The entrance gate and court of the Tabata villa had taken on, strangely, the look of its master. The gate was of unpolished cedar, studded with brass nails half a foot across, and barred with hinges that might have swung a hill. The massive panels now stood hospitably ajar. Above them leaned a single pine, red-stemmed and tall, of the indigenous Japanese variety. It, too, resembled Hagané. The house beyond was but little larger or more pretentious than that of Onda the kerai; but the variety of woods used in finishing bespoke both taste and great wealth. The roof, with its dark-blue scalloped tiling was edged at the rim with flattened discs of baked clay, and in the centre of each, in rough intaglio, curved the crest of the Hagané clan. Sombre shoji opened, before the visitors had time to dismount. Just within, a superb suitaté, or single screen of gold, painted in snow-laden bamboo trees, shut out interior vistas. Yuki was conducted to a woman's apartment, where she could remove her wraps and examine her shining blue-black coiffure for a misplaced hair. Tetsujo strode to the guest-room. At sight of Prince Hagané seated, still alone, he gave a great sigh of relief. Hagané turned with a smile,--"You love not our foreign friends, good Tetsujo." "I love them as our cat loves pickled plums, my liege." Hagané laughed indulgently. "At least you can distinguish the men from the women,--be sure to give me the signal should one of the young males prove to be he who was with Yuki on the hatoba, and who so rudely forced an entrance to your premises." "I shall not forget," said Tetsujo. The wide room was unchanged but for an unusually elaborate flower-composition in the tokonoma (recess). A most valuable set of pictures, three in number, and all mounted alike on priceless brocade, filled the soft, gray tinted space beyond the flowers. Yuki entered alone. Neither of the men had heard her soft stockinged step, nor her gentle pushing aside of a golden fusuma. "Go kigen (august health), your Highness," she murmured, sinking where she stood and touching her forehead to the floor. "Ah, it is Yuki-ko. Come nearer, child," said the host, kindly. As she moved toward him, his eyes rested with frank delight on the vision of her beauty. "You are now truly a maiden of Japan. That last image of you in Washington, if I remember rightly, was of a small brown wren of Paris." "So at the time you observed, Augustness, and my spirit thereat was poisoned by deep shame." "A thing so easily rectified can scarcely be a cause of shame," smiled Hagané. "You are now as truly Japanese as even your jealous father could desire. Will you kindly clap and serve us tea, small pigeon?"