OF course, figured Matsuda to himself, even the addition of one so famous as the Spider could not at once bring fortune to the House of Slender Pines at war-time. Then, too, there was the honorable child to sustain.

Not for a moment, Matsuda told himself, did he begrudge or regret the celebrations in the Spider’s honor rightly insisted upon by his wife. Undoubtedly she was an honorable guest. Still, a poor man, the keeper of a half-score of geishas, must make proper provision for their future sustenance and his own old age. If the Spider were, in fact, to prove her old title of fortune-bringer to the geisha-house, it was necessary that she begin at once.

So, while the Okusama and the geishas showered the Spider with favors and waited upon her slightest wish, while the honorable descendant of the illustrious Saito blood joyously passed from hand to hand, while the Okusama cast aside her dolls and hovered like a brooding mother over Moonlight and her baby, Matsuda held his head within his own chamber and cunningly planned a scheme whereby the Spider’s presence in his house might be turned to immediate profit.

By his contract with the Saito family, the Spider was released from bondage. Hence she was not entirely bound to serve him. She had already excited his exasperation by her persistent refusal to dance for prospective customers the dance by which she had won fame. She desired to assume another pseudonym, and for a month at least asked that she might rest and thus regain her strength.

A month! inwardly had snorted Matsuda. Why, even the last batch of troops would be at the front by then. Japan would be emptied completely of her men. Now was the time, if ever, to draw patrons to the house, since the departing soldiers celebrated their going at the most popular geisha-houses. Only the fact that the House of Slender Pines was some distance away among the hills kept the soldiers from patronizing it in preference to those in the city of Kioto. But, could Matsuda venture down below, proclaiming the fact of the return of the Spider, ah, then indeed he might be assured of customers for a time at least!

No amount of pleading or reasoning, however, moved the Spider. With the pitying, solicitous, fond arms of the Okusama about her, she languidly proclaimed herself still ill, as indeed she looked and was.

So Matsuda chewed on his nails and thought and thought. He thought of the agents of the young Lord Saito Gonji, who had come to see him at the time Gonji’s regiment was stationed in Tokio. He thought of the exorbitant reward temptingly tendered him for any information of the Spider. How he had cursed his inability to find the girl at that time. But the young Lord Gonji was gone—gone forever, undoubtedly. Who was there in all this haughty family, which had disdainfully and contemptuously cast out from its doors the miserable geisha, who could now possibly be interested in her lot? Nevertheless, the master of the geisha-house pondered the matter, and as he did so there came up suddenly before his mind’s eye the round rosy face of the rightful heir of all the Saito ancestors. His heart began to thump within him with a strange excitement. Suddenly he set out upon a journey.