And Delilah to Samson said: where your great power is or by what means overcoming to bind and torture you one may be able, this me tell.
She began to tremble in every limb. She, a samurai's daughter? She thought of her father, aged and broken, grieving that he had had no son in the war. She had been but a useless girl-child, left to plant paper prayers at the cross-roads for the brave men who longed to achieve a glorious death. If she did this thing—would it not be for Japan?
And he at last-to his mind completely opened.
The woman's knees-upon Samson did sleep and she called a man who of his head the seven locks cut off ... and the power of him was lost.
If she did, would it avail? She remembered Phil's eyes on her face the day on the sands at Kamakura—their smouldering, reckless glow. She remembered the bamboo lane! In those daredevil kisses her woman's instinct had divined the force of the attraction she exercised over him—had felt it with contempt and a self-humiliation that burned her like an acid. To use that for her purpose? But she was a Christian! From the Christian God's "Thou shalt not" there was no appeal.
She remembered suddenly her last service at the Buddhist temple across the lane, and how the old priest had bade her a gentle farewell, wishing her peace and joy in her new religion, and saying smilingly that all religions were augustly good, since they pointed the same way. She saw the nunnery, with its tall clumps of yellow dahlias and wild hydrangeas; above which hung gauzy robes that waved like gray ghosts escaping from the mold into the sunshine. She saw the cherry-trees touched by the golden summer light, the mossy monuments in the burying-ground, the pigeons fluttering about the lichened pavement.
The audience was singing now—the Japanese version of Jesus, Lover of My Soul:
Waga tamashii wo
Ai suru Yesu yo,
Nami wa sakamaki,
Kaze fuki-arete.
She could no longer be a Christian!
But the old gods of her people shining from their golden altars—the ancient divinities who looked for ever down above the sound of prayer—they would smile upon her!