When the rest entered the house she politely withdrew, unnoticed, and went away, far into the woods, and on and on until she came to the hidden cave, where every rock and all the flowers and even the stars had sung again and again of her great love and Shibusawa’s faith. She did not return, but lingered and stayed, and prayed fresh prayers; and then she thought she saw him there bending over her; she heard him speak and looked into his eyes, and felt again the power of his love. After a long time she went away, and when far from the cave and all about was darkness and she was uncertain of her way a chill came over her and she thought of the tempter’s bait and her mother’s weakness.

“Would to God that I, too, had found a way!” was her last thought as she nestled upon her wooden pillow, and at last slept a broken, restless sleep.

Late that evening Tetsutaisho left the cottage and lightly tripped along down the pathway toward his own house. As he went his steps quickened, and he almost ran with delight. He carried in his girdle a document which on the morrow he would safely file and thus insure the proper keeping of its lawful provisions. Upon his arrival he hurriedly entered the house, and that night Takara may have had, for the first time, misgivings of a weaker purpose on Tetsutaisho’s part than she herself had divined.

However that may have been, it mattered not to Tetsutaisho, for on the following day his own carriers set in front of the gardener’s cottage a beautiful lacquered chair into which there stepped a weeping, sorrowing child; a daughter whose only price was the worth of her virtue, whose only hope lay in the power of her own frail hands.

She went, and with her the rags that hung upon her back. There was not a mother’s blessing, and the father had slunk back from witnessing the fruit of a heartless wife’s bargaining. It was not the first. Others had likewise served. And the fathers and mothers had for ages eagerly and unknowingly partaken of the wages.

CHAPTER XVII
THE CHILD

Upon Kinsan’s arrival at Tetsutaisho’s house she was treated with every consideration by her master, and in reality though not in fact given equal rank with the mistress. She was settled in that part of the house over which his mother was supposed to reign and his lawful wife, Nehachibana, had been the principal personage, and while not raised to the place of a concubine she was given all the privileges of one. Her position was supposed to be that of a servant, yet in turn she was given servants and no duties were, by Tetsutaisho, exacted of her. It was not because he did not intend her to be his full-fledged concubine, nor because he had any scruples about Nehachibana that he did not give Kinsan that position; but simply because he entertained grave doubts about Takara’s pleasure in the matter—something with which even he as yet hesitated to trifle.

He had gained Takara’s love, and her honest love, upon the strength of an affinity—a thing which, so long as it lasted, brooked no rival. He had, though, in taking her into his house assumed responsibilities far beyond personal ones; and recognising the superiority of her position realised that, should he incur her displeasure, she had but to call upon a power that might overthrow and discard him in spite of his usefulness. He sought, therefore, to deceive Takara as to his real purpose in bringing Kinsan into the house, and to let her discover by slow degrees that, without a proper encouragement, even affinity may wane and finally cease to hold the object of its affection.