loved wife! That is too heavenly a thing for one so frail as I. Let me die, Lord, as you and I, though without speech, have agreed upon. At last I shall serve. Will you promise to befriend me to that hour, my husband?"

"To that hour and beyond!" groaned HaganÈ. A moment after, he said, "Do you realize, my Yuki, what may be the power of a soul freed like yours,—shot suddenly from the bowstring of a fixed purpose? It is a thunderbolt of the Gods! Not only in your body's death, but through your free soul, after, shall you aid Nippon!"

The wonder in her wide gaze grew. A dawn, it spread circling to outer rims of darkness. Currents of unseen force seemed to whirl in the air about them.

"Soul of my Yuki, I shall summon you to fields of death. Stand near me in perplexing hours, cleave to him who is to be thy mate in a nobler rebirth! Breathe your power through me in moments of despair, lift up your voice when a thousand guns roar death, when ghosts spring up like flames, and the commander sobs to hear the cry of 'Victory!' So shall you be worthy!"

"Lord! Lord! Already art thou a God, and I thy chosen comrade! Wield my freed spirit to our country's need! At last I shall be strong. Into thy hands—Lord—"

Things of the flesh flared up and blew back forever, like scraps of burnt moor-grass. The white flint of her soul had struck from him its spark of immortality!