“I am the Princess Sado-ko,” she cried. “I do defy you, artist-man, to prove I am not Sado-ko.”
His vague and wandering words recalled her self-possession. She knew that she had needlessly excited her fears.
“You are not Sado-ko,” he said, “for she was kind and sweet; but you—you are a nightmare of my Sado-ko. Your face is hers, yet still you are not Sado-ko. Your soul is false; your heart is dead, for Sado-ko is dead, and you who once were Sado-ko are but her ghost. You are not Sado-ko.”
She grew afraid of that white, glaring face, and hoarse, wandering voice. Turning, she hastened to her room, drawing the doors close behind her.
The artist stood alone. Then suddenly he laughed out wildly, loudly. Again he paused in silence. Then laughed aloud again, in that wild way. He heard the noise, the heavy step of palace guards. Then Junzo turned and fled like the wind, his fleet and sandalled feet carrying him with more than natural speed onward and onward. Past startled groups of garden revellers, past loitering lovers, and past guards about the grounds, and outward through the palace gates he plunged on toward the city, gleaming out in specks of light below.
CHAPTER XXII
THE COMING HOME OF JUNZO
