“One night of shelter, good, dear, kindest of mothers—and a little food!”
Madame Yamada’s voice was as hard as her face.
“So you have returned!” she said. “You are without shame, it seems. This is the house of respectable people. The Kirishitan cannot enter.”
“Kirishitan—Kirishitan!” Azalea repeated the word vaguely, dazedly. “I am not Kirishitan,” she said. “The gods——”
Madame Yamada’s shrill laugh interrupted her.
“What! And you carry the evil book in the front of your obi!”
“That!” Azalea dragged the book from her obi. She held it up with both hands, then with a sudden, wild vehemence dashed it to the ground and put her foot upon it.
“It has brought me evil. Good step-mother, I have cast it from me. Give me shelter,” and she stretched her hands out in piteous appeal. But only the blank wall of shoji faced her now. Madame Yamada and her daughters had closed the doors upon her, even as she renounced her religion.
In a frenzy she beat with her thin hands upon the panelling, and her moaning voice reached those within.
“Oh, hearts of stone, take then the child within. It is dying! dying!”
Her step-mother thrust her fist through the paper shoji. One baleful eye was placed at the opening. But she did not speak.
The burst of passion subsided. Azalea’s hands fell to her side; she slowly stiffened and straightened herself. She stood in giddy hesitation a moment, then slowly moved away.
Through half the length of the night she wandered about the hill country and town of Sanyo. Once she came to some water and its murmuring song evoked a momentary response in her. She began to laugh in a soft, mad way as she stepped into it; but the water came only to her ankles and the baby upon her back moved and moaned in its sleep. Something burned within her head. Words, words—words—spoken in that deep voice she had so loved. To take life was an evil and unpardonable thing in the sight of the One God! She stepped upon the bank of the brook in shivering terror. Suddenly she ran from it as though from a great temptation. She sped on from the dark allurement of the country to where the light of the city told her of the warmth and happiness of others. Through street and street she wandered, her feet dragging, her head dropped forward. She lost her sandals and her feet, in the worn and old linen, bled from the touch of the pavement. She had now lost all sense of locality. Only she knew that thrice she paraded one particular street—an avenue shaded by dark, drooping bamboos, under whose shade houses of exquisite structure and light gleamed out upon the night.