“It is the rain on my face, my lord,” she answered in the smallest voice.

“But you mustn’t go out in the rain. You are quite wet, dear.”

“Soach a little, gentle rain,” she said. “It will not hurt jus’ me. I loogin’ aeverywhere ‘bout for our liddle bit poor nightingale. Gone! Perhaps daed! Aeverything dies—bird, flowers, mebbe—me!”

He put his hand over her mouth with a hurt exclamation.

“Don’t!” he only said.

The maid brought in their supper on a tray, but before she could set it down Yuki had impetuously crossed the room and taken it from her hands.

“Go, go, honorable maid,” she said. “I will with my own hands attend my lord’s honorable appetite.”

She knelt at his feet, geisha fashion, holding the tray and waiting for him to eat, but he took it from her gravely, and put it on the small table beside them, and then silently, tenderly, he took her small hands in his own.

“What is troubling you, Yuki? You must tell me. You are hiding something from me. What has become of my little mocking-bird? I cannot live without it.”

“You also los’ liddle bird?” she queried, softly—“jus’ lige unto my same liddle nightingale?”