"How would it seem if you were in the place of Pierre Le Beau?" cried Gwendolen, angrily, before Yuki could speak.
The Japanese girl evidently was glad of the question. "Yes, yes!" she repeated. "How would you be?" She hung on his answer.
The young man's eyes were cool, his voice crisp and convincing, as he said slowly, "In the first place, I could not imagine myself having forced any binding promise from a girl so far from her home and friends. I might have let her see I loved her,—a fellow can't always help that; but I wouldn't have tied her up in her own words until she had the backing of her own people."
Gwendolen was all ready with a scornful word, but Yuki's small ice-cold hand upon her wrist restrained her. Yuki was leaning toward the young man, an eager gleam in her eyes. "Mr. Dodge, what was it that you meant by the su-per-lative opportunity—?"
"I seem to be turned into a sort of Information Bureau on other people's morals to-day," smiled Dodge. "But this is an easy one. I meant just what a Japanese would mean,—a rousing good chance for patriotism. Isn't that what you thought?"
Yuki's face fell, and her lips trembled. "Yes," she whispered like a child. "That is Japanese thought."
"How lofty and superior! A Confucius come to judgment!" cried Gwendolen to Dodge. His calmness, his power of thought, so soon after their fatal quarrel, irritated her. It almost seemed to make light of her influence. Since she could not command, she wished at least to sting him.
"And, Yuki, now I have advice to give. If I loved Pierre as you do,—if I loved any man so that the thought of another turned me sick,—I'd be faithful to him until those old moat pines turned somersaults and came up again as grass! I'd marry him, though Jimmu Tenno, with a new sword and mirror, came down to prevent! You say that Pierre goes by here whistling. What's to hinder you from going to him? The women here would not prevent. Some time like this, when your father is absent,—mind, I don't advise the doing it,—only, I say, if you were tortured and driven to despair—"
Yuki stopped her by a gesture. "Even that terrible thought has been thinked by me. But even if I wished it,—go to those garden shoji, Gwendolen. Open with some noisiness, and see what occurs."
Gwendolen obeyed with vehemence, placing one still booted foot defiantly upon the veranda. Instantly, as if by magic, the two blue-clad gardeners crouched, in threatening attitudes, on the gravelled path below. At sight of the tall blonde girl the men literally froze into grizzled gargoyles. Gwendolen drew back with a cry, then instantly realized the situation.