"Am I to infer, then, that to your Highness one woman would be about as desirable as another?"
"Ah, Monsieur! You are caustic. Not quite that, I protest. There is discrimination, even in playthings. And we must always take into account the effect of physique,—and character,—upon possible sons."
At repetition of this sickening thought Pierre's rage gave a convulsive bound. The veins in his temples burned the skin. His delicate hands clenched themselves into steel. He grasped the pistol, brandished it wildly, and putting his face close to Haganè hissed, "Leave out the name of Yuki, and your satyr's thoughts of her, if you expect to live!"
The prince's raised hand concealed an expression of amusement. Sadness, not altogether convincing, took its place. Pierre sank back to his chair sulkily, ashamed of his violence.
Haganè's eyes lowered themselves, as if in embarrassment, to the table. He toyed with the brittle stem of a wine-glass. "It is unfortunate you are so excitable. For it was just about—Yuki—no, never mind the pistol—that I was thinking to take you into my confidence."
Le Beau stared. The prince continued thoughtfully: "You have been her friend—"
"Iamher friend!"
"Exactly. I thought you ought to be told. After to-day there will be—noPrincess Haganè. She leaves my roof and must publicly relinquish my name."
The prince spoke blandly. Pierre's eyes seemed to protrude. The shock of this menace counteracted the coffee. "She is innocent—" He corrected himself. "Why? What has she done?"
Haganè smiled pleasantly. "Her innocence, as you call it, is too dangerous. My duties, you know. She distracts me, tires me. A mere child!"
"You never cared for her. You took her from me to show your hellish power. Now you will cast her out, dishonor her—relentlessly, for a new whim!"
"Monsieur should know best why I cannot trust her."
A wild thought leaped like flame about Pierre's distortedfancy. "Can you mean that she goes utterly free—free to be happy—back to her father's home?"
Haganè lowered his eyes. When he spoke his tone was conciliatory, even regretful.
"Onda, being my kerai, will scarcely consent to receive her."
"Monsters! both of you. I see—I might have known. But the Todds, thank God, are her friends!"
Haganè half lifted heavy lids. "Minister Todd,—who has signed that stolen paper,—may—er—hesitate."
"Mother of Christ! What will you have me think? What is to be her fate? Some foul black thought still bubbles behind those reptile eyes of yours! Out with it! Is she to be cast forth helpless, friendless, at the mercy of the first charitable stranger—"
Haganè lifted a hand. "Now we approach reason though by a somewhat frenzied path. You are the succoring knight. Merely return to me, with unbroken seal, the document I saw you take, and for reward I ask you to receive free, and untrammelled, the person of the present Princess Haganè."
Suspicion drove back into shadow a host of eager thoughts. After one incredulous look Pierre burst into a clamor of mirthless laughter. "So it is a bribe! What fools you must truly think all foreigners. Give the princess to me bodily? This is melodrama. Even had I the paper and should return it—I still deny, damn you!—you would take powerful precaution that she did not come."
"Do you so greatly distrust your powers of attraction?"
"No, nor her love, God bless her! But I distrust you and your Oriental subtleties. She would come—she loves me—but you would not let her. What guarantee can you offer?"
Haganè looked pained. "No one has ever doubted my word. But if you need it, take Japan's most sacred oath—by the life of our Emperor! Prevent her? Oh, no. I shall urge—compel."
Pierre struggled to preserve his balance. "Even in this barbaric country—have even—you—such power? Can you not be called to some account?"
"I regret the necessity of being vulgar," said Haganè, in a composed voice, "but I see I must explain. It is my—what you call position—my—er—rank. It might not be possible to every Japanese, Monsieur. But as things are, the woman is as much mine as a French spaniel would be yours. Again I assure you, by the life of my Emperor, she will come. Again I ask, Do you accept my bargain?"
Pierre whispered to himself Count Ronsard's words, "Remember France!" He tried to keep his reason, but the wave of hope had surged high. He saw as in a vision Yuki, disgraced, rejected, wandering alone through the wind-swept streets. He saw her face sheltered upon his arm,—that little face so pure, so delicate, so well-beloved. Her desolation touched him for a moment with an unselfish grief. "She is proud—she is brave!" he cried aloud. "Even at your orders will she come?"
"I think so, Monsieur. She might possibly consider it a last chance to serve the country she has wronged."
"Yes, and she might prefer to die."
Haganè sent a curious, cold look to search the young man's thought. "Do Christians dare—to die?"
The acid scorn bit deep. "Yes," raved Pierre. "And they dare to live, and, sometimes, they dare to slay! I do not consent, remember. I believe it yet to be a trick, a mockery. If I find it so, I swear in the name of that Christian God whom you blaspheme—if I find that you are holding out the one bribe that you know I would sell my soul to the devil for—thinking to gloat over the new deviltry of snatching it away—I'll—I'll—" He broke off, mouthing for words that would not come.
His hand unconsciously fingered the cold surface of the pistol. Again Haganè looked bored, and made a gesture of distaste.
"Don't sneer like that, you toad of hell!" shrieked his companion. "You think this bluster,—but I mean it. I mean it terribly!" A sudden sound in the outer hall cut short the threat. Footsteps, in stockinged feet, or in the Japanese tabi, came swiftly. Both men by instinct fixed eyes upon the door.
Yuki walked straight to her husband and stood still. Their eyes met. "I thank the Gods that you are safe," she said aloud. Her glance moved quickly to Pierre, surprising on his face a hurt, incredulous expression.
"Monsieur, be comforted. It is for the country, not for me," mocked Haganè.
"And now, Madame," he said, with bloodshot eyes on Yuki, "have you explanation for this new act of disobedience, of affront to my dignity?"
Yuki did not hasten to reply. Whether the power had grown from without or within that childish form, a new strength was now hers. She had the look of one who, after long wandering in a dangerous forest, has spied a path.
The gray robe, hastily caught back to decorous lines, showed traces of rough handling. Over her head she had thrown a light wrap called a dzukin. It hid her forehead with a nun-like band, was crossed under the chin, and knotted loosely behind the head. Not a strand of hair emerged. Her face, in the dull silver setting, gleamed like a long white pearl.
Haganè observed the change in her. The repulsion left his eyes. He waited in patience, and with some curiosity, for her answer. "I came, your Highness," she vouchsafed at length, "because without me you cannot get the paper."
Haganè's eyes went instantly to Pierre.
"Yuki, for God's sake are you mad?" cried the Frenchman. "I know of no paper. I have assured him that I do not know of it!"
"Give him the paper, Pierre," said the girl, gently. "Through me it was lost, and if I am to have a human soul hereafter—give him the paper."
