“And am I not like this Masago?” she asked.
“You are like no one in all the world,” he said, “save that sweet, lovely princess that even as a boy I sought to capture for—my own.”
“You have not tried again,” she said.
“The sun is in my eyes, O princess. I am afraid.”
He turned abruptly from her and walked swiftly away toward the front of the palace.
“I have been dreaming,” he said, passing his hand across his eyes, “and living in my dreams. O gods!”
Sado-ko looked after him, leaning over the railing of the gate watching until he disappeared. Then she turned and walked with dreamy step back through the bamboo grove. She turned toward a slender, pebbled path which she followed to a small lawn, in whose centre a stately statue, white and pure, was set. She stood in silence looking upon it,—a statue of the Prince Komatzu wrought by the hands of the artist-man. Suddenly she placed her arms about the statue’s form and pressed her face against it. Her words were strangely like to his:—
“I have been dreaming, dreaming,” she said, “and, O sweet Kuonnon, let me not awake!”
CHAPTER VII