Left alone, the husband and wife instinctively drew nearer. After gazing for a long moment Haganè suddenly put out his hands. Yuki thrust hers within them and lifted wide eyes. Her face had a look of blurred moonlight. Out of the mystic whiteness her eyes gleamed like deep spiritual wells, where hopes and possibilities, already death-shadowed, drifted in a spectral sheen. Haganè tightened his clasp, and at the same instant let his own soul come full into his face. Yuki shivered. Her lips parted. Virtue flowed in upon her from his touch. She thought, as in a vision, of the Kioto statue worn smooth by the touch of dying men. What ghostly comfort that image could have held was but a feeble emanation beside the blinding power of this living god.
"All things are not yet clear to me," said the man. "Something is hidden, and you jealously conceal the hiding-place. Yet you sheltered that spy. You prevented me from following. Speak your whole heart, Yuki."
"If I have a secret, Lord, it is one which aids to purify and consecrate my sacrifice. I long for that sweet hour, Lord. My parched spirit strains toward it."
Haganè's lips twitched once. "Yuki, as to the ear of your ancestral gods, tell me, should this paper be regained by means less terrible,—are you worthy to be my wife?"
Thinking of her weakness, her great and not ignoble efforts doomed always, it would seem, to failure, and with the knowledge of this man's greatness full upon her, Yuki answered simply, "No." Her very innocence betrayed her and sealed the doom of death.
Haganè had a man's thoughts. Pierre's boast—the disordered rooms of the tea-house—the broken hairpin—lashed him with a fiery hail. He groaned and dropped his face.
"Yuki, Yuki!" came a voice as though from a mangled soul. "Did you not begin to feel it? I love you! From that first instant in Washington—I have loved you more dearly than I ought. The Gods punish me for my infatuation!"
Yuki's cheeks grew faintly tinged. "Once, nay, twice, Lord, my heart bespoke it, but I dared not listen. If a star had slid through the night to my hand, I would sooner believe that I dreamed, awake, than that the heavens had lost a star."
"A soul—a face—a heart like thine, Yuki—to be befouled by a Frenchman's love!" he cried in agony.
"Dear Lord," whispered the girl, "perhaps by suffering greatly in this life—perhaps in my completeness of expiation—I shall, in the next life, be near thee!"