Haganè sucked in bitter triumph from Pierre's discomfiture. His eyes crucified the boyish face. Like a brood of dark vultures his conjectures swooped down to the cowering prey. Yet before Yuki's entrance he had, for a moment, felt talons at his own breast. Instinctively Pierre had clutched at his coat, where the document lay concealed. Haganè said softly, "Perhaps it is as well, Madame, that you have disobeyed. Yet on your lover's countenance I do not observe signs of joyous welcome."
"I came looking for no welcome, Lord, nor has personal desire directed me. I have done great wrong. Again has my weakness proved my enemy. But a hope of partial atonement has not gone altogether from me." She stretched both hands to Pierre. "Pierre, if you have known love, give me the paper."
"I do not understand," stammered Pierre. "Are you against me for that man? Here is the chance of our revenge,—our passport to happiness. I have not harmed him otherwise. Would you take this one possible chance from me?"
"I am not against you, Pierre. I am not for Haganè. It is myself, my wretched, shivering self, for which I plead. No, you cannot understand. I am Japanese. I must regain the paper. Through my cowardice you won it. At any sacrifice you can name I must get it back."
Haganè saw how she labored to keep her voice gentle and soothing. She had the accents of a suffering mother who tries to coax a sick child. The husband saw more in the calm, ashen face. "You have yet patriotism," he said, so low that she alone heard.
To these words she gave no recognition. She watched the Frenchman as Haganè studied her. The folds of her dzukin, heaped high and light about the slim throat, stifled her. She tugged nervously at it until one end came loose and fell. By inches the flexible fabric crawled down from hair to shoulder, then down her body to the floor. The disorder of the thick hair, one blue-black lock almost hiding her left temple and streaming to her breast, gave her an unfamiliar, a weird, even a supernatural appearance.
Haganè still held a cigarette in the death-mask of his face. He took it out now carefully. "You speak of revenge, Monsieur, meaning, of course, the personal revenge. Europeans conceive all offences to be personal. You weaklings have your code,—your jumping-jack ethics. Something touches a spring, and your honor leaps up and crows. You could hardly understand the language we now speak, though our words were purest French. I will attempt to elucidate. This woman refers to an—essence—underlying all personalities and all time. It is a stratum of substance which boilsand seethes in our sun, which sets the planets swinging in their steady paths, which ebbs and flows, a thin, resistless tide, down through the world of ghosts. We call it 'En.' You have no better word, I think, than 'Necessity.' This woman had a trust and failed. Sometimes the sabre slash of fatal weakness lays bare a hidden source of strength. I believe it to be so with her. The gods have smiled a ritual of sacrifice! No,—you do not understand. If I sang an obscene song your eyes would sparkle,—now they are bits of dull blue clay.—Onda Yuki-ko!" he said in another tone, and with a voice slightly raised, "have you the thought that, in winning back for your land this stolen document, you become worthy again to be my wife,—to bear my name?" Yuki's head went up a little. If Death himself could smile he would perhaps own the gleam which for an instant lighted her dark eyes. "Lord, we agree that I have failed. There is no deeper degradation. As for resuming your name,—you should have understood, before this, that I shall not need it."
Pierre wrinkled his forehead. The three stood. Pierre leaned against the edge of a massive table, and sometimes steadied himself with hands upon it. He bore upon the oaken surface now. The drift of their conversation, though in careful English, was indeed beyond him. Haganè did not menace Yuki. In her look toward him was no hint of fear. Yet between them, across from each to each, in all the space around them, the spider—tragedy—hurried unceasingly, and wove a closing web. They stared out from the black net with faces of calm nobility. An influence shook the Frenchman, vibrated through the particles of his brain, shrank and inflated his soul in its clay vessel. In bewilderment, as one reaches out in the dark, his voice cried, "Is this your sorrow, Yuki? Do you wish still to be his? If you bid me, perhaps I too can sacrifice. Shall I buy his mercy for you with this paper?" He snatched it out, but instead of presenting it, held the white rectangle again against his breast. The seal glared and winked like the inflamed eye of a pygmy Cyclops.
This was Pierre's supremest moment. Never again did hereach an equal height. The altitude turned him cold and dizzy. Blood surged in his ears, and tears of self-appreciation, of self-pity, sponged with a misty blur the room and its occupants.
Yuki, catching her underlip between her teeth, and bruising her slim hands together for control, went nearer. "Pierre, I thank you. I shall never forget this greatness,—in another world or this. You do much to restore what you, too, have lost. But I cannot bid you sacrifice. Haganè would not take the paper at that price. I myself must find a way to win it."
Haganè sat like a mass of clay new fallen from a cliff. Yuki's voice trailed off. An angelic sweetness hung about the echoes.
Now the clay was troubled. It stirred heavily. Haganè rose with his usual massive deliberation. "Tell her, Frenchman, the price I had already offered you."
"I shall not do it with that pure face before me, Haganè."
Haganè bowed. No hint of sarcasm cheapened the salutation. "Then, Yuki, I must speak it. I offered him in exchange for the paper your fair, white body to be his, as a dog is his, as a snatched blossom. That was my bargain."
For an instant she swayed and leaned one hand on the table opposite from Pierre. Haganè placed a chair for her. Before sinking to it she spoke, her eyes set on her husband, her voice grave and contained. "Then, Lord Haganè, you have revealed a depth of degradation below the uttermost punishment which I should have thought you willing to bestow."
"Also," continued Haganè, "I ventured to declare, and to believe, that you would go to him willingly." Pierre quivered under this insult to the woman he loved. But Yuki did not look ashamed. Pushing back the hair from both temples she bent her eyes upward, as though invoking strength from unseen powers.
"Yes, Yuki, darling," cried Pierre, coming to her. "He will free you honorably. You shall be mine forever, and we shall soon forget these horrors of the past. I will give him the paper if you wish it. What do I care for Ronsard or for France if I, with this, can buy your life-long happiness?"
Yuki shivered in all the length of her limbs. Haganè turned away. His face could not be seen with the utterance of his next words. Curiously enough they sounded apologetic.
"It was the only way I saw, Yuki, the only bribe that such a man might take. Your body, soiled already, have I offered. Do you understand?"
Pierre's gaze, too, had fallen. Shame weighed all lids. An abnormal silence came to the little group. Yuki broke it with a long, long breath, as of relief and comprehension. The men looked toward her. Haganè clenched a brown fist to a cluster of throbbing veins. But the Frenchman gaped, incredulous, and gaped again. For Yuki was smiling at something far away. A light already not of earth lay on her waxen brow. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now, at last, I understand. You will not force the gift, Haganè. It must be mine. Why, Pierre, look not so strange because, at last, I understand. You cannot know yet, poor Pierre, but soon you will know too. I must be yours, of course. Have you not planned, and spied, and—stolen for this?"
