The mellow summer was gone. With the dawn of the autumn the languor of the country seemed to increase. Now that the weather was cooler, however, they made frequent trips to the city, visiting the chrysanthemum shows, loitering through Uyeno park, the Shiba temples, and bazaars. And one day Jack shook gayly before her eyes a really awe-inspiring document. It was, in fact, an invitation, written in fine French, from a Japanese person of high rank, inviting him to attend a very important function, which was to be given at the HÔtel Imperial on the Mikado’s birthday, which function was to be honored by the presence of “les princes et les princesses.”

“We are going, of course,” he told her. “It will be a change, and, besides, I want to show you off to my friends. There’ll be hosts of them there, you know.”

But she protested. First she set forth as excuse the fact that she was only an honorably rude and insignificant humble geisha girl, who would be out of place in so great and extraordinary an assemblage.

Then her husband quite seriously reproved her, and reminded her forcibly that she was anything but an insignificant geisha girl. She was, in fact, a very important person—his wife.

Ah, yes, she admitted that she had indeed grown in caste since her marriage with him; nevertheless, they had lived so honorably secluded together that she had forgotten all the polite mannerisms of society, which she had never been acquainted with at all, being only a crude girl of humble parentage. She would surely disgrace not only both of them by her behavior, but doubtless the whole assemblage. She would not know how to act, how to look, and when to speak.

Then Jack insisted, with affected selfishness, that she should look at and speak to no one but himself. He would commit hari-kari, or joshi, or any old kind of Japanese suicide, otherwise. And as for her manners, they were lovely, perfect, just right.

“Ah, bud you—” she deprecated. “You don’ understan’, you big barbarian. Those same honorable monsters, Japanese princes, whad, before all the gods, they goin’ to thing of me?”

“That you are absolutely adorable. How could they help thinking so, unless they are stone blind. Besides, this isn’t a Japanese affair at all. It’s at a European hotel, and there’ll be all sorts and conditions of people there. I was lucky to get the invitations. They aren’t for every one, you know. This is a big thing.”

“You so big,” she said, proudly.

“Well, no. It had really nothing to do with my size. You see, I have a half-Jap friend in America, and of course it’s through him I’m favored.”

“Ah, thad half-Jap, he was very high-up man ad Japan, perhaps?”

“Well, he was connected with some of the big families, though he was quite poor.”

“Thad,” said Yuki, with sudden vehemence, “is no madder ad Japan. Money! Who has thad money? Nod the ole families, the flower of the country; jus’ the shop-keepers and the politicians.”

Her husband was startled at her outbreak. He was astonished at her knowledge of existing conditions in her country. But she did not pursue the subject, saying she disliked it.

And the ball? What about that?

Well, she would not go with him. He must go to that all alone, for the million big reasons she had given him. Moreover, all the ladies would wear Parisian toilettes. It would be a disgrace for his wife to go in a kimono.

Again he was astonished at her. How did she know that on such occasions the ladies, Japanese included, dressed in European gowns?

Apparently she knew more concerning such matters than he had imagined. It was becoming plainer to him every day that his wife was of no ordinary family. And then the memory of the old rambling palace, doubtless her home, in the exquisite, aristocratic little town where he had followed her, supported this idea. Who was his wife, after all? Who were her people, and why had none of them come near her during all these months? What was the meaning of the mystery in which she had surrounded herself ever since he had known her. And now, when there was scarcely a doubt left in his mind of her love for him, why had he failed to win her confidence?

“I want to know just who you are, my little wife,” he suddenly said. “I do not believe that tale about your people. I know you are not a geisha girl. You are not, are you?”

“No,” she said, very softly.

“Then tell me. Who are your people? It is only right I should know this.”

She looked up at him with intense seriousness. Then her eyes fluttered, and she went rambling into one of her fairy tales of nonsense.

“My people? Who they are? My august ancestors came from the moon. My one hundled grade-grandfathers fight and fight and fight like the lion, and conquer one-half of all Japan—fight the shogun, fight the kazoku, fight each other. They were great Samourai, cutting off the haeds of aevery humble mans they don’ like. So much bloodshed displeased the gods. They punishing all my ancestors, bringin’ them down to thad same poverty of those honorable peebles killed by them. Then much distress an’ sadness come forever ad our house. All pride, all haughty boasting daed forever. Aeverybody goin’ ‘bout weepin’ like ad a funeral. Nobody habby. What they goin’ do git bag thad power an’ reeches ag’in? Also one ancestor have grade big family to keep from starving, an’ one daughter beautiful as the moon of her ancestors. He weep more than all the rest of those ancestors, weep an’ weep till he go blind like an owl ad day-time. Then the gods begin feel sawry. One of them mos’ sawry of all. He also is descendant of the Sun. Well, thad sun-god he comin’ down ad Japan, make big raddle an’ noise, an’ marrying with thad same beautifullest daughter of thad ole blind ancestor. Thad sun-god my fadder. Me? I am the half-moon-half-sun offspring.”

