All this Takara felt in her heart, though she knew that he could not return her love; that another held in secret the trust which God had given, and that she herself at best must be but a slave. As such, she stole on board his ship and hid herself away. The storm came upon them, and she too may have fallen at the shrine of Mystery, listened to the sweet voice of Tradition. And she reasoned that if the one be true, the other must suffice; that if her presence had disturbed the gods, her sacrifice must appease their wrath. Hence she sought her god, and intrusted to him the keeping of her sworn duty. He accepted the obligation, and she answered to the will of her Maker. It is asked:

“Is the beautiful goddess of truth a certain star? Is Takara in heaven?”

CHAPTER XXXIX
THE BIVOUAC

The armada arrived at Hakone early in the morning, and the myriad sails stretched for miles along the low, sand-skirted beach, while the eager men plunged and waded to the shore. The waters lay calm—scarcely a ripple stirring their glassy surface—and long before midnight the soldiers had bivouacked upon the sloping banks far up toward the surrounding hills. They slumbered, and only the slow tramp of the sentinel told of the visitation there encamped.

Shibusawa alone lingered; he could not sleep. A new responsibility had taken hold of him, and his mind wandered into the mystic land of infinitude. At his back lay the majestic Fujiyama, whose silent cone and sloping sides seemed encircled with a thousand magic tales, and whose lofty peak had inspired with awe the millions born of departed ages; while before him spread the plains of Sagami, studded with its historic legend, sacred temples, mammoth statues, palaces of the kings, and caves of the gods.

The restless man thought of all these, and of how he had rambled amidst its historic fields; climbed up and into the very heart and head of the great Buddha, with its eyes of gold and tons of bronze, measuring fifty feet in height and seventeen across from ear to ear; stolen on the rock-hewn steps around the jagged cliffs at Enoshima, where juts the rock and beats the surf, to the cave, in which dwells the lovely goddess Benten; pilgrimaged to the lofty golden-lacquered statue of Kwannon, the beautiful image, over sixty feet in height, of the time-honoured goddess of mercy, recalling that he, too, had stood at her feet, in the darkened chamber, behind the shrine, bowing with reverence, while the priests in their sombre gowns repeated holy incantations: that he had admired the beautiful handiwork of man as they raised and lowered the sliding candles from foot to head on either side, and that he had gone away again feeling better in heart and stronger of purpose—more fitted to do his part in the mighty empire of life. These things crowded upon his memory, and a whole world of beauty opened up as of the past and he marvelled at its vastness and shuddered at the thought of its crumbling before the march of progress. He asked himself if he were in the right in hastening its downfall; if all those who had gone before, those millions of tireless, worshipping souls, had lived in vain. Then a broader conception dawned, and he answered:

“Yes.”

He had looked beyond all this to the God who knows no image, who counts within His fold all the suns and moons and stars and lands within a world of worlds. He then slept, and upon arising despatched a message to Kyoto with the news of Takara’s death, and began the march toward Tokyo, much refreshed and more confident of his mission. He had overcome the last temptation to cling to the old, and pressed forward with a better courage and lighter heart toward the new. He too had loved and lost, though his God bade him have faith: Takara’s did not.