Yuki sped on before him, like a fawn. At the tea-rooms she sprang to the narrow, railless veranda, drawing a single shoji panel carefully to one side. The two small rooms were in order. Sunken into the floor of one was the copper hibachi, two feet square and now filled with cold ashes, an article indispensable to tea-rooms of ceremony. The sun pouring against translucent paper walls flooded the small space with radiance.
"What dear little rooms!" exclaimed Pierre, as he scrambled in, panting. "She would call them 'cunning little rooms,' that yellow-haired American girl. What was her name, Yuki? She is not a good friend to poor Pierre; she could not swear it when I asked her. Are these the little rooms where we are to live, Yuki, now that we have run away from the old prince and are married?"
"Yes, dear," said Yuki, soothingly. "Here is where Yuki will care for you until a betterness comes. See, I shall heap for you these nice cushions. They are your Japanese pillows. You must lie on them very still, and keep all these shoji shut close until I can go and get some medicine for you."
"No!" said Pierre, fractiously. "Medicine no go! Kusuri, ikanai! Too much kusuri every day at hospital. Nurses all carry spoons in their belts. I don't need more medicine, Yuki; only for you to kiss me. You haven't kissed me all day!" He threw himself among the bright cushions and began tossing his head from side to side.
"I will kiss you when I get back," said Yuki. "Only promise to lie here very quietly until I can come, and many times I will kiss you."
Pierre raised himself on an elbow and looked dubious. "Kiss me before you start," he demanded. "You break promises, you know. And this morning you have such a droll fashion of going suddenly far away, and then starting back quickly, just like the end of a trombone that one is playing. You must be a witch, Yuki, to move so swiftly through the air. Kiss me, or I shall not believe it is really you."
With a heart strained to the limit of endurance Yuki knelt beside him on the matted floor and pressed her ashen lips to the red coal of his mouth. Pierre, seizing her with superhuman strength, kissed her again and again, until the tortured woman felt that she must rend the air in clamor to some native god or demon who might save her. This passion, branded on the soul of Prince Haganè's wife, gained a new and terrible power of defilement. In a spasm of anguish she wrenched herself free, went backward from him, and seized the shoji's edge to hold herself. "I will kiss you no more until you take the medicine," she said, with a steadiness that surprised them both.
He lurched forward, grasping at a swaying sleeve. She eluded him. "If you are not more controlled I will leave you altogether, and send police to take you back to Yokohama!" He grovelled at her feet and whimpered. "I'll be good. Don't send me, Yuki. But if I lie quite still you'll kiss me many, many times again when you return, won't you?"
Yuki hesitated. He dragged himself half upright. "You shall. I'll kill you! I'll kill myself, here! You must kiss me. A wife always kisses her husband. Swear that you will kiss me!" The light of increased madness glared in his beautiful eyes.
"Yes, I'll kiss you, I swear it," faltered the girl. Pierre laughed foolishly in his satisfaction. "Then I'll lie still among your pillows, little wife. Old prince sha'n't find us. Put us in boiling oil, that old prince. Don't be gone too long, little wife."