"You demand retraction of the thought," repeated Dodge. He faced her slowly. She was deliberately studying the two American flags embroidered between the blue cotton shoulders of the carriage-driver, high on the box. The delicate profile, uplifted in sunlight, had a translucency in the outline like the petal of a rose. Dodge gazed with hungry heart, but deepening frown. "You didn't mean that." He said it soothingly. "You couldn't insist on anything so utterly childish as the retraction of a personal thought. I've apologized for the words." "Do you refuse, then?" said Gwendolen, with a toss of the head she had seen Julia Marlowe give. "You really mean such a thing?" "I mean it." "Then--I refuse." The girl turned. This time it was Dodge's somewhat ragged profile held against the sky. "You dare to refuse me?" she gasped. Her hazel eyes grew inky; they seemed to shoot off sparkles of jet. "I am at your service for everything else," he said steadily. No other word was spoken until they reached the foot of Kobinata Hill, where the betto, springing lightly to earth, preceded the galloping horses up the slope. "You know," said Dodge, slowly, "this may mean to me giving up every hope of happiness. And it's such a nasty little cause,--like having one's eye put out by a spitball." "Yet you prefer it to retracting one rude, silly thought!" "For God's sake!" cried the badgered youth, "how can a man retract what he still thinks? Do you want me to lie, and say I don't think a thing when I do think it." "Yes," said Gwendolen, with a strange glint in her face. "Lie! Say that you do not think it. I shall be satisfied with that." "I'll be damned if I do!" said Dodge. "I'll lie to please myself, but I won't lie at the bidding of another,--not even you! Shall I stop the carriage and get out?" Gwendolen, with a little choking sound in her throat, turned away. Her gesture seemed an assent. Miserably the young man realized that he was bound by Mr. Todd to remain with her, and overhear the conversation that might ensue. In a moment more he helped her from the carriage in silence, allowing her to precede him to the Onda gate, and up the garden stones to the door. Old Suzumé answered the knock. She parted the entrance shoji very craftily, one bent eye to the crack. Her left cheek could not have been two inches from the floor. This gave an uncanny look, as if a severed head, or one of those long gourd-necked ghosts of Japanese mountains, had appeared to receive them. Gwendolen said, "Oh!" and retreated. Dodge stepped forward boldly, and put one gloved hand into the crack. The old dame shivered at this, and seemed to cower for a spring. A swift, soft rush of feet came through the house, and Yuki, flinging both doors wide, sent a crooked smile toward them. "Come quickly," she panted; "I pray you wait not to remove the shoes. My father is absent. I have prayed for Gwendolen; there is great thing to be said."