The expression on Takedo’s face was now enigmatic. He emptied his pipe slowly and with deliberation, as if in thought. Then solemnly he bobbed his bald head, as if in assent. The two old men then arose, shaking their skirts and hissing perfunctorily. Their bows were formal, and the words of parting the usual friendly and polite ones; but each met the eye of the other, and both understood; and, strangely, a sense of antagonism arose between them.
CHAPTER IV
SO it was in the honorable house of his father, and of the hundred august ancestors whom they accused him of dishonoring, that Gonji again saw the Spider.
Into the houses of the most exalted the geisha flutters with the free familiarity of a pampered house pet. No festivity, however private, is considered complete without her. She is as necessary as the flowers that bedeck the house, the viands, and the sake.
Upon a humid night in the season of greatest heat, and in the glow of a thousand fireflies, the Spider danced in the gardens of the house of Saito. Her kimono was vermilion, embroidered with dragons of gold. Gold too were her obi and her fan, and red and gold were the ornaments that glistened like fire in her hair. Yet more brilliant, more sparklingly, gleamed and shone the eyes of the dancer, and her scarlet lips were redder than the poppies in her hair, and held an hypnotic allure for the Lord Saito Gonji, watching her in a breathless silence that fairly pained him.
Every gesture, every slightest flutter of her sleeve, her hand, her fan, every smallest turn or motion of her bewitching head, was directed at the guest of honor, the son and heir of the house of Saito. For him alone she seemed to dance. To him she threw her joyous smiles, and, in the end, when the dance was done, it was at his feet she knelt, raising her naïvely coy, half-questioning glance. Then, very softly and with gentle solicitation:
“At your sole honorable service, noble lord,” she said. “What is your pleasure next?”
He said, like one awakening from some strange dream or trance: