The Tojin-san curbed his temper. His voice, though stern, was calm, as though he sought to humor the boy.
“What is the change you observe in me then?”
“Your eyes are weak and soft like the dove’s. There is a melting, tender look unfit for man upon your face. Your voice is gentle, like unto a woman’s. It is as if—as if—the enamored weakness of a love possessed you!”
“A love!” repeated the Tojin-san, as though the very word were new to him. Suddenly a look of anguish came into his face, giving it a poignant, withering expression.
The fox-woman had crept softly across the room. Now she leaned upon the farthest shoji, her head lifted in a dreaming trance.
“Leave this accursed place with me to-day,” urged the boy entreatingly. “My honorable father will gladly receive you as our honored guest. Throw off the burden of this foul witch of the mountains. She can only soil your excellency, and Fukui is prepared to mete out to her at last her proper fate.”
“I am a white man,” said the Tojin-san slowly, in a deadly voice, and never had his student seen such an expression upon his face before. “As such I protect, not abandon, the women of my race. It will not be well for Fukui if harm comes to either me, your guest and teacher, or to her, whom I choose to befriend.”
“Sayonara, then, excellent sensei,” said the boy brokenly, “I have done my best.”
As he pushed back the doors, the fox-woman glided soundlessly across his path. The boy found himself looking directly into that shining face that had distracted all who had gazed upon it. Breathing heavily, almost as if he sobbed, he drew backward from her, his young face drawn and shaken. She spoke not at all, though she touched him with a timid, questioning hand. Something in the expression of the upturned face, in the tears that stood like dew in the wide, sightless eyes, aroused a new strangling emotion in the Japanese youth—reached at last his innermost sense of chivalry. He threw up his arm, with a sudden motion almost as of defense. Then, without a word or look backward, he jumped into the garden below, and fled along its paths.