"Nay, nay, little one, I have heard of no wrong. Look not so fearful; one would think me Emma-O, the Lord of Hell, in the flesh. My thought was chiefly that, just now, even your present acquirements might serve Nippon."
"Ah, it is of war you hint! Here, many believe that it will not come. Is it to come, Lord?" She had drawn very close. Haganè perceived, as one looking at a picture, the exquisite balance of features in the pointed oval face, the pale width of brow under clouds of dusty hair, the refinement, the trembling sensitiveness of lips and chin. His eyes held a certain keen, inscrutable intentness of regard. The corners now wrinkled slightly with a smile.
"A nightingale studies not with a maker of swords," he said slowly. "Yet may the nightingale's note give warning where the sword could not avail. What one has not heard, cannot be told. It is a time when the whispering of leaves is to be shunned, and the fall of the petals counted."
Yuki caught her underlip between her teeth to steady its trembling. Again she felt reproved, though nothing could be kinder than the great man's voice.
"Four years," he mused aloud, "four years! Small space of time to us who are on the heights,—but to the young, still wandering happily on flowered-covered slopes, it is long, quite long. Ah, little Yuki, it is but yesterday that you came, as a child, to my Tabata villa. You clung timidly, at first, to Tetsujo's hand; but the serving-maids soon won you to the air. After that, at my request, Tetsujo brought you often. You were a scarlet poppy turned loose in that dim old garden. My eye would follow you through passages of the good Tetsujo's somewhat prosy discourse. You used to perch upon the gray rocks of the pond, and fish for hours, throwing back the small wriggling bits of gold as soon as caught. Do you remember, Yuki?"
"Yes, Lord, well do I remember," said Yuki, her mouth trembling into laughter. The self-consciousness faded. He knew that it would be so. It was for this that he had contrived the long speech of reminiscence. "Once," she went on shyly, "once, into that pond I fell, screaming with terror to think that certainly, now, all the goldfish would make haste to bite their enemy."
"Their best revenge, I take it, was in the cold you caught," laughed the prince.
"Nay, Highness," said she, gravely, "no cold at all did I acquire. The maid-servants and thy divine, pitying princess rescued me. They changed my worthless garments, and urged upon me much hot tea and a small, sweet powder. Indeed, but for the trouble my clumsiness occasioned, I enjoyed more the falling into that august pond than the fishing beside it."
Haganè smiled a little abstractedly. He did not laugh again. He turned to the table and smoothed the corners of a document. "The villa has no princess now, my child. In my many houses I come and go alone."
Yuki looked upon the floor. "My spirit is poisoned by your sorrow, Lord. Forgive my great rudeness in mentioning. I did not know."