HE aged castle moat was darkly melancholy, though its banks on either side were beautiful with the damp grass and the meeting willow and wistaria. Cold, still, and deep were its waters. At night it seemed grewsome and uncanny, perhaps because of the tragedy of its history, which every Catzu courtier knew. Even in the bright sunlight its beauty was seductively sad, for its dark waters were covered with white lotus, mingled with red and purple, with golden hearts, whose little cups each held one drop of dew—a glistening tear.

Wandering dejectedly along the banks of the old moat, Keiki vainly sought in his mind for some clew to the phenomenal change in his mistress. Though at times her eyes seemed drowned in tears of tenderness, more often they were coldly glassy. Her conversation, too, was spasmodic, devoid of all endearment, and of a sort alien to lovers. When he had first seen her after the illness which had kept her from his sight for some days, he had lost all self-control in the joy of beholding her once more. In ardent imagination he revived the memory of those dream-days on the little rock island of the twenty geishas, but though she appeared to have recovered her health, she no longer accompanied him upon such excursions. Indeed, she was rarely seen in the Catzu palace, except on the formal occasions of the guest-room. Keiki had been forced to content himself with those early morning meetings at her casement, so brief, so unsatisfactory. For she no longer murmured shy words of love and happiness. She talked, instead, of ridiculous matters, the politics of the country!

Nevertheless, through her apparent sympathy for this cause so close to the heart of the young man, she had revivified those thrills of patriotism which, for the nonce, he had pushed aside to devote all his heart and mind to the sweeter employment of loving.

In a moment of enthusiasm, only two days before, he had confided to her the far-reaching plans of the Mori princes for their country. She had begged him with tears in her eyes to tell her of them; then, before he had half finished, she had entreated him wildly to tell her no more, and the next instant, piteously, tremblingly, begged him to continue. And then as he went on she had dropped her head upon her arms and buried her face from his sight. Her emotion had thrilled him. At the moment he could have fallen on his knees, beseeching her to do something to hasten their marriage so that he might return to Choshui to do his part in this noble cause. Before he could speak, however, she had raised her face and gazed for a moment upon him with such an expression of penetrating agony and appeal that he had sprung towards her, hastily crying out her name, “Wistaria! Wistaria!”

A moment later she was gone. The following morning he had waited in vain in the garden beneath her casement. Over and over again he had tapped upon her shutters and called her name, but there was no response. He had met with the same experience this morning. Keiki was very miserable. Since the change in her seemed inexplicable, his confidence was shaken—not his confidence in her faith or truthfulness, but in her love. He began to torture his mind with the possibility that she might not love him, that she had been but a girl, after all, who, flattered by his manner of wooing her, had thought she returned his affection. His faith in her purity of soul was so perfect that no slightest thought of any designs upon his political schemes ever occurred to him in connection with Wistaria.

Thus unhappy, worried, and very much in love, Keiki walked moodily along the bank of the old castle moat, his old assurance and egotism completely gone from him.

Suddenly as he strolled along something struck him sharply on the temple. Stooping, he raised from the ground what seemed to be a soft pebble. Examining it more closely, however, he perceived it to be a lady’s fine paper handkerchief rolled into a little ball. Half wonderingly, half idly, Keiki undid it. A faint, familiar perfume exuded from it as he shook it out. In an instant he was pressing it rapturously to his face. It was from Wistaria. Tenderly turning it about and enjoying its sweetness, he found as he was smoothing it out a little word in the centre:

“Go.”

The lover became pale as death. He read it again, then repeated it aloud—“Go!” Its meaning was plain. He did not doubt for an instant from whom it came. That one little word from her explained everything—the change in her, her realization that she did not love him, and this silent means of telling him the truth. He crumpled the handkerchief in his hand. A moment later he was pacing—almost running—up and down along the bank of the silent, mocking moat. He could not think. He could only feel. Then he threw himself prone upon the ground, his face buried in the long grasses. He was smothering and choking back the hoarse, terrible sobs of a man—one who had been trained in the inflexible school of the samurai.

The day passed over his head. The sky, ruddy with the setting sun, paled gradually, until it seemed as though a veil were drawn softly across it. Still Keiki gave himself up to his despair. For him it seemed that the sun had gone out, life had ceased.

As the shadows continued to spread their batlike wings over the heavens, darkening, darkening the skies, until only an impenetrable vault of darkness dotted with myriad magic lights was above and about him, he still lay there.

