The place to which Kinsan led captive was an old abandoned nook, which had centuries before been used as a sight-seeing retreat by no less a personage than the shogun himself. It lay far up on the hillside in a small level space that rounded out at the head of a miniature gulch, through which ran the rivulet spanned by the bridge where the lovers met. The site, now dry and hard, was once the source of a natural spring, which had long ago disappeared through a tunnel made farther down the declivity. It was an ideal place for a hidden cave, such as it really appeared to be and as Kinsan called it; and the shogun under whose direction it was improved had spared no expense to make it a place of beauty as well as seclusion. A retaining wall at the back,--in which were constructed wide and comfortable stone seats,--rounded up at both corners and arched over in front, while trees and vines had been so planted here and there as to shade the sun or break the storm, without in any manner obstructing the view. Some of these giant trees still stood, marking the grandeur of a different age. Others had fallen and long ago disappeared, while vines and shrubs had grown and regrown into tangled gnarls of brush and brier. All trace of its once gravelled approach and smooth floor had vanished with age, and no other person now found his way there except by merest chance or a curious reverence. Kinsan was the cave's only regular visitor and, jealously, she took every precaution to avoid attracting any attention to it. Unlike her sisters and her girl friends she wanted some place to which she could go and be by herself, and there indulge in that freedom which made her so different from others as well as the envy of all who knew her. She had with her own hands cleared the place of briers and fallen debris, and had carried straw and mats there to cover and make more comfortable a seat. Why, she did not know, but she loved different things from those which pleased the people whom she knew, and at times she longed to breathe a different atmosphere and to think new thoughts and experience other feelings. And now that this queer little house of hers contained another--one in whom all her sentiments seemed to enliven and to crystallise--her heart filled and there rose within her a new being, whose love and innocence and purity and sweetness shone forth like a flood-light of truth. Shibusawa, too, felt the irresistible oncoming of that new life which had taken hold of him the first time he saw Kinsan; nor did he try to dissuade it, for in it he saw and felt the force of nature, the power of Infinity.