Part 16

“With the body showing?” inquired Madame Bara.

“Yes, the neck and the long arms. Why not?”

“Oh, ah, it is indecent!”

The artist stooped to the covering on the floor. He stood holding it in his hand, as though he knew not what to do.

“Oh, pray do not cover up the august likeness, artist,” pleaded the Lady Fuji-no, with affected solicitude.

The Countess Matsuka raised her voice almost shrilly:—

“Ladies, do let us take a vote as to the decency of the barbarian gown.”

But her suggestion was drowned in the hub-bub of gossip. The countess was met only with this reply:—

“Countess, upon what work was this artist-man engaged when he was closeted with Princess Sado-ko?”

The group about the picture grew closer still together. The question grew in size, and found a hundred answers.

“It is one that only the artist himself can solve,” said Aoi, looking toward him obliquely.

“Oh, oh, was only the artist present?” protested Lady Fuji.

“And her Highness,” said the Duchess Aoi, and bowed in mocking reverence at the name. “Do you not recall she said she would not have her ladies present at the sittings? When we dared to protest, in most humble wise, she frowned and commanded us to go, which we were forced to do.”

The artist suddenly took a step forward and faced the ladies fairly. The color had returned to his face, and his eyes sparkled in defiant scorn at his small tormentors. His voice was raised to a clear pitch:—

“You make mistake, most noble ladies. You do injustice to the humble artist, to his work, and to her most exalted Highness.” Here he bowed deeply and with reverence. “It is very true you do not now behold on this blank canvas the work of the many days of the artist. Yet that is not an unsolvable mystery. Shall the humble but honorable artist allow his work upon the portrait of her Serene Highness, the daughter of the sun-god, to remain in his most public salon for the chance and vulgar observation of the spiteful curious? Permit me to observe with proper respect and humility that no explanation of the substitution of the blank canvas is due. Further, ladies, you make a treasonable mistake when you declare the august sittings were unattended. Her Highness, upon all occasions when she deigned to permit me to paint her august picture, was both chaperoned and attended by the honorable maid, Onatsu-no.”

A sudden little shriek broke from one of the ladies, at which all turned toward her and then followed the direction of her startled eyes. The next instant all this company of clattering-tongued ladies, whether in European dress or kimono, had fallen to their knees, and were touching the mats with their heads.

The Princess Sado-ko, attended by her maiden, Natsu-no, stepped slowly down from the slight eminence of the adjoining room, the shojis of which the pages drew behind her. There was no expression in the face of Sado-ko as she crossed the room, bowing her head with grace in response to the servile courtesies of her maids of honor. She made a slight motion with her hands, and there was a quick movement and rustling of the obedient ladies, moving toward the shoji that led without. One of them, more daring than the others, the Lady Fuji-no, paused by the veranda doors, and spoke with affected timidity:—

“May it please your Highness that we be permitted to remain to-day for this sitting?”

Sado-ko’s eyes were above the head of her father’s new favorite and her own maid of honor.

“Lady Fuji-no,” she said, “I have spoken.”

Fuji bowed herself down to the mats, then quietly joined those without.

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CHAPTER VIII

A SENTIMENTAL PRINCESS

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CHAPTER VIII

A SENTIMENTAL PRINCESS

JUNZO turned his head from Sado-ko. He stood still as a statue, his head drooping, his hands clinched. She broke the strained silence with a command to her attendant.