“You love her still?” she asked, catching his arm and shaking it with her childish jealousy.
“No, no,” he said, as though the very thought was loathsome, “’tis you alone I love, my own Masago.”
“I would not have it otherwise,” she said, and laughed happily.
“Masago,” he said earnestly, “ask the consent of your honored parent that I may come indoors. We will spend a portion of the night together. I will then tell you all you wish to know concerning that passion of the heart I once have felt, which you have suspected. It is better you should know.”
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ALONE in the quiet guest room of the Yamada house they sat. Convention demanded a light, but it was of the dimmest—a dull and flickering andon. Yet the night was clear. By the shoji walls they sat, looking into each other’s faces, thinking always of the morrow.
She had listened without interrupting while in low, tense voice he had told her of a madness once felt for a high princess. When he had quite finished and sat in silent, moody gloom, she moved nearer to him, then slipped her hand into his, and nestled up against his shoulder. Her voice was soothing in its quality.
“By this time the little bird—the poor caged nightingale is dead,” she said. “The gods were more kind to you, Junzo, for see, you are so strong you beat away the cage-bars and are quite free to love again.”
Pressing his face against her hair, he said solemnly:—
“The gods are witness of this fact. You are the only one that I have ever loved.”
“That is true,” she said. “I do believe it, and to-morrow—”
“To-morrow will be a golden day upon the august calendar of our lives. I love you! Men of our country do not always marry for their love, Masago, but the gods are kind, and favor us!”
“How sad,” she said, “it must be to marry one for whom we do not care!”
“The times change, Junzo-san. Are not conditions happier to-day?”
“True. In the years to come they will still improve, and if the gods grant us honorable offspring—”
“What is that?” she cried, starting from him suddenly. “I thought I heard one moving—and see, oh, look, there is a shadow on the shoji wall!”