"I dare not! I dare not!" shuddered Iriya. "I fear your father, for the first time in my life.--There! He is calling. I must go." She caught one of the girl's dangling hands and pressed it convulsively against a tear-wet cheek. "May Kwannon soothe your bewildered heart, my loved one!" she murmured, and was gone. "I prefer you to have as little as possible to do with that hardened and ungrateful wretch!" came Tetsujo's voice, as Iriya entered to him. Yuki knew that it was raised purposely for her to hear. Iriya evidently attempted some conciliatory reply, for he burst out angrily, "Don't defend her, woman! It is disrespect to me. I tell you she shall consent, whether she wishes it or not!" Yuki smiled the smile that leaves a taint upon the soul. "There are a few things that even a father--even a Japanese father--cannot do!" she said aloud. CHAPTER FIFTEEN If previous days in the Onda household had been tense, those following were to reach the ultimate limit of nerve-endurance. Immediately after his last tempestuous scene with Yuki, Tetsujo had left the house. Yuki was minded to call after him, protesting that her promise given him on the first day of war did not hold indefinitely. She moved forward, the words nearly sped, when he turned on her a look and gesture so repellent that she cowered, and let him pass. It did not seem at all her father who now looked at her, but rather some angry Spirit of War, in temporary assumption of Onda's body. War! War! War! The streets thrilled to it. The sparrows chirped it. The jinrikisha wheels rattled a pygmy fusillade. In this flare of national ardor all passions burned more hotly, and among them, Tetsujo's indignation against his only child. Iriya, being more inexperienced than Yuki herself in interpretation of men's fiercer moods, could not tell her that such caloric outbursts would die the sooner from their own exaggeration. Yuki moaned, and shut her hot eyes from a future where her father should always be angry, and her mother always trembling.