“You are not pained, are you, Harunaga, at what I said?”

“How could I be, most honorable princess?”

“Then hereafter say, ‘Yodogima’; I love to hear the name.”

The personal note, whatever his predilection, touched Harunaga, as no other had; from the days of his childhood, in the service of Shibata, in far distant Kitanoshi, he had formed only the component part of a machine. The breath of life touched him, accordingly, as none other had done. Here lived a princess, possessing a mechanism most intricate, suffering the discipline of enforced conditions, with all the limitations, yet breathing the very spirit of humanitarianism. If such as she could find a place in her heart for the flame that enlivens, why not he grasp at a spark?

“I shall serve you, Yodogima, with all the vigor at my disposal,” promised he, ready at last to lay his fortune where she had denied and her father commanded.

“Then hark you, that none escape his mesh; these barons shall be taught what it is to respect a woman.”

And—at least two of them were apparently placing themselves in a position rapidly to learn something of the cost as well.

Mori, of Hiroshima; Shimadzu, of Satsuma; Ukida, of Bizen, and some thirty-five more of the eastern and central daimyos had already joined the Ishida contingent in the vicinity of Ozaka, observably, and a formidable host, larger than she or anybody else had anticipated, seemed gathering under the banner of the one man, whom Yodogima down deep in her heart detested, the very aspirant who had proffered a deadly cup and coveted the hand of an intended victim’s widow, the deceiver then standing outside the walls of her own castle crying, “Long live Hideyori,” and, “Death to Ieyasu.”

Ieyasu: the only man who had ever moved her! Others appealed to the sense, to pride, and to consideration, even love of a kind, yet, as events multiplied and the time grew shorter, a living realization momentarily overshadowed every expectation of hers; the godlight again shone brighter than ever.

Must she stop this cruelty? Yodogima asked and answered the question till burdened of its thought—she could have ended it all, at least temporarily, she believed—then gazed longingly at the child there in her presence.