“And I may rely on you for the future?” she asked, in conclusion.
The samurai raised his sword.
“With this, gentle lady, I’ll serve thee and him,” he said.
Then with a quick movement he flung the sword to the ground.
Three days passed away. She seemed like one in a dream, under a spell, as she hung over her flowers. Under the fruit-trees she wandered. Their petals, odorous and dewy-laden, fell around and upon her like a cloud of summer snow-flakes. They made her quiver with memories that caused her pain. She ran through the grasses away from them, her little feet scattering the petals before her, seeking the banks of the moat far away from where he had been wont to stand at the dawning, pleading for her love.
But the lotus with the dew in its cups smiled but to weep. She threw herself down by the water’s edge, and swept with her hand the lotus back from the surface of the water. The flowers at her touch left one little oval spot, out of which her small face shone up at her with its startled eyes of tragedy. She fancied it a magic mirror wherein the face of the divine goddess of mercy was reflected. So she prayed to the goddess very softly, and quite as one whose mind has been over-weighted with trouble, for peace and mercy for that wilful and foolish Lady Wistaria, whose lover had passed out of her life and gone the gods knew whither. And the lips of the goddess in the water moved in soundless response, but, “He is gone—gone!” said the hapless Lady Wistaria.
XII
