Part 64

With an impetuous motion he once again seized her hands.

“You are too good, too pure to hear the story of one both false and base.”

In the strangest, most piteous of voices she answered:—

“Perhaps there was another time when you called her by another name.”

Her strange words rendered him quite speechless. She put her hand upon his arm. There was a pleading quality in her voice:—

“Junzo, do not think or speak unkindly of poor Sado-ko,” she said.

He repeated the name in a low, despairing voice:—

“Sado-ko!”

The very name recalled his anguish of the past.

“You love her still?” she asked. Now a note of fear was in her voice. She could not bear that he should speak or think unkindly of the Princess Sado-ko, yet the very thought that he should love one who was no longer herself, rendered this paradox of women distracted.

“You love her still?” she asked, catching his arm and shaking it with her childish jealousy.

“No, no,” he said, as though the very thought was loathsome, “’tis you alone I love, my own Masago.”

Her tone was sharply tart.

“You do not love Sado-ko?”

“I love Masago,” he said.

She sighed.

“I would not have it otherwise,” she said, and laughed happily.

“Masago,” he said earnestly, “ask the consent of your honored parent that I may come indoors. We will spend a portion of the night together. I will then tell you all you wish to know concerning that passion of the heart I once have felt, which you have suspected. It is better you should know.”

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CHAPTER XXVI

MASAGO’S RETURN

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CHAPTER XXVI

MASAGO’S RETURN

ALONE in the quiet guest room of the Yamada house they sat. Convention demanded a light, but it was of the dimmest—a dull and flickering andon. Yet the night was clear. By the shoji walls they sat, looking into each other’s faces, thinking always of the morrow.

She had listened without interrupting while in low, tense voice he had told her of a madness once felt for a high princess. When he had quite finished and sat in silent, moody gloom, she moved nearer to him, then slipped her hand into his, and nestled up against his shoulder. Her voice was soothing in its quality.

“By this time the little bird—the poor caged nightingale is dead,” she said. “The gods were more kind to you, Junzo, for see, you are so strong you beat away the cage-bars and are quite free to love again.”

Pressing his face against her hair, he said solemnly:—