"You have brought me the happiness I do not deserve. I will never again put it in jeopardy."

But you are to understand that even that, dying together, perhaps, with her obi binding them close to each other, walking arm in arm, into the sea, or the moat, until they could but dimly know that the sun was yet in the heavens, on through the green water, more and more dim unto darkness, peace, sleep--you are to understand that this, death with him, was next in its sweetness to life with him.

He meant to go to the colonel; but not yet. You remember how she raped those few days of happiness out of the very hand of fate in China. So now Arisuga said Tadaima! Wait!

For again his little wife had to have a trousseau, and she was yet very weak and tired. And on the way she had sold her pretty hair-pins for food--these had to be replaced. But so potent is happiness, that it was not three days more till all her loveliness had returned and bloomed again--just in time to be adorned by the new kimono of blue crepe, and the new kanzashi of tortoise-sh.e.l.l and gold.

Still it was Tadaima!

For three days more Arisuga lived in his paradise and then went resolutely to the colonel.

"I am married," he said bluntly, with his salute.

"What?" roared the colonel.

"I was married when I was here before."

Finally the officer smiled. That is the way he would have been likely to do it at the color-bearer's age.

"I remember that you said you did not mean to marry! You _were_ married!

Well, well, if she is a samurai--"

"She is an eta," said Arisuga. "That one in China."

"Ah! After a little while you can divorce her. No one need know of it."

"I beg your pardon."

"You will not?"

"I cannot."

"You understand your position the moment this becomes public?"

"You cannot make me an eta in the army. I am a soldier."

"You will ask for a furlough. Time indefinite upon recall. It will be granted," said Zanzi, coldly.

This was the color-bearer's dismissal from the regiment. For a moment he could not speak.

"You are too ill for service," continued the colonel, less coldly. "If, however, you should think it best to take my advice, let me know of your recovery."

"I thank you, sir," said Arisuga, chokingly, "it is impossible. The flag--my flag--?" he begged.

"Good morning," said the officer; "I will find some one for the flag."

But, after he was gone the colonel determined to see what manner of woman this was who could make Arisuga give up his flag. Orojii had said, in China, that she was pretty! He pictured her an Amazon, with tremendous force, and painted cheeks, who had enslaved the little color-bearer, and he meant to exhibit his authority against hers and save Arisuga from her.

"It is always so," he was thinking as he arrived at the little house, in some haste to be ahead of Arisuga, "a little fellow like Shijiro is sure to choose some woman twice his size for a wife, and to be under her thumb ever after."

You may fancy, therefore, his surprise, when a little flower of a maiden pushed aside the door for him, and, to his question, announced that she was Shijiro's wife. For a moment the colonel did not speak. Tremendous readjustment was necessary. In the meantime she had led him within.

"Sit down," she said. "I will bring you some tea. My husband will be here very soon. He has gone to see his colonel. Alas! you must sit on the floor in the j.a.panese fashion. We have none of the new foreign chairs!"

In an instant she had the tea before him.

"I do not care for tea," said the soldier. "I am Colonel Zanzi."

"His colonel!" gasped the little wife. "And--and--you have come to be--"

"As kind to you as I can be," said the soldier, hastily. "Be at peace!"

"Oh! Is it true?" The tears ran over her eyes at once. "You know? And yet you will be kind? Oh, Jizo--that is my favorite G.o.ddess--look upon you! But you will smoke a little? See, here is my own pipe." She cleansed it and filled it and put it to his lips, and he who smoked only cigars smoked Hoshi's little metal pipe. "And he is not disgraced? I have not ruined him? No! Or you would not be here smoking my pipe. You would be savage. You would wish to kill me. Oh, I know he is the emperor's and you, also, even me! I know how that is. Everything for the emperor! Wives! Children! Even parents! Why, was it not Akima Chinori who killed his child, which was too small to be left alone, so that he might obey the call? 'I have given you life,' so says the imperial call, 'now give it back to me.' But I will not harm him. I will help him to be a soldier. Oh, I am brave! You cannot think how brave. It is only waiting, waiting, waiting, that I cannot endure. Do you know that we were married away down there? And that Arisuga-Sama left me to go to the emperor? Did you know that? And that it was I came to him? He did not bring me. I meant to die here without harm to him. But only Isonna died.

He is not to blame."

"Who was Isonna?" asked the soldier.

"She was my little maid. She was to die first when the clock struck, die there in the moat--then I. But first I came to see his shadow on the shoji--touch it. Say farewell. To hear a word, if there were one. I am afraid I wept, fainted with hunger, and he heard me and took me in and kept me. He _did_ wish me! He _did!_ But Isonna was dead. Yes, while I slept in his arms! Dead for us. The tea is very good, excellency?"

And because she put it into his hands with that fear in her great eyes, and because of that shaking of the little hand, and that chattering story in the quavering voice, and those tears, he drank the tea, who drank only hot brandy.

"Do you mean to say that Isonna killed herself so that--so that--"

Even the grizzled soldier choked at the thought.

"So that no disgrace might come to him. And I--I, also, should have died--before he knew. Then he would not have been harmed. As long as the thin paper was between us he was safe--safe as if I were yet in China.

But you do not know how sweet that was--to sleep in his arms, to wake in his arms--with the words he spoke that night he married me again in my ears? But while I slept the clock struck. Ah, you know him only as a soldier! I know him as a lover! A husband! A G.o.d!"

Still this soldier, brought up to the religion of sacrifice, thought of the serving-woman sacrificially dead there in the moat.

"Was Isonna an eta, too?"

"She was an eta, too," said Hoshiko.

"G.o.ds! And we think you lack spirit--courage--devotion!"

"No! We are brave!" she said piteously. "We are as ready as you to die for the emperor! If you will only learn to let us!"

"I believe you!" said Zanzi.

"Shall I tell you?" she begged. "He is not at fault. Let me plead for him!"

"Yes, tell me," he said.

But she could only repeat the old story:--

"We came because we thought he was dead--he said that only death should keep him from us--to take his body back with us--only his dear, dead body. That would have been no disgrace. For the Lord Buddha does not permit any one to disgrace the dead who cannot help themselves. But when we knew that he was alive, we knew also that, by coming to j.a.pan, we had harmed him. Then we meant to die without him knowing, keeping always the thin wall between us. Where no one could find us after. But I could not without one word of farewell to his shadow--only his shadow! And one word from him--if there was one. That would not harm him. Oh, yes, I knew that I must not touch his body in j.a.pan! But his shadow! Was that harm? And one word? Would not you have touched his shadow? And he _did_ wish me--he _did_! And then--I woke in his arms!