The blood rushed into her face; and Katsutoya laughed outright: Shibata tremblingly urged:

“Speak, daughter.”

The one pleading, the other taunting, drove hard the will, yet thought rebelled, and Yodogima’s face turned rigid. Peace had been his and faithfulness her own had not this, the bitterest test of living, come at last to stay the hand of death. She might have evaded him, but the very thing she sought forbade it. He must dishonor her were the truth known. She had sinned, and tradition proffered not repentance. What was it, then, that moved Yodogima to answer as she did? Some subtle influence had wrought her father’s decline; they were then contemplating together the virtue of an only salvation, and—Yodogima, too, saw a face: it beckoned: she answered:

“Ieyasu!”

“He? The maker of our destiny?” demanded Shibata.

“Yes. My lover.”

“How so, Yodogima; you had not mentioned this?”

“You denied me the privilege—as you imagine me now.”

“Ah, ha—you would mock really a parent? Then go from me; and learn what it is to desecrate the gods. And that you may drink to the dregs, I send your two sisters along to do you service thereat. No daughter of mine shall disgrace me in death—be gone!”

The fires were then lighted in the rooms all around them. Shibata and Asai, his wife and only hope, withdrew into an inner chamber. The floors had been covered with straw, and the flames leaped up—Yodogima turned to go, and two faces, one hideous, the other smiling, greeted her.