Part 53

“If his Majesty should not consent, Komatzu?”

“Why even dream of such a thing?” he asked. “Am I not the very one most fitted for your husband, and have I not served well his Majesty?”

She seized his hand and held it close against her face.

“Komatzu, were I not of equal rank with you,—if I were but a simple maiden of humble parentage,—would you still love me?”

“I do not love your rank, sweet cousin, but your own self.”

“But if I were not of your rank, what then?”

“Capricious Sado-ko, why ask such foolish questions?”

“Would you still marry me if I were not a royal princess?”

“I still would love you, Sado-ko. I could not marry you in that event. Why, you turn your face away! The tears are in your eyes. Cousin, you are too fanciful.”

“Love makes me so,” she said, and sighed.

“How strange,” he said, “that we should speak so freely of our love. A little while ago the subject would have been deemed indecent. Now it is a foreign fashion and we Japanese speak out our love without the smallest blush of shame. ’Tis strange, indeed!”

“It is not only fashion,” she protested; “love is not a new thing,—a caprice, a whim, like such and such a dress, a hat or shoe or fan.”

“It is a new device of speech in our Japan,” the prince declared, thoughtfully.

With childish petulance she turned toward the balcony.

“Which you do not approve, Komatzu?”

“Why, yes, I do approve it, Sado-ko. It is most beautiful and pure, moreover. But, cousin, as you know, I never spoke it yet—this love—till lately. Then, somehow, when you came back from the palace Aoyama, a something in your eyes seemed to beckon me to you and force the words of love to overrun my lips.”

“They were not merely words of lips?”

“No, no. But I, you know, am not completely modern in my thought, despite my dress, and, too, I am a soldier. So sometimes if my words seem clumsy—stupid—I fear you must compare them with the flowery speeches of others.”

“Others, Komatzu? What others could there be?”

His voice was low and nervous. He seemed to hesitate.

“Cousin, have you forgotten the artist-man?”

“The artist-man!” she gave a little cry, then quickly covered up her lips with her fingers.

“You start! Kamura Junzo his name was. Once I thought you favored him. So thought all the members of the court. I could not close my ears against the romance, though I severely disapproved the slander, and named it such; for I deemed your condescension to the man the idle fancy of a princess noted for her oddities and caprices. But lately, the mere thought of him causes my brain to burn with raging and unworthy jealousy.”

She rested one small hand against the railing of her balcony, then slowly drew up her slender figure.

“The artist is no more to me,” she said, “than any slave who dresses me, sings to me, entertains me, comes at my command, or paints for me my picture.”

“Yet, Sado-ko, the artist did not paint your picture.”

For a moment she stood still in bewilderment, then went a step toward him. Her words were stammering, then changed to fervent, passionate appeal.

“Why, yes, he painted—that—assuredly he painted—it does not matter what the artist did. Komatzu, I have no thought within my mind, nor love within my heart, for any one in all the world save you.”