For all save one, sleep came early that evening to the house in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods. In her little room Haru lay as stirless as a sleeping flower. There was no sound save the hushed accents of the outer night that penetrated the wooden amado.

At length she rose, noiselessly slid the paper shoji, and with infinite care, inch by inch, pushed back the shutters. The moon had risen and a flood of moonlight came into the room. Stealthily she opened a wall-closet and selected her best and gayest robe—a holiday kimono of dim green, with lotos flowers, and an obi of cloth-of-gold, with chrysanthemums peeping from the weave. By the round mirror on her low dressing-cabinet, she redressed the coiled ebony butterfly of her hair, and set a red flower in it. She touched her face with the soft rice-powder, and added a tint of carmine to the set paleness of her cheeks. She wrapped in a furoshiki some soberer street clothing, toilet articles, and a mauve kimono woven with silver camelias, set the bundle by the opened amado and noiselessly passed into the next room.

It was the larger living-apartment. The tiny lamp which burned before the golden shrine of Kwan-on on the Buddha-shelf cast a wan glimmer over the spotless alcove, and threw a ghostly light on her finery. Through the thin paper shikiri she could hear her father's deep breathing, and in the room in which he slept a little clock chimed eleven. She opened the door of the shrine and stood looking at the tablet it held—the ihai of her mother. The kaimyo, or soul name, it bore signified "Moon-Dawn-of-the-Mountain-of-Light-Dwelling-in-the-Mansion-of-Luminous-Perfume." She rubbed her palms softly together before it and her lips moved silently. From the golden shadows she seemed suddenly to feel her mother's hand guiding her childish steps to that place of morning worship, to see that loving face, as she remembered it, looking down on her across the rim of years. She bent and passed her hand along the two swords, one long, one short, that rested on their lacquered rack beneath the shelf—it was her farewell to her father.

She had left no message. She could tell no one. If she succeeded, she would have done her part. If she failed—there was only a blank darkness in that thought. But she had no agitation now—only a dull ache.

In her own room she took a book from a drawer and slipped it into her sleeve, caught up the furoshiki, stepped noiselessly to the outer porch and carefully closed the amado behind her.

She walked swiftly back to the empty Chapel. The great glass window that had seemed so beautiful with the light behind it, was now dark and opaque and dead. Only the cross above the roof in the moonlight looked as white as snow. She drew the book from her sleeve. It was her Bible, with her name on the fly-leaf. She unhooked the gold chain about her neck and slipped off the little enamel cross. She put this between the leaves of the Bible and laid it on the doorstep.

A half-hour later she stood before a wistaria-roofed gate in Kasumiga-tani Cho—the "Street-of-the-Misty-Valley"—near Aoyama parade-ground. The glass lantern above it threw a dim light on a gravel path twisting through low shrubbery. Down the street she could hear a dozen students chanting the marching song of HirosÉ Chusa, the young war hero:

Haru opened the gate. Cherry-petals were sifting down like rosy snowflakes over the scarlet trembling of nanten bushes. A little way inside was a graceful house entrance half-shaded by a trailing vine. The amado were not closed, the shoji were brilliantly lighted.

With a little sob she unfastened the golden obi, rewound and tied it with the knot in front.