“What is it?” He started up fearfully. “Your eyes are tragic! You look as if you were contemplating something frightful.”

She sank down to his feet, and, despite his protests, knelt and clung to him there, sobbing with passionate abandon.

“Don’t! Don’t! I can’t bear you to do that. What is it, Yuki?”

“Oh, for liddle while, jus’ liddle bit while, bear with me,” she said.

“Little while! What do you mean?” he demanded.

She tried to regain her composure. Her laughter was piteous.

“I only liddle bit skeered,” she said. “I—” she stammered—“I skeered ‘bout thad liddle foolish jade bracelet, all smashed and broken.”

“Is that all?”

“It is soach a bad omen! The gods trying to separate us, mebbe.”

“Separate us?” His suspicions were growing. “How can they do that? It lies between you and me, such a—such a fate. The gods—ah, you are talking nonsense.”