Since the butler's knock, and Yuki's few words with him, absolute silence had prevailed in the little office; the very door seemed holding its breath. Yuki heard the panel pushed cautiously to one side, and knew that her husband listened. She went to her former place by the window. Now the bees outside, and the buzz of human voices within, recommenced. Into the latter crept vivacious exclamation. The clink of glasses arose, and now the sharp detonation of a match; more than once a smothered laugh was heard. Yuki sat by the window in apparent calm; her agony of suspense would soon be over. Those were the sounds that come at the end of an important conference, not in the midst of it. She clenched her little hands together within gray sleeves, and faced the office-door, to be in readiness with her smile when the grave procession should emerge. Another ten minutes elapsed, and another; the garden shadows gained visibly in length. Like a little image of propriety, she sat, and, for all her preparation, a small shiver passed along her frame as the office-door at last went flying aside.
So set had been her eyes, her thoughts, upon this door, that she had not heard the sound of stealthy footsteps without or the soft brushing aside of clustered shrubs. Pierre stood, bareheaded, under the weeping cherry. The drooping branches, each set along its entire length in single pink amethysts of bloom, enclosed him as in a fountain. The lower part to his knees was hidden in waves of yama-buki. The wind, now rising, concealed with tossing sprays his trembling nook.
First the doors of the office, then the thick portières had been flung aside by Prince Haganè. The notable company filed in, the Japanese not forgetting the slight, ceremonial bow to Haganè, who stood smiling to let them pass. The last to emerge was Minister Todd. He bore in his hand a paper folded and sealed. Haganè kept close behind him. As the rest of the company came forward, making adieux to the flushed and dignified little hostess, these two stood apart, talking in low tones. Todd now and again tapped the paper by way of emphasis.
Pierre, crouching among the sprays of yama-buki, saw and heard it all. His fever and madness were, for the moment, things that had not been. The price he would later pay for this immunity did not trouble him now. He seemed all mind and spirit and keen intelligence, with no encumbering body. Nothing was impossible. He would scarcely have been surprised had he begun to drift toward that inner room without effort, as one sometimes drifts in dreams, and to enter unperceived by any one but Yuki. There she stood, his sweetheart, his promised bride, kept from him by that great monster who towered near and kept talking to the thin American, and kept tapping a paper that bore a great seal, red like blood. It should be blood, Pierre thought, with a slight rise in his excitement,—the blood of that old toad who had cheated him of this flower. But did a toad have blood at all? Well, there was a way to find out! When the American left he would steal in, a new St. George pursuing an uglier dragon. He felt now feverishly in his pockets for a knife, a pistol. He remembered now that the pistol, a pretty toy of silver and pearl given him by a Parisian actress, had been left at the French Legation. A moment after, reason again grasped him. He smiled bitterly, calling himself a child, a fool. Nothing could be worse for France or Yuki either than the death of Haganè at his hands. Some other way must be found. The Japanese themselves had a saying, "If you hate a man, let him live." Yes, let the old man live. Yuki's true lover could yet win her, undrenched in any blood. That paper now,—if he could secure such a paper—Haganè would give any price for such a paper!
All the guests had gone but Mr. Todd. He smiled down at Yuki and said, "Well, little girl, I guess Uncle Sam has done your country a good turn."
"Madame la Princesse is not burdened by me with state secrets, your Excellency," interposed Haganè, with more than his wonted haste.
"I understand. I sha'n't say more," laughed the other. "What was it, Yuki, that you tried to tell us just before the meeting?"
Yuki now could afford to smile and look demure; her danger was over. The great strong rock of Haganè's presence was near. "The need is past now, I thank you, Mr. Todd," she said.
"Good-bye, both of you. You're looking mighty young and happy, Prince, if there are hard struggles in the nation!"
He was gone. Yuki, glancing upward to her husband, was surprised and then herself embarrassed to note signs of discomfiture on that bronze countenance. Was it possible that Todd's light words could move him? Yuki went closer still. She could not meet his eyes, but, oh, the restfulness, the relief in his splendid nearness! Her explanation rushed to her lips and hung there. After the manner of good wives, she must first show interest in what was uppermost in his thoughts, and afterward could gently incline him to her own desire.