"I, not my father, am speaking now!"
"I will be silent," agreed the maid.
"What is the use to take the trouble to tell him? Soon he will go and forget both us and that—what is the use?"
"I will be silent," said the maid, again. "I do not wish to die."
"And then—O Jizo, punish him!" She broke off and addressed another of her goddesses. "And then he had the unparalleled audacity to ask me what I had been doing with him all the while he has been here! After he had said angel repeatedly! O Jizo, punish him!"
"Well, well," comforted the maid, "why did you not inform him? Surely that was not difficult!"
"Oh! it was not, eh? Well, you blind little beast, do you know what I have been doing?"
"You have recovered him from his illness with the utmost tenderness and beauty," said the maid.
"Oh, you little fool!" cried her mistress, first striking her, then embracing her; "I have been falling in love with him. It happened that day they carried him into the house of Han-Hai, where live three daughters, all unmarried. You saw it; you were present! Do you not remember how beautiful and bloody he was? His eyes were closed, the sun shone in his face, and that was pale with here and here the windings of a bandage, like an aureole. Oh, how we both wept! He was so young; and we thought that we could heal him with great care! We wept. My father did the one thing which would stop our tears—brought, him here!"
"Yes—yes!" agreed Isonna.