“THE mistake—you will admit it was a mistake?—was to have countenanced such a match at all,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo.

Her husband’s manner was less sure, less unyielding than it had been in many days. Indeed, there was a slightly apologetic tone in his voice, and he avoided the angry eyes of his spouse. He too had seen the arrival of the Spider!

“Well, well, let us admit it, then, for the sake of peace. The marriage was a mistake. But consider, our son’s happiness—nay, his very life!—was at stake.”

He lowered his voice.

“I will tell you in confidence that which I had discovered. They had already made their plans to marry.”

“Pff!” Lady Saito waved the matter aside as unbelievable. “Will you tell me how they were to do this thing? Marriage, fortunately, is not such an easy matter without the consent of the parents. Moreover, the woman was under bonds to her keeper.”

“You forget there are other unions possible to lovers. You should know that many such start bravely on the long journey to the Meido when it is impossible to marry in this life.”

Lady Saito turned her face slowly toward her husband and fixed him with a piercing, bitter glare.

“That,” said Ichigo, gently, “was the union contemplated by our children.”

His wife drew in her breath in that peculiar, hissing fashion of the Japanese. Her beady little eyes glittered like fire.

“That was what she—the Spider woman—induced my son to do! You see, do you not, how completely she has seduced him—even from his duty to his parents and his ancestors?”

She beat out the minute blaze from her pipe, digging into it with her forefinger. Then, first coughing harshly to attract the attention of the young people, she called out loudly:

“Come hither, if you please! I say, come! You seem to forget you are no longer in the geisha-house. It is the voice of supreme authority which summons you now. A cup of tea, if you please—and water for my honorable feet!”

She repeated the demand twice, in a peremptory voice; and now she arose to her feet and advanced a step almost threateningly toward the young couple.

They had been smiling into each other’s eyes. They were oblivious of everything and every one in the room, for they were in that exalted and enraptured condition of first love which makes the individual seem almost stupid and obtuse to all save the loved one. Only dimly the words of their mother had reached them, and they stirred like children rudely awakened from some beautiful dream. The smile was still on the face of the girl as she turned toward her mother-in-law; but it slowly faded, leaving her pale, confused, and timorous. She met the malevolent gaze of the older woman, and began to tremble.

She tried to speak, and her hand reached out flutteringly toward her husband—a charming, helpless little gesture that warmed him to the soul. He inclosed the little reaching hand, and thus, hand in hand, they faced the enraged lady.

“Your manners, my good girl, are in keeping with the geisha-house. Is it the fashion there to ignore the voice of authority?”

The bride’s large, dark eyes had widened in innocent surprise. Only partially she seemed to comprehend the older woman’s attitude. She had been but a day in the house of the parents-in-law. No one as yet had taught her, the cherished, petted, adored star of the House of Slender Pines, that the position of a daughter-in-law is often as lowly as that of a servant. Not even by Matsuda had she ever been thus offensively addressed. She said, stammeringly:

“I—I—have not heard the voice of which you speak, august lady.”

A cruel smile curled the lips of her mother-in-law.

“Then it is time, my girl, that you kept your ears wide open.”

She sat down upon her heels abruptly by the hibachi.

“Tea is desirable for the honorable insides. Water for my feet, which are tired!”

The girl’s eyes turned inquiringly toward her husband. He had grown darkly red. For a moment he seemed about to speak protestingly to his mother; then in a whisper he murmured to his bride:

“It is your—duty!”

Moonlight’s shocked glance had gone from her husband’s face to the opposite shoji. There, in dumb show, a maid beckoned to her. Without a word her lovely little head bowed in meek assent; she began upon her first menial task.

When she was gone Gonji looked scowlingly at the back of his mother’s head—she had turned her face rigidly from him. He felt keenly the danger threatening his wife, the one he adored. He knew the exact power in the hands of the mother-in-law, the cruel whip of authority it was possible for her to wield. That Moonlight would be forced to succumb to the common lot of many unhappy wives he had not realized. Secretly he determined to help her in every way possible within his power.

“What has come over you?” His mother’s voice broke upon his miserable reverie, and it was as harsh as the one she employed to his wife. “Is it a new fashion of the geisha-house perchance—to answer a parent’s question with silence?”

“Did you question me, mother? I am sorry I did not hear you.”

“Oh, it is of no consequence. Besides, you are not listening, even now. Your eyes are still upon the screen through which the insignificant daughter-in-law passed to do me service.”

He flushed and bit his lips. Something in his mother’s baleful look moved him to an impetuous cry:

“Mother! Do not hate my wife! If you could but know her as she is, so sweet and lovely and—”

“There is no medicine for a fool!” snarled his mother, enraged at the boy’s apparent infatuation.

Moonlight, who had pushed the sliding doors open, heard the words, and now she paused, looking from one to the other. Gonji hastened across to her and seized the pail of water from her hand.

“It is too heavy for hands so small—and so lovely!” he cried, and then, as though aghast at his own words, he again pleadingly faced his mother.

“We have many servants. Why give such employment to my wife?”

“Since when,” demanded the mother, hoarsely, “did a childless son become master in his father’s house?”

“These are modern times, mother,” he protested. “She has not been bred for service such as this!”

“Then it is time we undertook her education,” said his mother, ominously. “In the house of the honorable mother-in-law she will quickly learn her proper place.”

She put out her feet, and the girl knelt and washed them.

Alone that evening in their room, they clung together like frightened children. It had been a hard, a cruel day for both.

“It is true,” she said, searching his face in the hope of finding a denial there, “that your parents bitterly hate me.”

“They will outgrow it. It is not so with my father, and later you will win my mother’s affection. Your sweetness, beauty, goodness, beloved one, will win her even against her will.”

She held him back from her, with her two little hands resting flatly on his breast.

“They despise me because I am a geisha? That is why they treat me so.”

“No, it is not that only. It is often the case at first in the house of the parents-in-law. It is your duty to serve them—to obey even their cruel caprices. But”—and he drew her into a warm embrace—“it will not be for long! Maybe a year—longer, if the gods decree it! You can bear it for a little while, can you not, for me?”

“And after that?” she persisted, with the clear-eyed innocence of a child.

“After that? Why, the gods are good!” he cried, joyously. “We will have our own home. The humblest daughter-in-law is elevated with the coming of an heir!”

Her eyes were very wide, and in their dark depths he saw a piteous look of terror there. She caught at his hand and clung to it.

“Gonji! Suppose—suppose it is not possible for me—to please the gods!” she gasped. “Ah!”—as he hastened to reassure her—“it is said by the wise ones that a geisha is but a fragile toy, for transient pleasure only, but with neither the body nor the heart to mother a race!”