"Yuki," said Haganè, in a deeply troubled voice, "if Monsieur Le Beau by any chance should give the paper—unconditionally should refuse the price—"
"No! no!" she cried, with a quick note of terror, and sprang to her feet again. "Where would be my atonement, my reparation? Think it not, Lord. See that your great mercy be not merciless. I shall go, gladly, gladly, to Monsieur Le Beau; my heart falters not for myself,—but him. It is a cruel deed to him."
"And well deserved," muttered Haganè.
"Being myself weak, Lord," said the young wife, "I feel that the deserving is, after all, the hardest pang."
Pierre dashed his hand across his brow, and went to a small sideboard for a liqueur. Again these strange people were talking their mystic gibberish. Yuki was more clear, indeed. She had stated openly to her husband that she wished to be given to another man. Neither seemed to feel the least delicacy or shame. In Pierre's fastidious thought this fact made a tiny stain for Yuki. The old brute evidently wantedto be rid of her, and she, eagerly accepting freedom, did not shrink from claiming at once a more desirable companionship. At the last moment should he, Pierre, refuse to grasp the prize he had turned criminal in pursuing? No, a thousand times no! Yuki's friendless condition demanded his deepest pity. It was with a faint touch of condescension that he leaned to her, saying, "Do not falter now, Yuki. Our goal is in sight. I will be true to you. I will yet make you happy!"
"Happy! happy!" echoed the woman in a ghost's voice. "All foreigners think and say only that one thing,—happy! Pierre, Pierre, I need so much more than—happiness!"
The pathos of her voice, her small face, touched him to a manlier emotion. She was so young, so white, so helpless!
"What it is possible for me to give you I live but to bestow, my darling," he said, and, kneeling, kissed a small, scarred hand. "I can promise love, protection, deep respect,—for the slime of this man shall not cling to you!"
Haganè snatched him bodily from the floor. His eyes blazed like a beast's. "Time will come for puling. A few things are yet to be said. Let us conclude the savory bargain. I must be gone."
"Yes, let us finish quickly," whispered Yuki.
"Gallant lover," continued Haganè to Pierre, "when and how do you wish to claim your prize?"
"Now, at once," cried Pierre, rallying a little under the scorn hurled toward him. "You have the eyes of a demon. She would not be safe alone with you. Take the paper now, and let me have her!"
Yuki shivered again, and hid her face in her sleeve.
"I shall not harm madame. This I can assure you. But the earliest possible hour for your ecstasy will be—to-night!"
"To-night—to-night!" moaned Yuki.
"It must be so. You cannot pass another night beneath my roof, and there is none who dares receive you but this brawny champion."
"To-night! It is an eternity away!" cried Pierre. "See, love, the sun already is low. I hear the moat-crows cawing. To-night we shall begin to live!"
"Kwannon Sama—oh, dear Saviour, help me to endure," said Yuki to herself.
"To-morrow I join the army in Manchuria. Whatever is to do must be completed before the dawn."
"To-night! To-night, this very night!" sang Pierre, like a schoolboy. "They called me sick, but I am already a well man! That was a marvellous draught you gave me in the tea-rooms, Yuki."
For the first time Haganè showed a puzzled frown. Yuki explained quickly. "Oh, I had forgotten that you did not know. Pierre wandered delirious into our garden this forenoon, your Highness, just after your instructions to me. I could think of no way to send him off, so I took him to the Cha no yu rooms and gave him a fever mixture and a sleeping-draught. I believed he would remain asleep until after the meeting."
"But I didn't," laughed Pierre. "It must have been the God of Good Luck that woke me when he did."
"I tried to tell your Highness before the meeting, although you had given me orders not to disturb your mind," went on Yuki to her husband in the same quiet way. "Perhaps you will recall my effort."
"I do," said Haganè. "It goes far to exonerate you. Tell me more in detail." Yuki closed her lips. She did not wish to be exonerated, at least by Haganè. This was her one supreme opportunity for full expiation,—for sacrifice. No one should wrest it from her.
"I woke in good time," babbled Pierre, to whose brain the liquor was giving a strange lightness. "I saw the statesmen come and go. They whispered and leaned down. I saw Todd, and Sir Charles,—and Yuki by the window. I saw my Lord Haganè come to her with the great paper in his hand. She was going to betray poor Pierre to him, but first the great lord must have his say. He told her of the paper—and then he made iron love—that old lord. I could hear his joints rasp. 'Yuki, you are my wife! When this time of stress and strain is over I shall teach you something of a brighter hue than duty!' Ah, ha! making love, like any schoolboy! She never kissed you as she haskissed me, Haganè. Oh, she cared for me in the little tearooms. We played we were married. Go there; you will find the cushions, the trinkets strewn around, the broken hairpin."
A dull purple tide rushed upward to Haganè's face and stayed there. No battle-wounds could sting and torture like the mincing mimicry of the Frenchman's words. His control was superhuman. He leaned an instant nearer the fireplace to flip off a cigarette ash, then faced his companions coolly. "I must remember to investigate the scene of romance."
Yuki bowed. If she had craved martyrdom, here were assuring circumstances. Pierre's thoughtless words, Haganè's passionate calm, were prison manacles. They snapped on wrists already scarred. She welcomed the cold compulsion.
"Well," Pierre hurried on, "let us get back to business. To-night, you say? I agree, but where?"
"Should the noble count permit such base use of it, the most suitable spot would be your Legation," said Haganè.
Pierre gave a hiss. His head was on fire again. He must hurry and have things settled before the full conflagration came. "More melodrama! I feel the sincerity of your suggestion. Shall I summon the noble count to be asked?"
"Certainly. I shall await him here. Kindly hasten, as the day already wanes."
Pierre fell back a little, half in derision, half in apprehensive credulity, like a harlequin in two shades.
"You really mean it! Well, I shall go. I will get him if he is to be brought. He must come,—I shall be in need of him. It is all a dream, a fever dream. Will you give parole to stay here till I come back,—you and Yuki?" His bright eyes shot suspiciously from one to the other. There was still so much he did not understand.
Haganè sighed. He assumed the expression of one who has had an insect light upon him and whose dignity forbids him to brush it off.
"Answer the Frenchman, Yuki-ko."
"We will remain, Monsieur Le Beau," said Yuki.
Left alone, the husband and wife instinctively drew nearer. After gazing for a long moment Haganè suddenly put out his hands. Yuki thrust hers within them and lifted wide eyes. Her face had a look of blurred moonlight. Out of the mystic whiteness her eyes gleamed like deep spiritual wells, where hopes and possibilities, already death-shadowed, drifted in a spectral sheen. Haganè tightened his clasp, and at the same instant let his own soul come full into his face. Yuki shivered. Her lips parted. Virtue flowed in upon her from his touch. She thought, as in a vision, of the Kioto statue worn smooth by the touch of dying men. What ghostly comfort that image could have held was but a feeble emanation beside the blinding power of this living god.
