“I do,” answered Yodogima, with brightening eyes and confident voice.

Oyea pondered now. She, too, felt the agony with which Yodogima—whom she had come to love—must receive the news: news that to her seemed otherwise impossible of coming. And Oyea had taken great pride in her husband’s achievements; next to her love for him, it had been her greatest concern. Then she thought of her own position and Yodogima’s chance should Ieyasu fall; Hideyoshi spared not an enemy, and halted nowhere in the resolving of his plans: if not by force, then by subtler means—still harder to bear. Suddenly her expression strangely changed, and turning to Yodogima, she said, reassuringly:

“Then I trust he shall not lose.”

Yodogima’s eyes softened; and bowing low, out of respect, but struggling hard against scruple, the more finely wrought princess thanked her benefactress, saying:

“How can I ever requite such generosity.”

Time wore away dull and anxiously at the castle, till presently word came of the great battle of Komakiyami, where Hideyoshi’s advance had been checked, all his ready attempts at bribing the enemy’s superior officers put to naught, and Ieyasu with inferior numbers had, at last, given his opponent such a thrashing as none thought possible: in view of further developments, proving to be the initial of a series of engagements that were to revolutionize government, change the trend of civilization, and leave, perhaps, its lasting imprint upon the future higher destiny of all mankind.

Ieyasu drove the foe out of his territory and across the river, then halted to reorganize his broken lines and conserve better their resources; Esyo deliberately told him that Yodogima had grown indifferent, his own intelligence warned him of Hideyoshi’s recuperation, and whether convinced of the former or frightened at the latter the not over confident victor in place of following up a first triumph resolutely set himself down again to defend, once more to wait.

Hideyoshi, on the other hand, had in the meantime found it convenient or wise to consult Oyea; and whether acting upon her advice to make friends with Ieyasu or designing to accomplish by unfair means what he had failed of doing with arms began forthwith to reconstruct the shattered fragments of his sorely beaten army, recruiting with additional levies and intrenching himself as best he could to scare or mislead the enemy into remaining within the confines of his own domain. And there they stayed, bickering and bartering, one on either side the river Komaki, both afraid but eager, till diplomacy had been for the first time developed into a sufficiently vital force to make war a more extensive if not crueler means of settling dispute and rolling onward the vast, silent confusion of ethical entities.

To do this, and to carry forward each his advantage in the exercising of so little known an agency, neither one halted, but adjusted his conscience in the use of instruments that the heroics had held sacredly above the sordid selfishness of eager quest; woman must be permitted to degrade herself—yes, should be used—that man’s supremacy be not endangered or questioned in its strident march toward the goal of a collectively devised, pampered, vain, and self-denying individuality.

Esyo and Jokoin were both taken advantage of. The latter to carry tainted messages from a scheming father, by adoption only; she could cross the river and thus avoid an encounter that other men than Hideyoshi in those days had courted as manlier—Ieyasu would not harm or hinder a sister to his love, whether doubted or mistaken, or both. Esyo served Ieyasu in a like capacity; not, however, until the younger man had despaired of his challenge to the other to meet him in personal combat.