A dozen times he sat down to write to her. But what comfort was that? It was herself he wanted: the bodily presence which could softly touch him, the voice which could gently speak to him, all the beauty which he might see! A dozen times he threw the unfinished letter from him.
And so, finally, this fight against Hoshiko became a rout. Every night, when he should have slept, it came on—like an enemy who knew the time and place of the weakness of his adversary. If there had only been no nights to fight through! At last his bunk-mates so complained of him that the doctor sent him to live out of the barracks, where he would disturb no one. He had a small house to himself.
But in this new solitude she came and stayed and possessed him. She made him again to possess her. She was there always. The night mattered no more. He saw her eyes in the dusk, heard her voice in daylight. He often parted the shoji—sometimes to find vacancy—when his mood was practical and he had slept well; but often when he had not eaten or slept, and the visions came—to have her swiftly in his arms.
Presently a certain infidelity came and lodged in him, and the knowledge of it spread through the army.
"What a spirit must that be of the emperor—the gods—the augustnesses—even a father waiting in the Meido—which would not permit him to have one small woman!"
That is what he publicly said. And, worse, he had once thought of throwing his medal into the moat near by and of escaping to China. Of deserting the emperor he had doubly sworn to serve. His gods, his father, the shades. Perhaps there was but one thing in the old days, worse than the eta—the deserter. He thought of this and took terrible pause.
Finally it was known in the army that Arisuga was mad—quite mad. The wound in his head had done it. His talk was of a woman: an houri, if ever there was one, should his talk of her be believed. He had cursed the gods, reviled the augustnesses, the spirit of his father, the emperor who had pinned the medal on his coat. Certainly Shijiro Arisuga was mad. He himself heard this, and thought to take a cunning advantage of it. If he were mad, he would be invalided, and then he would see China again.