"Banzai Nippon! Dai Nippon! Banzai! Banzai!" shouted Tetsujo, and beat his fists on the matting.
Haganè, with a smile that seemed to deprecate yet condone his kerai's vehemence, went on directly to Yuki. "Strange that Western minds—the astute American politician, the journalist, even the cleverest of Europe's statesmen—hardly claim to look forward more than a few years,—five, ten, at best half a century! They want results they shall live to see—after them the deluge! As they have forgotten the very names of their grandfathers, so they ignore their descendants. But we of the East count time in other lengths. We do not bound our horizon with personal aim or the catchword of a day. We owe,—we owe ourselves,—all, to a future that we may not comprehend, but have no right, in our ignorance, to cramp. What we are fighting for at this moment will not be fully realized for two hundred years. Then it will be seen as a great landscape in a valley. Your foreigners are like children that play now in that valley. But every Japanese patriot stands lonely on a mountain,—very lonely, very lonely!"
"Is one alone in a shining company of spirits, Lord?" asked Yuki, a wonderful glow now kindling in her long eyes. "Will that youth of whom you told us be lonely, though he stand singly against a squadron of Cossacks? Where is his mother's soul? O Gods of my country! O my dear Christian God! why was it not given to me to be a man?"
"Do you think that the soul of a woman who shirks would be less cowardly if put into the body of a man? Even your Christians could tell you better."
"Lord! Lord!" cried the girl to him in great stress, "am I indeed of the coward's heart? Is this thing I call fidelity but a shirking?"
"A Japanese has no fidelity but to his Emperor!" thundered Onda.
"Be quiet, Tetsujo! Listen, poor wavering little heart; I will try to make you understand. You cannot be allowed to marry this man, not because we wish to thwart you, but—"
"I said I would not marry him, now,—not now!"
"Then what will you do?" asked Haganè. "All are striving to their utmost. What will be your part? Do you intend to sit sullen and inactive here, at home?"
"The wench shall remain no longer under my roof!" raged Tetsujo.