He sprang to his feet, and stood in quivering thought. She heard him mutter half aloud, despairingly:—
“But she had gone away—to Tokyo. They told me so.”
“Why, no, it is a mistake. Who told you that she went to Tokyo, my son?”
“The palace guards,” he said, not looking at his mother.
“Oh, you are surely ill, my son.”
“I am not ill,” he said, with persistent gentleness; “but I am speaking truth, dear mother. Do I not know of what I speak, for was I not close by the palace walls throughout the length of one whole night? I tell you, mother, that I saw her go to Tokyo.”
His mother threw her arms about his neck, then, bursting into tears, clung to him.
“Son,” she sobbed, “do not speak of Tokyo. The parent of your fiancée, Yamada Kwacho, is even now within our domicile, and the chaste maiden is safe in her home.”
He spoke with slow and hazy positiveness:—
“She went to Tokyo that night. I was so close unto her norimon that I could even touch it, and through the fog and the dim night I cried her name aloud. It sounded wildly in the night air.”