"Yes, when he is gone--quite gone--then we will try for that tranquillity. We had it before he came!"

"We shall have it again," cheered the maid. "As soon as he is gone--"

"Oh!" A flash of Hoshiko's old manner energized her. "I know a better and happier way to insure that tranquillity."

"What is it?"

"Ask him to--stay! You!"

The maid only gasped.

"Yes," said her mistress, more timorously than she had ever spoken of him.

"Ask a man to stay?"

"Certainly! That is what I said. Am I so hard to understand?"

Hoshiko spoke with more pain than asperity.

"You may--with honor--" pleaded Hoshiko. "He doesn't love you. You do not love him."

"And if the asking of these lips and hands and eyes and this voice, all that are permitted you, are not potent--how shall I be? How shall any one or anything be? Let him go."

"Stop!" cried her mistress. "He is a G.o.d. We are creatures. What we wish we must pet.i.tion for as we do the G.o.ds. Yet I dare not--will not you?"

"No!" said the maid. "I know the penalty. I do not wish you to know it."

BUT WHAT COULD HE DO?

XV

BUT WHAT COULD HE DO?

However, it all came out involuntarily when, at last, he began with tremendous difficulty to go away. He was already at the courtyard gate when she sobbed. He was gone--oh, it mattered not now what she did!

But Arisuga hearing this, of course, returned. His renewed presence only renewed the Lady Hoshi's tears.

"But what can I do?" he kept on asking politely.

"Stay!" cried the Lady Hoshi, madly, forgetting everything but that one wish.

"Oh!" said Arisuga.

"G.o.ds!" breathed Isonna.

"Only till to-morrow; that is but one day; to-morrow, lord--lord of my soul!"

"Oh!" said Arisuga again, and, at once entirely willing, dismissed his 'rik'sha.

The next day he took her to the Forbidden City and showed her the tragic, broken wonders of it, while he puzzled out that scene of the day before. There were times when he had to help her up on broken walls and over fallen sculptures. And more and more as he possessed her thus for one day he wanted to possess her indefinitely. For the hands were very soft, the eyes luminous, the small body where it touched his exquisite.

He found it hard to believe--that, like a courtezan, she would beg him to stay. Yet, it was for but one day! No woman of joy would stop there!

At last he spoke:--

"Were you educated in j.a.pan--or China, angel of my earth-heaven?" he asked of her.

"In China, lord, such things as a girl learns after three years, but in the j.a.panese way entirely."

There was little enlightenment in that.

"And have you known many men?"

"Yes," she answered at once, thinking that was what he wished.

"No!" cried Isonna.

The two girls turned together. Hoshiko was about to chastise the maid.

But she was terrified at the pallor of her face. Nevertheless she insisted, with a certain pathetic dignity:--

"I said--yes!"

"I say no!" stubbornly cried the maid. "None! none!"

Arisuga deprecatingly waved his hand, and courteously believed what they disagreed about.

"What does it matter?" he said.

But the maid whispered tragically to her mistress:--

"See what you have done!"

"What?" asked Hoshiko.

The maid's whisper was sinister.

"Do you wish him to think that you have been any one's? Every one's?

That is why he asked."

"It is not!" protested Hoshiko. "He asked to learn how many others love me."

"And why should he ask that?"