"All things are not yet clear to me," said the man. "Something is hidden, and you jealously conceal the hiding-place. Yet you sheltered that spy. You prevented me from following. Speak your whole heart, Yuki."
"If I have a secret, Lord, it is one which aids to purify and consecrate my sacrifice. I long for that sweet hour, Lord. My parched spirit strains toward it."
Haganè's lips twitched once. "Yuki, as to the ear of your ancestral gods, tell me, should this paper be regained by means less terrible,—are you worthy to be my wife?"
Thinking of her weakness, her great and not ignoble efforts doomed always, it would seem, to failure, and with the knowledge of this man's greatness full upon her, Yuki answered simply, "No." Her very innocence betrayed her and sealed the doom of death.
Haganè had a man's thoughts. Pierre's boast—the disordered rooms of the tea-house—the broken hairpin—lashed him with a fiery hail. He groaned and dropped his face.
"Yuki, Yuki!" came a voice as though from a mangled soul. "Did you not begin to feel it? I love you! From that first instant in Washington—I have loved you more dearly than I ought. The Gods punish me for my infatuation!"
Yuki's cheeks grew faintly tinged. "Once, nay, twice, Lord, my heart bespoke it, but I dared not listen. If astar had slid through the night to my hand, I would sooner believe that I dreamed, awake, than that the heavens had lost a star."
"A soul—a face—a heart like thine, Yuki—to be befouled by a Frenchman's love!" he cried in agony.
"Dear Lord," whispered the girl, "perhaps by suffering greatly in this life—perhaps in my completeness of expiation—I shall, in the next life, be near thee!"
Haganè could only groan. The black spider busied itself about them. A strange stillness fell on Yuki. She put up a hand to her husband's shoulder, drawing him closer. "My soul is like a quiet pool, my husband. Gaze in, softly, and see your own face there. Nay, break not the shining by thy tears. You must help me to suffer greatly. Let no interference come. This last treachery to the weak boy who has loved me is part of the pain. He will forgive me and forget. He will even be happier than for me to live on as your wife—your loved wife! That is too heavenly a thing for one so frail as I. Let me die, Lord, as you and I, though without speech, have agreed upon. At last I shall serve. Will you promise to befriend me to that hour, my husband?"
"To that hour and beyond!" groaned Haganè. A moment after, he said, "Do you realize, my Yuki, what may be the power of a soul freed like yours,—shot suddenly from the bowstring of a fixed purpose? It is a thunderbolt of the Gods! Not only in your body's death, but through your free soul, after, shall you aid Nippon!"
The wonder in her wide gaze grew. A dawn, it spread circling to outer rims of darkness. Currents of unseen force seemed to whirl in the air about them.
"Soul of my Yuki, I shall summon you to fields of death. Stand near me in perplexing hours, cleave to him who is to be thy mate in a nobler rebirth! Breathe your power through me in moments of despair, lift up your voice when a thousand guns roar death, when ghosts spring up like flames, and the commander sobs to hear the cry of 'Victory!' So shall you be worthy!"
"Lord! Lord! Already art thou a God, and I thy chosencomrade! Wield my freed spirit to our country's need! At last I shall be strong. Into thy hands—Lord—"
Things of the flesh flared up and blew back forever, like scraps of burnt moor-grass. The white flint of her soul had struck from him its spark of immortality!
Pierre'svisible return was preceded by a great chatter of his voice, now in English, again in French. Evidently he had more than one companion. Haganè and Yuki drew apart. Pierre stood at the door which, with a wide French gesture, he had flung open. The tall figure of Minister Todd entered, followed closely by Count Ronsard. It was the latter who saw to the careful closing of the door.
"Mr. Todd!" Yuki faltered, under her breath. Here was a new and terrible trial. Haganè gave her a glance. He saw her slight figure stiffen, and her face grow still again. The light upon his stern countenance was almost as beautiful as her own.
Pierre began a hurried and vaporous explanation. "Mr. Todd was here, your Highness, as you were already aware. He desired greatly to come, and his Excellency, the count, wished it!"
"Entirely unofficial," Ronsard hastened to add. "It is a personal misunderstanding, nothing more. I have been assuring Mr. Todd that it is utterly unofficial!"
Todd raised his thin hand. Reassurance had already come to him. Yuki was safe, and Haganè had the look of an altarpiece. No personal harm, at least, was to be done. "Before this goes one step further I want to say for myself, that unless Prince Haganè is quite willing to have me, I leave at once. I don't pretend to understand what has happened, but I have full faith in Yuki and her husband. There, your Highness! I am through with my little stunt. Shall I strike roots, or reverse the throttle?"
"Unless against the wishes of Madame la Princesse, I desire you to remain."
"Madame la Princesse!" mocked Pierre, angrily, under his breath.
Yuki's dignity equalled that of her husband. "Kindly remain, Mr. Todd," she murmured, with a slight bow.
"Your Highness," said Todd, still addressing Haganè, "now tell us how many grains of wheat are in this chaff of foolishness Pierre is giving us! Something about your going to send my little Yuki off like a piece of broken china, for him, Le Beau, to patch together at his leisure. Pshaw! Of course the boy is out of his head!"
Haganè thought deeply before he made reply. His sobriety and deliberation gave unusual weight to speech always impressive. Each word was a nail driven straight into the lid of an abandoned hope.
"Madame la Princesse has offended in a way peculiarly Japanese,—difficult, I think,—too difficult even for your sympathy and kindness to comprehend. There is no need to dwell upon it. She leaves me of her own free will. She and I understand each other perfectly. That is all! We shall detain you two gentlemen but a moment."
"Entirely unofficial, your Excellency will observe," whispered Ronsard, nervously, to the American.
"Yes, yes, I made that much out for myself," said Todd to Haganè. "If you intend to separate, it is deplorable, but clearly none of my business. It's the other heinous suggestion, that of handing her over to another man, that makes me hot in the collar. Don't tell me I must believe this of your Highness!"
Neither Haganè's eyes nor voice faltered. "The man, Monsieur Le Beau, has a service to perform for Japan. He asks a certain price. Yuki alone can pay that price."
"It is simple enough, Mr. Todd," Pierre burst in. The discussion went in a direction distasteful to him. He did not wish the matter of the paper, and its means of acquirement, laid bare. "I can do the prince a service. For it, Yuki becomes my own, as from the beginning she should have been. This little talisman merely rights the mistakes of Fortune." He held out the document, shaking it to attract attention.
