She caught at her husband’s hand. He drew it up into his sleeve. There had never been any caresses between them. Always he seemed rather to shrink from contact with her.
“Lord, let us call a family council,” she cried, shrilly. “Let them decide where is my proper place, Lord Saito Gonji. It is not for the time of one life only that we marry. I have plighted my troth to you for all time!”
Slowly he turned; and the deep, penetrating look scorched Ohano again.
“And I,” he said, “have plighted my troth with another.”
“Lord, it was dissolved,” she cried, breathlessly, “by the honorable laws of our land. The Spider is now an outcast. Ah!”—her voice rose shrilly on the verge of hysteria—“it is said—it is known—proved by those who know—that now—now she is an inmate of the Yoshiwara. She—”
He had gripped her so savagely by the shoulder that she cried aloud in pain. At her cry he threw her from him almost as if she had been some unclean thing. She fell upon her knees, and upon them crept toward him, stretching out her hands and beating them futilely together.
“My Lord Gonji! My husband! I am your honorable wife before all the eight million gods of the heavens and the seas. It is impossible to forsake me. I will not permit it. I will cling to your skirts and proclaim my rights—ah, yes, to the very doors of Hades, if need be!”
He seemed not even to hear her. With his face thrust out like one who dreams, he was recalling a vision. It was the face of Moonlight as he had seen it last with that exalted, spiritual expression of self-sacrifice and adoration upon it. She an inmate of the cursed Yoshiwara! The thought was grotesque, so horrible that a short laugh came to his lips.
He strode by the agonized woman on the floor without a further word, and sharply snapped the folding doors between them. This was their farewell.
As he passed down the street, on his way to join his regiment, he was halted by the throngs pressing on all sides. The whole country seemed to be abroad in the streets. The people marched about carrying banners, and even the little children seemed to have caught the spirit of Yamato Damashii (the Soul of Japan), and stammered their little banzais in chorus. It was an inspiring sight, and he wandered about for some time, with no particular purpose, unconscious where he was, in what direction his feet carried him, following the throngs as they pushed along through the streets.