The poor wife of the geisha-keeper clasped her thin hands passionately upon her breast; but her expression was less wild, her words intelligible.
“Here, my Moonlight! In my arms, the soft head nestling beneath my chin—so warm—so—so—so-o—”
She laid her hands in the place where the little head had rested. Her features worked as if she must again abandon herself to anguished weeping, but the look on Moonlight’s face restrained her with almost hypnotic power.
“It was after the going of the master?” she queried, speaking very slowly and gently, as if thus the better to secure intelligent answers.
“After the going,” repeated the woman. “For good-fortune I held him in the andon-light, that his honorable face might be the last my lord should see as he departed.”
“He has gone to the—city?”
“To the city. He contemplated arousing the interest of a departing regiment in your honorable presence here, but, alas!” She broke down again, crying out piercingly that the evil ones had come meanwhile in the absence of the master of the house, and who was there left save helpless females to seek the august little one?
Moonlight’s chin had fallen into her hands again. She seemed to think deeply, but the stricken, numb look was gone. Two red spots crept into her cheeks, and her dark eyes gleamed dangerously.
She was rehearsing in her mind the words and actions of Matsuda since his return. She was acutely aware of the base character of the geisha-keeper, and recalled the many times when she had seen him plunged in calculating thought, pacing and repacing the gardens, gnawing like a rat at his nails, and ever his eye stealing craftily to her.
Suddenly there came clearly to the geisha what had possessed for days the mind of the master. Like an illuminating flash from the gods it came upon her what Matsuda had done with her child.