"The very paper I helped to sign, this day!" said Todd, wondering. "What, in the name of Beelzebub, are you doing with it? Haganè was to guard it with his life! There'ssomething queer in this. I smell foul play! Did Yuki,—could Yuki have—?" He checked himself, reddening at the baseness of his quick suspicion. Yuki, facing him, gave no answering flush. She was white,—white beyond belief in a thing that lived at all. Her low voice gave each syllable full measure. "I was partly—to blame—that Monsieur Le Beau secured that paper. I shall pay his price."
Todd's eyes still hung on her, fascinated, incredulous. He could not believe her capable of vileness. He knew that no depth of personal degradation could begin to compare, in the Japanese mind, with an offence against loyalty. It was to them, truly, the sin against the Holy Ghost. Yet, by her own words, Yuki was condemned. His stung thought flashed to Pierre, and fastened on him. "Then, man, it is a double wrong! I do not know yet how you got the thing; but if she is implicated, you owe it to her, far more than yourself, to be decent! In the name of morality,—of honor,—do not sell the thing; give it back without condition! Your proposition is damnable!"
"His Excellency Mr. Todd was one who signed the paper; he pleads for its return," murmured Ronsard to the air.
"Never mind that!" flashed Todd. "The paper doesn't trouble me a little bit! I am thinking of Yuki!"
"But—Mr. Todd—Yuki, she wish to pay that price. She wish to be given—so—to Monsieur!" said the Princess Haganè.
Pierre flashed a look of triumph into Todd's dazed eyes. Defiantly he went to Yuki, caught her hand, and kissed it. "You see and hear her for yourself!" vaunted Pierre. Todd appealed dumbly to Haganè for extrication from this amazing skein of tangled interests. Haganè brooded on his wife with tenderness,—with the ache of love,—as over a dying child. Yuki drew her hand from Pierre and went to the minister. "Don't try to understand," she urged him, piteously, "don't defend me! You cannot understand,—not even Gwendolen could understand!" She caught her breath sharply, with a new and untried pang, "Oh, Gwendolen, my dear one!" she moaned, "I had forgotten you. Gwendolen—Gwendolen!"
"If I might be allowed to say a word in behalf of France," ventured Ronsard, hesitatingly.
"Your Excellency," interrupted Pierre, "let us have no further discussion. I cannot be interfered with, even by you. The thing is done! I have agreed! Prince Haganè protects us all! All are satisfied. Cela!"
"Yes, yes," echoed Yuki. "Everything is settled!"
"Here's one thing that isn't!" flared out Todd. "I say to you men, French and Japanese alike, damn you for a set of cold-blooded, fanatical politicians! Out of the bunch I respect—no, I despise a little less, Le Beau, for though an egoist and a fool, he is at least on fire with love. As for you two statesmen, there's something rotten in your refrigerators! I know what Le Beau has to sell, of course; and it is not worth the sacrifice of this poor shivering child! Ronsard, speak up for France, without permission or apology. Where is your honor, where that little cross with the red ribbon, that you stand by and see this wedge of opportunity driven by a boy's lust into sand!"
"Your Excellency!" thundered Haganè. "Though you signed the paper, it is not yours. I claim it—for Nippon! I alone am responsible!"
Yuki cowered an instant, pressing both hands against her ears, then she rallied, and crying, "Do not interfere,—it is Haganè's concern and mine," went up to Todd, and seized his arm for emphasis. He pushed her off. "It may be Haganè's business, but I make it mine! God! These are not the Dark Ages. I'm not the man to stand aside and have a woman burned at the stake of political exigency. I'll turn traitor myself! I'll tell the purport of the paper! I'll wire my resignation to Washington next day! But I won't keep still!" His lean figure flashed with indignation like a gleam that plays along an unsheathed sword.
Yuki, wheeling back to him with incredible swiftness, caught down the upraised hand, and strained it to her breast. She threw herself against him, praying, it would seem, for eternal life. "Oh, my friend, you are noble, but you make the terrible mistake! You will kill my soul, which has but just come alive. Let me go to Pierre, as is now planned. Youthink, maybe, that I do some great sacrifice for my country, like that good girl, Jeanne d'Arc. But you think too high. I am bad! I am the cat! I have no love for Nippon or for Haganè! No, I have the one wish now,—to go to Pierre—to Pierre! I was close to him a moment, and now you come to drag me away. Keep me not from Pierre!"
Todd scrutinized her from between stiffening, half-closed eyelids. The gathering corner-wrinkles had the effect of sparks. "It's no good, Yuki!" he said quietly. "It don't work a little bit! I've known you too long!"
"Oh, but Iisbad, very bad! You didn't know, of course not! I was sly to hide everythings. Pierre and I have arrange so that, in spite of cruel father, and Prince Haganè and all, we comes together at last! Ah, push me off again!" she cried convulsively. "That is right! I care not if I lose you, and Mrs. Todd, and Gwendolen, and my good name,—everything! if only I can go to Pierre this night! Just let me do what I wish, as all have agree but you. Try not to prevent!"
At the wild light in her eyes, the impassioned ring of her voice, Todd, his faith for the moment quailing, had pushed her off a few shuddering inches. She clung still to his hand. By this he drew her near again, and probed. Before his first word, she must have surmised the change, for she swayed in his hold, shuddered violently, closed her lids, and let her lips form a few dumb words of prayer.
"Yuki!" Todd began, in a voice so low that the others scarcely heard. "Yuki, this is a part you are playing. Eternity is your stage, and tragedy your curtain. The room smells of it. You are not bad. You harbor now a heroic design. I cannot understand, but I believe it to be supreme! Before God, look into my eyes, and tell me the truth. I will not betray you!"
She lifted calmly, now, the great, dark orbs. He gazed down into them, to the thought that lay, like a white rock, in the clear depths. In absolute moments the human soul has a speech of its own and an ear to listen. Her lips moved no more. She was not conscious of further effort to make him see. Without grosser statement, knowledge came to him.This life of earth already had lost its hold on her,—Pierre was less than a shadow on a stream. Todd knew that she was to die,—that the discarded shell of the thing he loved would be Pierre's prize. By the same ghostly prescience Haganè knew that certainty had laid her cold touch upon the American. He averted quickly his dark face from the sight. Ronsard, who was nearest, saw a mighty shudder blow upon him; then the face, now twitching, lifted toward the light. His lips moved. Ronsard could not surmise the trend of the broken, muttered words; but Yuki, who had neither heard nor seen, knew that he was praying.
Todd loosed the girl's hand now, not in rebuke, but as one incapable of sustaining longer the fragile burden. The alertness, the eagerness went from him. All at once he was a middle-aged man. "And I must stand by and do—nothing!" he whispered, half to himself, half to her.
"Oh, you can still do much. You can believe in me,—and Gwendolen will not need to scorn me. I will thank you always, if only for what you have just understood."
