Yuki entered alone. Neither of the men had heard her soft stockinged step, nor her gentle pushing aside of a golden fusuma.
"Go kigen (august health), your Highness," she murmured, sinking where she stood and touching her forehead to the floor.
"Ah, it is Yuki-ko. Come nearer, child," said the host, kindly. As she moved toward him, his eyes rested with frank delight on the vision of her beauty. "You are now truly a maiden of Japan. That last image of you in Washington, if I remember rightly, was of a small brown wren of Paris."
"So at the time you observed, Augustness, and my spirit thereat was poisoned by deep shame."
"A thing so easily rectified can scarcely be a cause of shame," smiled Haganè. "You are now as truly Japanese as even your jealous father could desire. Will you kindly clap and serve us tea, small pigeon?"
Yuki obeyed instantly and in silence. She was glad to have some occupation for her hands, glad that her eyes had good excuse for drooping. In Prince Haganè's presence the old magnetism, the old troubled sense of his power, again possessed her. Compared with him, nothing else seemed real. He established new values for the spirit. One in the room with him needed no vision to certify his actual place. He dominated and charged the air around him. She felt his eyes as they rested on her slim white hands; she knew when that gaze was turned away.
Haganè, indeed, looked long at the girl. At times he appeared to study her with a gentle, speculative gravity. Of her beauty there had never been a doubt, and to-day she looked her best. Haganè's experience of women had been wide. Now he was saying to himself that this was the fairest maiden of the whole world. Her beauty filled the room like perfume. An old Chinese poet in singing of her would have called her "a flake of white jade held against a star." In the statesman's mind fragments of poetry flitted, similes of moon-light, of white blossoms newly opened in the dew, of hillside grasses in the wind, of a young spring willow with a nightingale in the branches. Poetry is as natural to all classes of Japanese as profanity to the average sailor. Haganè gained new delight in imagery. Should a foreigner be allowed to bear away the sweetness of this flower? No; Tetsujo was justified in his indignation. No foreigner should have her. She must marry some young nobleman of her own land; some honorable and brilliant youth with a future, and at least a hint of personal beauty to match her own. Haganè's mind ran rapidly through a list of eligible men. Objections rose at every point. One was of poor health, another lived a life of open immorality, a third possessed a mother of uncertain temper; Yuki-ko must not have her young life crushed by the tyranny of a shrewish mother-in-law. She should by right be married to a statesman, and be mistress at once of an official home. In this way would her beauty and foreign education be brought into immediate service. If he himself were a young man, what rapture to have that living thing, made up of dew and morning, entirely one's own! Haganè drew a single sharp breath and was calm.
On the gravelled walk of the entrance court came the sound of a carriage.
"His Excellency Mister Todd-u, Madame Todd-u, Mees Todd-u, Mister Douje, and Mister Le Beau," announced a servant in what he thought English.
Haganè went forward to meet them. "Welcome to my cottage. Are we all known, one to the other?"