She had promised to accompany him, at all events, to see the review from the American-legation tent, but at the last moment she backed out. She had seen it many times before, she declared. She was tired of it.

At first he swore he would not go without her. Why, the “show,” he declared, would be nothing to him without her to see it with him. Half the pleasure—nay, all of it—would be gone. He was really keenly disappointed, but she coaxed and wheedled and petted around him, till, before he knew that he was aggrieved at her backsliding, he was well on his way.

The streets were thronged with a motley crowd of people. Jinrikishas were scurrying hither and thither, and little bits of humanity, in the shape of small men, small women, small children, and small dogs and cats, were colliding and jostling against the many ramshackle vehicles in the road. Gay flags and bunting were displayed everywhere, and the town presented a gala appearance.

Jack got out of his jinrikisha and pushed his way through the crowd until he came up to the parade-grounds. He found his way to the proper tent, and, with a half-score of former acquaintances about him, he was soon drawn into the babble and gush of small talk and jokes that tourists meeting each other in foreign lands usually indulge in.

Once on the parade-grounds, where infantry, cavalry, and artillery were forming themselves, it seemed as if he had suddenly left Japan altogether, and was once more in the modern Western world, of which he had always been a part.

There was nothing Oriental in this brave display of the imperial army. There was nothing Oriental in this bustling, noisy crowd of foreigners, each trying to outdo the other in importance and precedence. Only the skies and the little winds, and, in the distance, the sinuous outlines of the mountains and forests beyond, and the disks on the national flag displayed everywhere, were Japanese. And after his long seclusion in the country the glitter dazzled him.

There were seven thousand men in the field, and the Mikado, surrounded by his generals, body-guard, outriders, and standard-bearers, reviewed the troops; and then, amid a great flourish, and hoarse cheering drowning the national hymn, which was being played by all the bands at once, he left the grounds.

Jack did not return after the parade to his home, much as he would have liked to do so. Some acquaintances who had crossed on the same steamer with him on his way to Japan carried him off triumphantly to their hotel, and that night he went with them to the imperial ball.

It was very late when he went home to Yuki. There was a faint light burning in the zashishi, and he wondered with some concern whether she were sitting up waiting for him. He did not see her at first when he entered the room, for the light of the andon had fluttered down dimly, and it was more the grayness of the approaching dawn which saved the room from complete darkness. Crossing the room, he came upon her. She had fallen asleep on the floor. She was lying on her back, her arms encircling her head. He was suddenly struck with her extreme youth. She seemed little more than a tired child, who had grown weary and had fallen asleep among her toys, for beside her on a tiny foot-high table was the little supper she had prepared for him, and which was now quite cold. On the other side of her were her tiny drum and samisen, with which she had been attempting doubtless to pass the evening by pulling from the strings some of that weird music he knew so well now.

For a long time her husband looked at her, and a feeling of intense isolation about her came over and suddenly possessed him. Why had he never been able to bridge that strange distance which lay like a pall between them, the feeling always that she was not wholly his own, that she had been but a guest within his house, a tiny wild bird that he had caught in some strange way and caged—caught, though she had come to him, as it were, for protection? Just as, when a boy, he remembered how a robin had beaten at his shutters, and he had saved it from an enemy, and afterwards how he had caged it, and how it had pined for its freedom.

The thought that he might yet lose Yuki caused him such anguish of mind it almost stunned him. He knelt down beside her, and drew her up in his arms, and then, as gently as a mother would have done, he carried her up the queer spiral stairway which led to their little up-stairs room.

The next day she questioned him anxiously. Were there many ladies more beautiful than she at the ball? Had he enjoyed himself largely with them, and how could he live away hereafter from such mirth and gayety? Why had he come back to little, insignificant her?

And he told her that never in all his life before had he longed so ardently for any one as he had for her that previous night. That the day had been endless; the noise and show, the brassy merriment and cheer, were abhorrent to him, for she had not been there to rob it of its vulgarity with the charm of her sweet presence. That he had been rude in his efforts to escape it, had bullied the jinrikimen because they had seemed to creep, and that happiness and peace had only come back to him again when he had crossed his own threshold and had taken her in his arms.

Still the wistful distress in her misty eyes was only in part dispelled.

“Last night,” she said, “I broke my liddle jade bracelet. It is a bad omen.”

“I will buy you a dozen new ones,” he said.

“One million dozens cannot mend jus’ thad liddle one,” she returned, sadly, shaking her head. “It is a bad omen. Mebbe a warning from the gods.”

Of what did they warn her? That she could not say, but she had heard that such an accident usually preceded the sorrows of love. Perhaps he would soon pass away from her, and, like the ghost of the fisher-boy Urashima, who had left his fairy bride to return to his people, he too would pass out of her life, back into that from which he had come.