Part 17

“Natsu-no, pray draw apart the door at once. The atmosphere is thick with odor of our ladies. It has sickened the honorable artist.”

He raised his head sharply. She had not heard, then! The maid pushed the shojis to either side, thus exposing the apartment to the full view of any without. This was a daily custom and precaution. No spying maid of honor might lurk about the balcony.

While the sliding doors remained open, neither the artist nor the princess spoke, but when a sufficient interval had elapsed and the doors had been drawn together again, the maid whispered a word of command to the guard outside, who silently took his station on the balcony. Then Sado-ko, turning slowly toward the artist, began to laugh in a strangely quivering, and subdued fashion. The sound of the soft laughter hurt the artist. He scarcely could command his words.

“Guileless princess, I pray you do not laugh!”

“Not laugh?” she repeated. “You are to-day a most unflattering artist. Was it only yesterday you said my laughter was as sweet as sweetest music of the sweetest birds?”

She passed her fan over her shoulder to the maid Natsu-no, who, whirling it open, fanned her gently. Sado-ko smiled reproachfully at Junzo, as she sat by a golden screen, near to a shoji through which the sinking sun pierced and slanted just above her head.

Junzo knelt on one knee a short distance from her. His face was sad and serious.

“Princess Sado-ko,” he said, “you have not heard of a most lamentable happening.”

“If,” said she, still smiling, “you allude to the noisy chatter of my ladies, you are mistaken. I have heard.”

He looked half unconsciously toward the now covered canvas. She followed his glance, and still she smiled.

“I have seen, too,” she said.

He regarded her dumbly, marvelling at the trembling happiness which seemed to lurk within her eyes and about her small red lips.

“Come a pace nearer to me, if you please,” she urged. His obedience brought him so close that he could have touched her. She put out a little hand toward him, and spoke his name.

“Junzo!” she said.

He scarcely dared to look at her. She said:—

“I pray you, look at me a space.”

Their eyes met fully now, and then he saw that despite the smile within them, hers were shining with undropped tears. In an agony of feeling he turned from her. He heard her tremulous voice, thrilling now with that strange laughing quality but accentuating the pleading underneath.

“Do not even the birds chatter? Permit my ladies the same pastime.”

“It is of you I think,” he said huskily.

“That is all very well. I—I would not have you think of—of another,” she replied.

“Princess, the gossip of the ladies does injury to your sweet name.”

“If that were so,” she said, “there would be no such name as Sado-ko left in the world. Do you not know that I am the most unpopular princess in Japan?”

“But this late matter, princess, is not merely female resentment at your refusal to accept the Western mode of life within your household. But this new slan—”

“Do not speak the word,” she said quietly.

She took her fan from Natsu-no, and arising crossed the room until she stood before the easel. Pensively she looked at the covered canvas. Junzo had followed her and now stood by her side. There was deep emotion in his voice:—

“Princess, will it please you to sit to-day?”

She turned to raise her eyes to his.

“But,” she said, “you do not paint upon the canvas. You have told me so.”