"Sit down," she said. "I will bring you some tea. My husband will be here very soon. He has gone to see his colonel. Alas! you must sit on the floor in the Japanese fashion. We have none of the new foreign chairs!"
In an instant she had the tea before him.
"I do not care for tea," said the soldier. "I am Colonel Zanzi."
"His colonel!" gasped the little wife. "And—and—you have come to be—"
"As kind to you as I can be," said the soldier, hastily. "Be at peace!"
"Oh! Is it true?" The tears ran over her eyes at once. "You know? And yet you will be kind? Oh, Jizo—that is my favorite goddess—look upon you! But you will smoke a little? See, here is my own pipe." She cleansed it and filled it and put it to his lips, and he who smoked only cigars smoked Hoshi's little metal pipe. "And he is not disgraced? I have not ruined him? No! Or you would not be here smoking my pipe. You would be savage. You would wish to kill me. Oh, I know he is the emperor's and you, also, even me! I know how that is. Everything for the emperor! Wives! Children! Even parents! Why, was it not Akima Chinori who killed his child, which was too small to be left alone, so that he might obey the call? 'I have given you life,' so says the imperial call, 'now give it back to me.' But I will not harm him. I will help him to be a soldier. Oh, I am brave! You cannot think how brave. It is only waiting, waiting, waiting, that I cannot endure. Do you know that we were married away down there? And that Arisuga-Sama left me to go to the emperor? Did you know that? And that it was I came to him? He did not bring me. I meant to die here without harm to him. But only Isonna died. He is not to blame."
"Who was Isonna?" asked the soldier.
"She was my little maid. She was to die first when the clock struck, die there in the moat—then I. But first I came to see his shadow on the shoji—touch it. Say farewell. To hear a word, if there were one. I am afraid I wept, fainted with hunger, and he heard me and took me in and kept me. He did wish me! He did! But Isonna was dead. Yes, while I slept in his arms! Dead for us. The tea is very good, excellency?"
And because she put it into his hands with that fear in her great eyes, and because of that shaking of the little hand, and that chattering story in the quavering voice, and those tears, he drank the tea, who drank only hot brandy.
"Do you mean to say that Isonna killed herself so that—so that—"