After Nehachibana had left the room Tetsutaisho approached Kinsan and said with low emphasis: "And this is how you have served your master?" Again she did not answer; it was because she could not. She only sobbed with a broken heart. Tetsutaisho clapped his hands and a servant came quickly toward him. "The guards!" said he; then calmly stood surveying his victim. He had but a short time to wait until they came, though it served Tetsutaisho to cover well in his heated memory the last few years. Likely Kinsan did the same, but hers was a different mood. He did not ask himself the reason, and consulted only impulse; he may have let hatred enter his heart, for he now began to suspect as well as doubt his once upon a time passing friend, Daikomitsu. From the time Daikomitsu first came into official position at Tokyo he had been a constant if not wholly welcome guest at Tetsutaisho's house. From the beginning he had divined Nehachibana's master passion, and always tried as best he could to relieve her hard distress. He had also observed Kinsan and cultivated her friendship, not that he loved her, but because he admired her wonderful gift. He, a patron of art and lover of the beautiful, quickly appreciated Kinsan's powers, and instinctively knew and respected her virtue. That Nehachibana was entirely wrong in her attitude toward Kinsan he had been fully convinced, and long hoped sometime to advise the one of her false impressions and relieve the other of her natural predicament. Thus he had become a familiar visitor, and his attentions were bestowed no less upon the one than the other. Tetsutaisho had never frowned upon any of these courtesies, in fact rather encouraged them, feeling honoured by the prime minister's warm attentions. He had, consequently, upon more than one occasion, freely given Daikomitsu the loan of Kinsan to sing at entertainments of high degree; and however vulgar the southern prince may have been in other ways, and whatever may have been Tetsutaisho's conclusions at this late day, the former's intercourse with the latter's family certainly had been of the purest and most honourable kind. By the time the guards had arrived Tetsutaisho had worked himself up to the proper degree of feeling, however, and without further ado pointed to Kinsan, saying in a commanding tone of voice: "To the dungeon!" As she was being hurried from the house Tetsutaisho turned his back upon the one he had so long coveted, and hastened to his wife, nervously listening to her clear and unequivocal denunciation. She told him without a blush how she had come upon Kinsan while in the act of flinging the sleeping child into the dark crevice, and how she had suffered through all these years with fear, and how she had hesitated to disclose to him her knowledge of the awful deed because she believed his love for Kinsan would bring a punishment upon herself. "You will forgive me, my most honourable husband, will you not?" said she, calmly and invitingly.