Part 27

“He will betroth us,” said Komatzu, with gloomy assurance, “for all his ministers are in favor of the union.”

“We will abide the time, Komatzu, when his Majesty sanctions it. Meanwhile we are but cousins.”

“Sado-ko, give me that picture of you painted by the artist.”

She turned her face away. Her nervous hands were clasped.

“When we are betrothed,” she said.

“Sado-ko, you know I am your lover.”

“So it is said.”

“Who but a lover should possess this likeness of your Highness?”

“You are not my lover—yet.”

“I will be so,” said Komatzu. “Give me, I repeat, the portrait of your Highness.”

She turned toward him, like one brought suddenly to desperate bay.

“Why require this of me? You have already learned there is no such picture.”

“What, you admit it!”

“I admit it,” she returned quietly now.

He changed his haughty tone to one wherein there was more sorrow than anger.

“Tell me this, Cousin Sado-ko, why did the artist remain, and upon what work was he engaged when closeted with you?”

“He did not work, Komatzu. He but spoke to me—and I to him. He would have gone, but I commanded him to stay. There was no option for the man. He could not paint. I knew this all the time—yet—still—I bade him stay.”

“Why, Princess Sado-ko?”

“For many reasons. I wished to know of other lives. The shallow, shameless ones of those about me enervated my body and my soul. I wished to learn of others in the world, fresh, cleaner, cousin.”

“Sado-ko, I fear you were misjudged. I fathom now your reasons. Just one more bit of eccentricity so natural to our cousin.”

“And so he stayed,” she said, her voice now slow and almost absent in its tone, as though she were recalling incidents in some far past. “He stayed, as I commanded. He told me of his world,—the great world without, Komatzu, where men were men, not puppets. He had travelled much, Komatzu,—fairly round the world, it seems; and though he dressed not in the garb of the barbarian, he knew more of them than the whole of this affected court.”

“He spoke of the foreign world?”

“That and of other things.”

“Other things?”

Her voice dragged slowly over the word as she spoke in answer.

“Masago!” she murmured in a low voice.

“And who, I pray, is this Masago?”

“Masago,” she repeated; and then again, “Masago. Do you like the sound of the name, cousin?”