"You speak as if you wept—and, when you turned, your face looked as if you had wept. Oh, it looked for a moment like a woman's—and not a soldier's! Soldiers do not weep."
"Soldiers weep. I do."
"Ani-San! For me?"
"For you."
"The waiting?"
"The waiting."
"But, then, weep no more, Ani-San. I am here—at your side. All the waiting is forgot. Blotted out by this one great moment. And perhaps—Here is the seat. Is it not all as it was? Though it is ten years—ten years of weary waiting. Here you sat, always, here I sat. And we are grown too old now to change."
She laughed timorously, and when Hoshiko had seated herself where Arisuga had once sat, she took her place as if there were no years between this and that. Then she went on:—
"—perhaps, to-night, you will be as sweet as you were on that other night—when—Do you remember?"
"I remember," said Hoshiko.