"Be not afraid, beloved," Yoné said. "I will be true always until we meet in the heavens. Always I will be your widow with blackened teeth if you fall—my hair blowing at a shrine. Think! But for me there will be no one to keep the lamps alight before you if you die—but for me. And I—they shall never fail. For, if you fall, I will wait as I have done—keeping the lamps, hoping that you will hold out your hand in the black Meido when I pass to death, and that then we shall, somehow, never part. Oh, beloved, there have been suitors and suitors and always suitors! The nakado has worn bare the mat at the door. But was I not yours? How could I listen to any one else? And the wedding garments are all ready. And there is no one to stay us but the old deaf Hana, who will not even hear. If you must go quickly, to-night, there is the foreign minister—there is the new registry office—"
"And for this," said Hoshiko, "the few words of a foreign priest, nine cups of saké, a line in the registry office, you will give up your dear life to me?"
"I will give up all my souls—all my hope of a rest at last in Buddha's bosom if I must. Oh, Shijiro Arisuga, for this I have waited until it seemed that I could wait no more. Give it to me now—this night—before you go!"
"O love," whispered Hoshiko, "what is like you in all the earths, in all the heavens! There is no other miracle but you alone. Come! My hour is almost here. But were it already past, and though a soldier but obeys the hours, yet you should be a wife before I go."
And even to that moment Hoshiko had not known how Yoné yearned for that one word to be added to her. Suddenly she grovelled on the earth and caught the hands and knees of her who had been wife to him they both loved.
"All the gods bless you—all the gods—for giving me that one name. For in all the earths and heavens together there is none so sweet as—wife to Shijiro Arisuga."
And there, that night, Hoshiko married little Yoné.
"Now go and die," she wept at farewell, "and here I will wait—wait, until I, also, die—wait for that touch of your spirit on my arm, wait for your hand in the dark Meido. But if you do not die? if the gods are not ready yet for you—you will come?"
"I will come again," said Hoshiko, weeping, too, which was strange for a soldier.
And there they parted, only a moment after they were married, and Hoshiko was ordered to join the Guards and hurry to the Yalu, where their prey was fattening.