They stood there, hand in hand, he and Sylvia, gazing at the dead girl. "The poor, dear little thing." There were tears in the girl's voice. "How beautiful she is."
"Beautiful." The thought came to him of the peculiarly luminous radiance of her eyes. "That's just what makes me so sick of this whole thing, Sylvia, the wanton waste and destruction of the process of compelling the grace and beauty of Japan into the cramping forms of our civilization: that it is these women, these girls who must suffer. What do I care for the men, even the young boys, who have been slaughtered to-day! That's part of the game, man's price for that which we call progress of civilization. That's all right. But these girls, these infinitely delicate and beautiful beings, made for sunlight, and fragrance, and flowers; but they are drawn, attracted into the whirl and whirr of the wheels of our civilization, and they hurt them, tear and mangle them, in mind, in spirit, or in body, and cast them forth." He stared misty-eyed at the figure before them, with its bright crimson obi band, delicately tinted kimono sleeve drooping outspread towards the floor. "Like that, dead, crushed—broken butterflies."
Outside, the tumult and clamor of the mob was increasing. All were facing the palace gate at Sakuradamon. "Banzai." The cry came from those on the bridge. "Banzai. Long live the Emperor. Long live Japan. Banzai." The roar was taken up by the other thousands, rose heavenwards, about the rumble and crackle from the flaming furnace of the General Staff building.
Kikuchi slammed open the window. "Come on," he turned to Kent, ecstatic, strident-voiced. "We have won. The tyrants are finished. Now we shall build up Japan, make it a great nation, the Emperor and the people together. Banzai." He threw his arm around the shoulder of Ishii. Together they leaned far out of the window, aristocrat and office boy, their voices blending with the thunderous pæan of the multitude:
"Banzai, banzai."
End