"Come!" said Haganè, sharply. "A woman's endurance has a limit. The paper, please, Monsieur Le Beau."
Ronsard touched Pierre's arm. "Not until you have received your price."
"When Yuki comes to me to-night, and not before," said Pierre, valiantly. He was pleased with the sound of his own bravado.
Yuki threw a piteous glance toward her husband. "Then shall I accompany, now? I think I can do all, alone."
Haganè did not answer her. He held Pierre in a hard gaze. "To-night?" he questioned. "How can I be sure that the seal will be intact?"
"Sir!" said Pierre, indignantly, "your suggestion is an insult!"
"Ah! do thieves who enter other men's homes to rob them still wave the flag of honor?" Pierre drew back, flushed and scowling, with a muttered curse. Todd gave a great start. It was the first time he had heard the specific charge. How then, if Pierre were a mere common thief, could Yuki be involved? Again he was baffled. He shook his head sadly,and kept silence. Haganè had begun to speak again. "I am willing to refer the matter to arbitration, but shall not consent to the document remaining here. Let it be put into the hands of a third party, until to-night."
"Yes," said Yuki, eagerly. "Mr. Todd will keep it. All trust him!"
Pierre and Ronsard exchanged apprehensive glances. To refuse was impossible. "An—an—excellent plan," said Ronsard, with a watery beam. "But, since Russia is our ally—"
"Utterly unofficial, you know. A purely personal misunderstanding," reminded Todd, not without a gleam of malice. "In your present attitude, Count Ronsard, you can scarcely claim anything further. France's honor hardly rests on—felony! I am willing to hold it; and, if the prince should fail to drive in the sacrificial lamb, otherwise Yuki, France gets the paper, I presume."
"Exactly," said Haganè, and Ronsard in a breath.
"Only," interpolated Yuki, in her low, clear voice, "no sacrificial lamb is to be driven, your Excellency,—only a woman gaining her soul's desire."
Pierre triumphed in glances about the room. Couldn't the fool American see that Yuki was simply dying to get away from old Haganè and come to him! Why this continued talk of sacrifice? It sounded like the Japanese themselves. Pierre sent an ardent, encouraging look to the girl. To his surprise, her face was set steadily upon Haganè, and in his answering gaze was the same embarrassing rapture.
"Well," said Todd, sharply, "am I to keep the paper or not?"
"My dear colleague," stuttered Ronsard, paddling the air with gestures of concession, "of course, in your keeping it is as safe as—say—in my private desk. Pierre!—" There was a sharp tang to the name.
The young man reluctantly handed the envelope to Todd. He took it with a crooked smile. Haganè and Yuki remained calm as statues.
"Madame," the host said, with fictitious gayety, "perhaps, as a matter of delicacy, congratulations are not in order; yet allow me to assure you of my good-will and homage!"
Yuki met his look. Her face was still expressionless, like a Japanese painting of a high-born lady where repose is the desired essential. Something underlying the white calm disturbed him. After her few gentle words, "I thank your Excellency," he was glad to turn away.
"To-night at eight," said Haganè, moving toward the door. "Can all be present at eight?"
The three men bowed gravely. Ronsard for once had forgotten etiquette. He was allowing his visitors to leave alone. Yuki, with no further look for Pierre, prepared to follow her husband, but Todd came to himself with a queer, choking little sound. In two long strides he overtook her.
"Yuki,—how can. I stand it? You are like my other child! I am in a bed of nettles, and you have tied my hands! I have agreed to take this paper chiefly on the hope that I may stir Le Beau to a nobler issue. You must agree,—youmust—to a less awful price."
Yuki's lifted face was whiter now than any death, but somehow, under the icy surface a flower was frozen. "Pierre will not agree, because I have said I wish to go to him. You have understood the Japanese heart strangely; but even yet,—there are spaces you have not dreamed. I pray God for you to fail, dear Mr. Todd, but I ask his blessing on your kindness. Give to those dear ones at your home, my Sayonara, and my undying love!"
Todd writhed as if stung by an unseen serpent. "And yet, within my bounds of confidence and honor, I must reason with Pierre, must speak more fully with Ronsard!"
"I trust you utterly," said Yuki, as she faded through the doorway.
Ronsard, recalled perhaps by the mention of his name, hurried forward now, and accompanied the noble guests to the portico. Left together, Pierre and Todd eyed each other. On the younger, more beautiful face, vanity and self-satisfaction were spread as scented unguents. The hour was his. He had triumphed! Yuki, in spite of all these grave men, was to be his own. Oh, he would make her happy!
It is said that the colorless color 'white' is merely a cunning admixture of all hues. In the same way, the iridescent struggleof contempt, pity, incredulity, disapprobation, whirling together in the American's mind, coalesced into blankness,—the consciousness of a situation hopeless, irremediable. Without a word or exclamation he sank to the nearest chair, put his long, lean arms out upon the table, and laid his face upon them. So the two men remained, until the heavy footsteps of Ronsard came back into the hall,—until he entered, and, casting an eye on the prostrate form, asked of Pierre, in a whisper, "Is his Excellency ill?"
"No," said Pierre, irritably. "He is not, but I am. Nobody seems to think of the strain I've been under all this time. With your permission, Excellency, I'll have one of the servants telephone for a physician. This hellish fever is on me again. I must keep my reason until this night is over!"
Ronsard, without answering, waddled to a chair, moved his short legs outward, and let the attraction of gravitation do the rest. The room shook with the impact, jangling empty cups and glasses on the table. He drew out a silken handkerchief, and with it odors of violet and vervain.
"Oui, oui," he made answer at length, "have your physician. You will need him before you are through. And when the servant comes, kindly order tea, sandwiches, coffee, liqueurs, anything which may strengthen. Bah! It is vaudeville tragedy!" He settled himself with grunts and short groans of distaste. Todd was deliberately overlooked. The silent form gave both observers a sense of uneasiness.
Pierre's orders given, strength suddenly deserted him. He went to a couch, where pillows in Japanese brocades were heaped. "With your permission, gentlemen," he muttered. He threw himself down upon his back, bending his head upward into the soft squares, until the profile was drawn thin and clear, as that of a mediæval figure on a tomb. All day long, ever since his escape from the hospital (and could it be possible that his flight had taken place since dawn of this very day?), illness had toyed with him as a jungle tiger with its prey, letting him go free for a moment, only to spring back, fastening deeper claws. Now the fever held him, and moved like a tumultuous sea across which was hung a molten, blindingsheet of brass. Down in the valleys of the waves it was dark, and cold, and terrible. Sea-creatures grimaced at him, holding out long, wavering arms. Oh, the valleys were terrible indeed! But up on the swelling crest was far worse, for there he burned. Sometimes his brain went wild in the torment of flame. His lips blistered and cracked. Once, when he threw a hand suddenly upward, a pink finger-nail split to the flesh. The intervals had a rhythm, a relentless, horrible recurrence. He knew in anticipation the agony of each moment just before it came. Now,—now he was beginning to rise, to be borne up from the liquid, icy trough toward a plane of fire. He groaned aloud, and cowered. Soft footsteps went around the room. Porcelain or some such brittle substance went clashing gently. To him it was as shells of the sea, caught up with him in the wave; caught up from slimy depths, like him; torn from a nether world of cold despair and whirled upward, as he was being whirled! Soon they would crack, too, and the pretty colors be burned and blackened. A voice came out of the water. It sounded like Ronsard's voice. "Look at the young Monsieur! Diable! Fever is gaining. I would he were safely back in the hospital."
