Perhaps I ought to be, but I cannot quite bring myself to believe that I am as deserving. You make sport with me, I do so myself, and the world is no different than we.
It is more alluring, however, I take it, in the case of some than of others. Look underneath the smiles, Ieyasu; it is not all gold that glitters; perchance my heart may have bled, is bleeding this very minute; do not consider me happy, till—
I am out of the way, interceded he, not one whit thawed or observant.
Look at me, commanded she, her very frame racking with a passion that he, in his coldness, had not the power to comprehend.
You do love me, then, stammered Ieyasu, ravenously reading the words so lengthily written for his dull eyes to feast faun-like upon.
Love you? I presume you know what it is to love? I do.
Yodogima! Forgive me, plead he, the clouds vanishing as they had gathered: uncontrolled and misapprehended.
Yes; but not with the assurance you possess, replied Yodogima, more anxious to divulge than he were ready to exact, now, any secret incapable of ingraining or outliving a nature as commonplace as his.
The princess had seated herself, at leisure, a little in front of the rapidly recovering lover, whose ardor would again have bordered the extreme had not her last admonition once more set him thinking. But Ieyasus mind moved like a tortoise, and Yodogima flushed a little, no doubt at the prospect of having to reach a bit deeper into that unthinkable comprehension of his—with which she had wrestled mostly since their meeting underneath the really suggestive azalea.
Ieyasu observed, however, the one indiscretion, and would have bowed to the mat, at her feet—no closer contact being permitted, either in heart or at will, by the bushido and of choice—but for Yodogimas further cautioning: