"No-o" she hesitated, "not exactly agree, either; only I'm not willing to take upon myself to stop the whole thing here at the beginning. I'm not the Lord! Maybe this is planned out by higher powers; and then, besides," she added with a gleam of hope, "maybe you won't get it, after all!"
Todd's face bore a curious expression. His under lids closed slightly. "No," he repeated slowly, "maybe I won't get it, after all. But it's only fair to tell you that, if I am turned loose to try, I'm going to try like—hell!"
CHAPTER FOUR
The Todd household slept until late the morning after the party. Next to the efficient hirelings,—those ball-bearing sockets of domestic ease,—the senator himself was first to awake.
He came slowly into the day, as though passing from a fair garden into one more fair. That sense of some great good, new-garnered, and in the warm sweet haze of sleep not quite recalled, caressed his smiling lips. In spite of dalliance, the shining consciousness drew near. His appointment had been given! Ah, that was the new glory! He was in effect, at that instant, "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary" to a Wonderland! It was not the honor that thrilled him, but the opportunity. He would have a niche near the breathing heart of that strange country. Proving himself worthy, he might go deeper, drinking at that spiritual fountain of eternal youth.
Lying now on his rich, canopied bed, with all the luxury of modern Occidental life heaped close, Todd told himself that, because of the success, he was all the more a soul, an individual, with better things to seek. He scorned to be a pampered animal, possessed by its possessions. He envied anew the clean, sweet poverty of the samurai's code.
He was now at that elevation in life where past events take proper place, as in a landscape, and vistas begin. Yesterday was his fiftieth year. By another coincidence—those clashings of star-beams in his career—his birthday fell on that of the Japanese Emperor.
Looking back now, he could see where streams of tendency, taking rise in boyhood, had worked steadily, though through seeming deviations, towards this one great tide of purpose. His lonely interest in rice-culture had been a hidden spring; his coming to Washington, where Japan's development was a living topic instead of a solitary reader's dream, a winding stream of fate. Yuki herself was a deep well of inspiration. Now at last had come his opportunity to serve, in one life-giving effort, his own beloved country,—and Japan. The future widened for him into a deep harbor where great fleets of achievement might find safe anchorage.