"Then why not take the responsibility of sending him there?" drawled the American's voice,—that thin, nasal, self-confident voice that Pierre hated. It lashed now, like sea-nettles, in his face.
Pierre writhed, and tried to toss aside the pillows. "I won't go back! You need not plan! You cannot force me!" he tried to scream. His parched lips opened. A hissing noise came from his throat. He thought he had really screamed the words, but the quiet, uninterrupted flow of conversation, behind the wall of the wave convicted him terribly of delusion. He gnashed his teeth, struggling to rise.
"Good God!" cried Todd, reaching him at a bound. "The man is in convulsions. A doctor, quick, or he'll die here!"
Ronsard pressed a bell in frantic haste, and sent all the Legation servants forth in search of physicians, warning each to go in an individual direction. As a natural consequence, they went in a frightened phalanx. Police-officers, seeing the confusion, hurried in. Everywhere was dismayand disorganization. Todd alone retained a little judgment, giving the sick man ammonia to smell, and bathing his forehead with cold water.
It was a young American practitioner who first gained the house. Had it been a German (of whom there are several of world-wide reputation resident in Tokio), he, in behalf of his reputation,—not to mention common sense, would certainly have insisted upon sending the invalid back to Yokohama, where, indubitably, he belonged. The American being younger, more imaginative, and with less reputation to jeopardize, might lend himself the more readily to the unusual. Ronsard and Todd, each in his own way,—both, of course, intensely desirous of getting Pierre safely in hospital walls,—nevertheless advanced persuasions to keep him away from the desirable haven until the following morning. The physician was evidently puzzled by the presence of conflicting motives. As a final statement of his own position, he said, "I insist that you gentlemen recognize the measures I must employ to give him an interval of strength and lucidity must take away at least fifty per cent of the patient's chances of recovery!"
Todd answered for both. "We understand. It is the dickens of a thing for us to have to decide on; yet, since the man, if in his senses, would consider us traitors to shut him up before eight to-night, I don't see anything else but to let you dose him until that time."
"Exactly," corroborated the French minister.
"And, doctor," added Todd, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "it is a mess. We can't explain. Mum's the word, you know."
"Oh, I knew before you told me," said the young doctor. Then he went to work.
An hour later Pierre, gasping, and pouring out from his entire frame the very sap of vitality, still lay on the sofa, his fever gone, his mind clear, uplifted, pellucid, as it had been on awakening in Yuki's tea-rooms three hours before.
The doctor had departed. Neither Todd nor the French minister had left the room. The two politicians tacitly understood that neither trusted the other, yet, strange to say,neither resented it. The issue at stake was too big for personal irritation. In the reaction of his excitement Todd pondered anew, with ever deepening foreboding, upon the thing that Yuki's eyes had told him. Ronsard, overflowing in his cushioned chair, brooded of France and her already humiliated ally, Russia.
"Le Beau," said Todd, at length, rising and walking in the direction of the sofa, "you're too sick a man to be pounded by all the arguments I have been getting together for you, but there are just a few things I must say, and which his Excellency Count Ronsard here should hear me say."
"Speak," said Pierre, languidly; "it will make no difference at all, Monsieur, but I shall listen."
"I want you to return that paper quietly, as a gentleman should, and I want you to go back to the hospital, as a rational being should. You are precipitating a crisis that Napoleon in his best days might shrink from, and you are too ill to stand on your feet. You don't know yet what you are doing. Rely on stronger men, just now, and in all your future life you will thank God that you listened!"
Pierre shifted his position slightly and tried to smile. Ronsard placed himself at the other end of the couch. His eyes held Todd. "Before Pierre tries to answer, it is but right to him, to France, that I should speak, your Excellency." He went close to Pierre and touched him. "Pierre, I urge, with all the fervor, all the loyalty, all the passion of a son of France, that you give up—not the paper; that is ours,—but the woman. None but a coward and a sensualist would sell away from his country a paper which commands so terrible a price."
"I am impaled upon the diameter of widely differing opinions," said Pierre, sarcastically.
Todd's next words were very quiet. They were addressed to Ronsard. "The advice of your Excellency is both just and creditable. You speak as a diplomat; I merely as a man. I know what was in the paper, and I know also that a man's honor, that nameless, indescribable essence which makes him a man, once blackened, with the stain eaten in, can neverbe brightened. Pierre has but an hour or two to change himself from a low thief to a man. Give up the paper, Pierre, and save the woman you say you love!"
"Bah!" Ronsard interrupted with a rudeness the others scarcely had believed possible to him; "you accuse Frenchmen of sentimentality, Mr. Todd. What is this desire of yours but sentiment, false sentiment, puerile, absurd? You spur the boy's honor in order to save a woman who probably does not wish to be saved. You play upon him! I see a tear in his youthful eye. He thinks of Madame, deserted,—in need of comfort! Who should condole with her but he? Pouf! If you yearn to be a hero, Pierre, make of that very desire a nobler sacrifice for France! Break your heart if you will, but with the shattered fragments trace the name of France! Upon this paper that you hold, the future of a great war may hang. It has written instructions,—values,—perhaps a secret treaty. Think what it may mean, not only to our own land, to Russia, but to you!" He leaned to finger a little red ribbon dangling from a cigar-box on the table. Pierre's eyes shot a dull gleam. "When Haganè comes, defy him,—break your word, retain the paper, but give back the wife he so easily discards!"
Pierre had fallen back in his pillows. "You don't know what you are talking of,—neither knows," he said, tossing his head feverishly. "You will set my veins on fire again with your chatter. Yuki, Haganè and I understand each other—" he broke off with a querulous gesture.
