Part 19

“The chamber darkens, O princess. Will your Highness deign to permit the honorable light?”

“I am quite satisfied,” said Sado-ko, and rested her head contentedly against the artist’s arm. The maid did not move.

“Will not the noble princess permit her evening meal?” she asked in trembling tones.

“I am not hungry,” said the Princess Sado-ko. She smiled up at her lover’s now adoring face.

“Princess, the hour of—”

Sado-ko turned toward the maid with the first show of impatience.

“Pray return to your seat, Natsu-no,” she said, “and when I need your service, I will so advise you.”

Without replying, Natsu-no slowly moved to her seat; but she kept her face toward those two figures now silhouetted in the twilight of the room.

“You still are uneasy?” asked the Princess Sado-ko. “Do you not like the touch of me?”

“It makes me faint with ecstasy,” he said. “Yet, Sado-ko, I am fearful.”

“Oh, be not fearful,” she said.

“On my knees I could adore you, but—”

“But? You do not finish.”

“Princess!”

“Do not call me princess. Forget for but a little while that I am such. I, too, would forget, my Junzo.”

“I must remember for us both,” he said. “My honor—O sweet Sado-ko—thy honor—”

“Sado-ko is ill with honor,” she replied. “Give me for a change a little of that simple love I have not had since my august grandmother died.”

“O innocent princess!”

She laughed softly.

“Junzo, they say that I was born without a heart, that because I was the child of gods I could not love as mortals do. Could you not tell them otherwise, my Junzo?”

The maid was weeping in the darkened room, her sobs clearly audible. They heard her crawling on her knees across the room, and then the soft thud of her prostration before the little shrine. Then came the mumbling words of her prayer:—

“Hear thou the prayer of the most humble one, O mighty Kuonnon. Save thou the soul of thy innocent descendant, she who—”

Sado-ko dropped the arm of her lover and started toward the maid.

“Natsu-no!” she cried out sharply, as the drone of the woman’s prayer ended, “for whom do you pray?”

The maid put her head at the princess’s feet.

“For you, O beloved mistress, I pray that the gods will save you from this artist-man.”

The princess spurned her with her little foot.

“If you make such foolish prayers, the gods may hear you,” she cried. “If they should grant your prayers and take him from me, why, I should be bereft of—Oh-h—”