A rustle disturbed the grass. Possibly a hare running by. Keiki heeded it not. Something was stirring, moving near him. Mechanically, dully, he listened. Some one had lost his way among the willows and with his hands was feeling his way. From his own despair Keiki was recalled by the sudden acute knowledge of possible danger to this person who had evidently lost his way. One false step towards the boggy grass, and beyond was the treacherous moat, whose water-flowers and reeds hid its dark surface. Suddenly he sprang to his feet and called out hoarsely:

“Who is the honorable one?”

He fancied he heard a cry. He ran towards it, then stopped short. He had come upon her there in the willows. Her kimono shone out startlingly white with a stray moon-beam upon it, but her gown was not less white than her face, which stared into the darkness like that of a statue.

Slowly he went to her as though drawn by subtle, compelling hands. Close to her, almost touching her; he did not speak, because he could not. Bitter words had sprung to his lips only to die before birth. He perceived that she was trembling from head to foot. Her hands stood out from her sleeves, each finger apart, and they trembled, quivered, shook.

With an inarticulate cry he caught them in his own, inclosing them warmly, almost savagely, in his grasp. Then his voice came to him. It was very husky and strange.

“Speak!”

“Go!—Go!”

This was all she whisperingly cried. She kept repeating it over and over between her chattering teeth. As he wound his arms about her shivering form he found that she was dripping wet. Could it be that she had fallen into the moat? By what miracle of the gods, then, had she been saved? The dark waters were so deep—so deep!

“You are wet and cold! You have met with an accident?”

“No, no,” she said. “It was the honorable grass—so wet—so cold, like a lake. I crawled through it, on my hands and knees, close to the moat.”

“But why did you do it, why did you do it?” His voice was imploring.

“To come to you. To be with you—to—”

He clasped her closer, warmed to the soul by her words.

“Ah, then it is not true,” he cried, “and you do still love me, Fuji-wara?”

“Better than my soul. Better than my duty to the gods,” she whispered.

The sound of her voice was muffled. Her words literally sighed through her lips. He could not comprehend; he knew only that she loved him, had come to him, and now she was all water-wet, pale-eyed, and trembling as one who sleeps with fear. And because that strange voice hurt his soul, he covered her lips with his hand. She made no remonstrance, but sank into his arms, almost as if she had fainted. But looking down he saw her eyes were wide open, shining like dark stars. They startled him. They were like those of a dead woman. He shook her almost roughly in his fright.

“Wistaria! Speak to me! What is it? Tell me your trouble.”

“Trouble?” she repeated, dazedly. “Trouble!”

Then she remembered. She grasped his arm till her fingers almost pierced through the silk into his flesh.

“You must go—go! Go quickly—run all the way. Do not stop one moment—not one little moment.”

“Go away? Run? What are you saying?”

“Listen! In a moment, perhaps, I may not have power to speak. My strength is failing me. I thought you would obey the word I sent you. But I saw you fall down among the grasses, and all day long I have watched from my window, waiting, waiting, waiting to see you depart. No, no—listen unto me—do not speak. I escaped the vigilance of my jailers—my executioners. Oh, will you not understand? I have come through perils you cannot imagine to warn you—to beg you on my knees to go away at once. Hasten to Choshui!”

Her breath failed her. She had been speaking quickly, in sharp gasps.

“But I do not understand,” he said.

“Your prince—your august prince is in danger!”

“What?”

“The Prince of—the young Prince Keiki,” she gasped.

“The young Prince Keiki!” he repeated, incredulously.

“Yes, yes; they have discovered his secrets—they will arrest him for treason and—”

He almost shouted.

“His secrets! The cause! Oh, all the gods!”

“You can save him. There may be time. They will take him and cast him into a dungeon and kill him!”

“I must set off at once,” excitedly he muttered. “What could have happened in my absence?”

Her shivering, trembling presence recalled him. He was distracted at the thought of leaving her. He could think of nothing else. He tried to see her white face in the darkness, but could only trace the pale outlines. Suddenly he took it in his hands.

“Fuji-wara,” he whispered, in a voice of mingled love and agony. “How can I leave you? How can I do so? And yet you would not have me act the part of a coward, the false traitor. You would be the first to bid me go.”

“Go, go!” she cried, releasing herself from his hands feverishly.

“And you?”

“Lead me back into the path. I shall find my way from there.”

Leading her, he questioned anxiously:

“There is danger for you here, Wistaria? Tell me, or I shall not depart.”

She turned the question.

“Last night there was a slight earthquake in the province. There is always danger. But you and I have pledged each other. For the time of this life and the next, and as many after as may come, I will be your flower-wife and you my husband.”

At parting he kissed the hem of her kimono and the little, water-soaked foot beneath.