She held them forth to him with a gesture that might have disarmed Beelzebub. "I tore them myself upon that hedge the night you came,—the night I had promised Prince Haganè."
Pierre glared at her an instant longer. Oh, he had meant to be so harsh! Nothing was to have softened his just wrath. Through sleepless nights he had scourged himself with memory until his soul was flayed. Yuki should not appeal to him or move him. He would get from her own lips some faltering explanation of her perfidy. Yet now, for all his armor of resolve, two little torn hands held out silently through deepening gloom pulled at his heart,—drew down the visor from his quivering face.
Above them bent, like a great cloud, the head and stooping shoulders of the Buddha.
"Yuki, Yuki, you have ruined my life! You have killed my soul! I cannot consent to live unless to revenge myself upon the man who has brought us both this agony!"
"Pierre, if you say such thing, I must—because I am now Japanese wife—warn my master of it."
This new affront to vanity stung Pierre back into some of his assumed relentlessness. "You would defend him,—betray me already? Count Ronsard said it would be so, but I would not listen. Why should you be true to him when you were false as hell to me? I'll kill him, I tell you, and if I cannot kill him in open fight, I will find some way to harm him! I'll have you yet, Madame la Princesse. I do not give you up, even at your own words. You owe me something! Come, come, you owe me reparation,—help me trick him, Yuki. You love me,—ah, I know it! This is my first triumph, that your heart cannot forget. Yes, yes, poor shivering slave, it is Pierre you love. Now, come, deny it! When his arms are around you, do you not think of mine? When his thick lips press you, do you not faint for me? Ah, I have touched you!"
"Go—I say to you again, go, and go quickly! You with your own speech cauterize my wound. You are a coward! Your words are vipers which give their deepest venom first to you!"
In speaking the girl had drawn herself very erect. Her face, through the twilight, gleamed luminous with inner fire. Over her left shoulder the open mouth of the dragon yawned. Pierre could not meet her look. He cowered back, and pressed his eyes with one trembling hand.
"Yuki, Yuki, indeed I scarcely know what I am saying. This misery bewilders me. I cannot eat or sleep. My thoughts surge in my brain like fire in a battened ship. And this is worst of all, that now, so soon, you are tamed,—half reconciled! You have not loved me!"
"If I love or not love, I must not now remember. Pierre, pity me a little. Go from Nippon; help me to be the good woman, and the loyal one."