Haganè still held a cigarette in the death-mask of his face. He took it out now carefully. "You speak of revenge, Monsieur, meaning, of course, the personal revenge. Europeans conceive all offences to be personal. You weaklings have your code,—your jumping-jack ethics. Something touches a spring, and your honor leaps up and crows. You could hardly understand the language we now speak, though our words were purest French. I will attempt to elucidate. This woman refers to an—essence—underlying all personalities and all time. It is a stratum of substance which boils and seethes in our sun, which sets the planets swinging in their steady paths, which ebbs and flows, a thin, resistless tide, down through the world of ghosts. We call it 'En.' You have no better word, I think, than 'Necessity.' This woman had a trust and failed. Sometimes the sabre slash of fatal weakness lays bare a hidden source of strength. I believe it to be so with her. The gods have smiled a ritual of sacrifice! No,—you do not understand. If I sang an obscene song your eyes would sparkle,—now they are bits of dull blue clay.—Onda Yuki-ko!" he said in another tone, and with a voice slightly raised, "have you the thought that, in winning back for your land this stolen document, you become worthy again to be my wife,—to bear my name?" Yuki's head went up a little. If Death himself could smile he would perhaps own the gleam which for an instant lighted her dark eyes. "Lord, we agree that I have failed. There is no deeper degradation. As for resuming your name,—you should have understood, before this, that I shall not need it."

Pierre wrinkled his forehead. The three stood. Pierre leaned against the edge of a massive table, and sometimes steadied himself with hands upon it. He bore upon the oaken surface now. The drift of their conversation, though in careful English, was indeed beyond him. Haganè did not menace Yuki. In her look toward him was no hint of fear. Yet between them, across from each to each, in all the space around them, the spider—tragedy—hurried unceasingly, and wove a closing web. They stared out from the black net with faces of calm nobility. An influence shook the Frenchman, vibrated through the particles of his brain, shrank and inflated his soul in its clay vessel. In bewilderment, as one reaches out in the dark, his voice cried, "Is this your sorrow, Yuki? Do you wish still to be his? If you bid me, perhaps I too can sacrifice. Shall I buy his mercy for you with this paper?" He snatched it out, but instead of presenting it, held the white rectangle again against his breast. The seal glared and winked like the inflamed eye of a pygmy Cyclops.

This was Pierre's supremest moment. Never again did he reach an equal height. The altitude turned him cold and dizzy. Blood surged in his ears, and tears of self-appreciation, of self-pity, sponged with a misty blur the room and its occupants.

Yuki, catching her underlip between her teeth, and bruising her slim hands together for control, went nearer. "Pierre, I thank you. I shall never forget this greatness,—in another world or this. You do much to restore what you, too, have lost. But I cannot bid you sacrifice. Haganè would not take the paper at that price. I myself must find a way to win it."

Haganè sat like a mass of clay new fallen from a cliff. Yuki's voice trailed off. An angelic sweetness hung about the echoes.

Now the clay was troubled. It stirred heavily. Haganè rose with his usual massive deliberation. "Tell her, Frenchman, the price I had already offered you."

"I shall not do it with that pure face before me, Haganè."

Haganè bowed. No hint of sarcasm cheapened the salutation. "Then, Yuki, I must speak it. I offered him in exchange for the paper your fair, white body to be his, as a dog is his, as a snatched blossom. That was my bargain."

For an instant she swayed and leaned one hand on the table opposite from Pierre. Haganè placed a chair for her. Before sinking to it she spoke, her eyes set on her husband, her voice grave and contained. "Then, Lord Haganè, you have revealed a depth of degradation below the uttermost punishment which I should have thought you willing to bestow."

"Also," continued Haganè, "I ventured to declare, and to believe, that you would go to him willingly." Pierre quivered under this insult to the woman he loved. But Yuki did not look ashamed. Pushing back the hair from both temples she bent her eyes upward, as though invoking strength from unseen powers.