Todd had begun to bristle. Sneers were rare to him, but now his lean face assumed one. He caught up the red ribbon which Ronsard had let fall, and cried to him, "You scorned the motive of honor, of pity for a woman, yet wave the red flag of personal ambition. Pierre, can you not see for yourself how flimsy is his argument? You think you understand Yuki and her husband, but you do not. A terrific tragedy hangs over us all. I insist, I implore you, Pierre, try to reason this out for yourself, not as a Frenchman, a lover, or a diplomat, but just as a man,—a man, and what makes him a man, with a little fuse of God sputtering in him, and not an animal minus the fuse, made up of intellect,tastes, and inclinations! Think of that shivering, white-faced girl,—that Oriental Jeanne d'Arc who faced us all so bravely an hour ago. I tell you, man, if you loved her decently, you would turn sick at the thought of receiving her at the hands of her lawful husband. Boy, try to think for once in your life of some one besides yourself,—and may God have mercy on you and my little Yuki."
His voice broke on the last word. Ronsard jerked his body, and gave a low sound of irritation. Pierre flared up into feeble passion.
"And I tell you, Mr. Todd, that you talk nonsense! I have thought of Yuki,—only Yuki! I think now of no one but Yuki. I too pitied her, and did what I could. I offered to give the paper back into her hands, with the one condition that Haganè should pardon what he fancies her offence and should receive her back openly as his wife. They both refused!"
"You did what? Haganè refusedwhat?" exclaimed Todd. He thought that the fever was again upon its victim. Ronsard looked concerned and felt Pierre's white forehead. He met their eyes triumphantly. He was pleased at the effect of his words. Something in his boyish face impressed the diplomats with the truth of the unbelievable statement just made. "Now, perhaps you will let me alone for a while," he said disdainfully, and turned his back.
The elder men exchanged glances of dismay, and by a common impulse left the couch. Pierre felt himself again a conqueror. His words, like a querulous barking, followed them. "I really do not feel able to endure more talk, or more tobacco-smoke, just now, gentlemen. The doctor said I must have sleep before to-night. If I could only sleep! After a fine deep sleep I should be strong again, the doctor said it! But they will not let me alone,—they talk and argue, but they are ignorant. Yuki and I understand each other." With little childish, spasmodic movements he settled himself among the sheens of brocade, keeping his face to the wall. Small sounds of discontent, passing into moans and feverish starts, came from him.
Todd stood, perplexed, by the table. Ronsard, in equalagitation, hovered near, and then with a side glance at the sick boy, crushed his cigarette into a tray. Todd's lean shoulders bent over as with a weight. "After that last," he muttered, "I guess I might as well clear out. Is there anything further to discuss, your Excellency?" he asked of Ronsard.
The Frenchman's eyes shifted. His protruding underlip trembled until he felt it shake, and raised a perfumed laden handkerchief for a screen. Todd saw the uncertainty, the battle between etiquette and fear in his colleague's face, and, with a dry smile, took the paper from his breast, slapping it down upon the bare table.
"My dear sir, my most valuable friend," began Ronsard, in his oiliest manner, "you tear my heartstrings with the implied doubt. Your honor is not to be questioned. Yet I would be glad to know just where you intend to remain this fateful afternoon." The contrast between his tone and the relief in his fat face were too much for Todd. He threw back his head to laugh. Pierre, already dragged far out in an undertow of sleep, did not turn, but Ronsard glanced up suspiciously. His half-buried eyes had a tinge of red.
"It's just this way, Count," said the other, easily. "I know what is in this little billet,—you don't. I assure you that the price is not big enough by half for the promised reward. Yet if it were a thousand times bigger, and if I dreaded and disapproved of the whole business ten thousand times more than I do, yet, having given my word to Prince Haganè and Yuki, and having accepted the—er—shall I call it confidence?—of you and Le Beau, I should keep strictly both to the letter and the spirit of my bargain. I can't imagine, to be frank, the inner workings of a man who could do anything else. I am an American. I have been a senator, and I now represent my Government in a land which fills me with the most intense admiration. Does that put any lubricator on your troubled waves?"
"My dear sir," purred the Frenchman, "let us be seated for a moment more. I thank your Excellency for these new assurances, and appreciate the generosity of them. This has been an afternoon of trial for me,—of deep humiliation.Your nobility adds but one more pang, and, in the name of France, I can bear it! I shall give five hundred yen to the poor of Tokio when this most detestable affair is at an end. It is my first experience of the kind, and shall be my last. Pierre's public dismissal from the service of this Legation will be in the morning papers. I shelter him no longer."
Todd made no comment. He had refused to take the proffered seat. "Your Excellency, I feel the need of fresh air. I must go. But before leaving you I have two questions to put,—answer or not as you think best."
"At your service, Monsieur."
"Have you any knowledge of the motive which prompts Yuki to take so strong, so vital a part in this hellish arrangement—and—do you know her offence?"
"I can answer both. The first is obvious enough. Madame has the natural desire to pass from the arms of winter to that of spring. The other query,—I cannot give a positive reply, but will share the data."
Todd waited in silence. Ronsard arranged his words with some nicety. "In the first excitement of Le Beau's arrival,—as he came in like a maniac, waving a white screed, and gasping out to me its nature,—I cried, 'Then where is Haganè? He must be close behind you!' Pierre, with a meaning glance, assured me that the great man could not follow, being—detained."
"Detained? Well, go on!"
"I marvelled, as you do, at the phrase. 'Detained,' Pierre said,—entangled, tied, quite cleverly, by Madame and her long gray sleeves. Did you not notice the disarray of Madame's toilette?" Ronsard looked up now full at his colleague, as if to enjoy the effect. Todd steadied himself. He would not give this man the satisfaction of gloating over new wounds. The whole terrible thing came clear to him. He saw why Yuki needed to die. It was no punishment inflicted by Haganè, but a last desperate self-atonement.
"Ah!" he answered Ronsard, with wonderful coolness, "I thank your Excellency for the elucidation. It is complete. Now, with your permission, and if your mind is entirely at rest, I will say 'Good-bye until to-night at eight.'"
"Certainly," bowed the count, who did not relish this acrobatic reversion to tranquillity. "The disclosure, I trust, makes no difference in your—sentiments."
"Heavens, man! how could it? I'm not a tin fish on a red barn, to wheel round with every wind! Don't you see it is as much to me as anybody else that the thing gets back, unopened, to Haganè?"
"Yes, yes, I presume so," muttered Ronsard, and accompanied his colleague to the door. The American went out on foot. Ronsard slowly retraced his heavy steps to Pierre. Stopping beside the sleeper, he stared down, first thoughtfully, then in growing antipathy and disgust. France, America, political acumen, possible distinction for himself or Todd,—all were blocked by this sick animal who lay, inert as a log, clear across the current of affairs. Well, endurance came with the thought that a few hours more would see the end!
Ronsard turned away at length, moved restlessly around the room, and at last, with a resigned sigh, took out a pack of cards, drew a table before a long pier-glass, and, solemnly dealing two hands, played piquet with his silent, gray shade, until the day went out, and the first purple waves of night came rushing in across a soundless shore.