It was three days before she could smile. Then she said wanly:—
"What will you do with me, Ani-San? Must I die, too? You cannot go back to China with me."
"By all the gods in all the skies we shall part no more! We can die—yes—together—but part never!"
"Alas! that is all we can do now, beloved, for I have harmed you in coming here."
"You have brought me the happiness I do not deserve. I will never again put it in jeopardy."
But you are to understand that even that, dying together, perhaps, with her obi binding them close to each other, walking arm in arm, into the sea, or the moat, until they could but dimly know that the sun was yet in the heavens, on through the green water, more and more dim unto darkness, peace, sleep—you are to understand that this, death with him, was next in its sweetness to life with him.
He meant to go to the colonel; but not yet. You remember how she raped those few days of happiness out of the very hand of fate in China. So now Arisuga said Tadaima! Wait!
For again his little wife had to have a trousseau, and she was yet very weak and tired. And on the way she had sold her pretty hair-pins for food—these had to be replaced. But so potent is happiness, that it was not three days more till all her loveliness had returned and bloomed again—just in time to be adorned by the new kimono of blue crêpe, and the new kanzashi of tortoise-shell and gold.
Still it was Tadaima!
For three days more Arisuga lived in his paradise and then went resolutely to the colonel.