"Good morning!" thundered the colonel.
And even that could not frighten him. He was momentously deciding between the emperor and Hoshiko.
"I desire to say, sir, that I shall not marry," said Arisuga.
"I am glad to hear it. The soldier who marries is a fool."
And therefore the little color-guard set himself to fight again, and to the end, against the invincible thing called love. It makes me smile as I think of it. Who has ever vanquished it? At first he stubbornly thought of other battles he had fought and won. But he was surprised that this brought no courage to the new kind of conflict. She came in the visions of night, like the sappers and miners, when he was least defended against her, smiling, beckoning. He could see her and touch her, and know that she was at his side.
Now all things mightily conspired to make that thing he had once thought of in China—a temporary alliance,—a going away, an easy forgetting, another marriage, many—to be more fully than he could have hoped.
It was only necessary that he should remain in Japan. Time would do the rest. He used to wonder, in the night, under the stars, how long it would take her to understand, then forget, then to take another husband. He never got over this latter without waking his sleeping comrade by a certain wild violence of passion.
He thought of it with a pitying laugh at himself—now mad to go back where he was denied the going—to have her there who must not come—whose coming would be ruin.
One night he spoke wildly to this comrade:—
"I tell you that she will never forget, never take another: if she did, I would kill her! But I am the liar and the scoundrel—I. She chose me." Concerning which interruptions of his repose his sleeping-mate continued to complain to headquarters.