"This is my punishment," he whispered to her in anathema; "this is my punishment for taking you and forgetting him. Yes, even the gate of the Meido will be closed on me. I am not fit to meet my father. He must still wait. And for whom? There is only I! Only I can redeem him! And I must first descend—and cleanse my sinning face in the waters—the hot, hot waters of the hells! And when, after many lives, I meet my father—"
His mind could not endure the horror of this. But he turned his fury upon her.
"For you," he cried, "such a thing as you! Eta, jigoku onna! Hell woman! Yes, you came to me in the form of a goddess. But the hell woman does that. And now that death is here my vision sees through that and you are a skeleton with talons—with a beak—with hell's hollow laughter—the devils sent you to tempt me and I fell—and am lost—my father's soul is lost—and you laugh—"
Alas! she did not laugh—she sobbed. For that was one of the days when the flesh was weak.
"Yes," she said, "I tempted you; I am all you say!"
He fell into coma then and remembered no more: leaving her here on earth with those fearful words in her heart to remember which had loved him only too well. Sometimes she half believed them. Once she crept from his side to look in the glass. She saw no talons or beak, but a wanness which, indeed, suggested a skeleton.
He knew, before his wits left him, that the objective of the Guards was the Yalu. And now he fancied himself gloriously leading them. But half-sane moments came in which he would again suspect the four white walls.
"Gods!" he whispered hoarsely, in one of these, "am I going to the small white death of women and children? Have I only dreamed that I was still leading them?"
"No," said his wife. "This is the dream—these white walls. You are to die the great red death. God has told me."
"Is it so?"