Haganè emptied the few dregs of his teacup into the hot ashes of the hibachi, ignoring the ceremonial little bowl put near for the purpose. "It was in Washington, I believe, that once before you made that foolish remark. What use would death be, especially if you seek it as an escape from conditions that do not please you? Cowardice is a crime of the spirit! I see no chance for you to serve but this."
"But to be your wife, your wife—while yet he—that other—holds my pledge!" murmured the girl, piteously, under her breath. "I prayed for freedom, but he would not send it—!" Gwendolen's telegraphic words, "I would accept H." came to her like a little gust of refreshing wind. She looked again squarely into Haganè's noble face. For the first time Pierre's rose before her, a little weak, a little over-delicate, with incipient lines of self-indulgence.
"My child," said Haganè, almost in a pleading tone, "Japan must not lose you. Put your life into my hands, and let me wield it for our country's need. I believe my motives to be selfless. If indeed your young beauty blurs my vision, then will punishment rightly follow. But I take that hazard. Had I a son, you should be, more fitly, his wife."
"If your father's everlasting curse—" Tetsujo began; but Haganè stopped him.
"We need no curses, Tetsujo! You are showing yourself unworthy of this brave child. Be quiet, I say; and let her own soul speak to her!"
Iriya gasped, and Onda bit his thick lip to the blood. Yuki's lifted face had the pathos of dying music. "Will my soul speak, Lord?" she breathed. The sound of her voice was cold and thin, and touched with a mystic fear.
Almost as if gathered in to answer, from the far distance a muffled chorus of a thousand whispering voices quivered in the air,—drawing nearer, nearer,—until the sound seemed to press upon their very hearts. Now over the garden a soft, pale light began to dawn. It grew to a concourse of a thousand spirit-lamps, crossing, recrossing, flickering, then passing on. Feet moving softly, though by the hundred, went by in ghostly rhythm.
"Lord! Lord!" panted Yuki, wild-eyed. "What is it? Do you hear also? or is it only I?"
Haganè did not answer at once. He watched the girl's face as one watches a changing chemical. When the sound had grown unmistakably human, though of voices kept low and tense with unusual awe, he said quietly, "You have all heard of the brave young Commander Hirosè, who died rescuing his friend, in the second attempt to block Port Arthur. This is a band of Koishikawa students passing down to the railway station to meet him."
He stopped, wondering how much the girl could endure. The glare of the white lanterns, borne aloft, ploughed a great soundless trench of light through the trees and houses that line the steep slope of Kobinata's hill. Light surged over the thorn and bamboo hedges of Onda's home, brimming the garden with a tender radiance, and revealing hillock, shrub, and tree as in a faint unearthly dream. It threw a deeper glow into the face of Haganè, and over the battle-flag above him.