"For a little while, lord?"
She thought it the mere hyperbole of their race.
"Oh, you shall be old, old, old, and beautiful, with long white hair and perhaps a beard, and all the earth shall worship your piety—"
Arisuga laughed and caught a hand to stop her.
"Lord," she went on, "most vast lord, I will make you. Yes! I have thus far made it to be. When they brought you they said you would die. So said my father and mother. But I—"
She turned and summoned her maid with fierce irrelevance.
"Isonna, come here!"
The maid hastened from the next room, where, it is almost certain, she had lain with her ear to the fusuma, and then Hoshiko's mysterious purpose appeared.
"But I—Isonna and me—this is Isonna, my ugly maid—Isonna and me prayed for you—wept for you; you were so beautiful and bloody. And Benten—see, I have Benten always near! Benten loves the tears of sympathy, and to her we prayed, so—"
"I owe you and Isonna my life," laughed the soldier.