Yuki's hands were pressed against her breast. In the samurai's slow, fervid utterance one could feel each word fill and thrill the heroic heart before utterance came to the lips. He was deriving strength and comfort from the immortal ode. "'Commit then, O soul, thyself upon the current of things!'" rose the exulting pæan. "'Let me choose my own time. Let me go out for my solitary walk! Let me hobble about the farm on my friendly cane. Let me toil up the Eastern hill, look the clear brook in the face, and sing it my dying songs. So let me end my days as days of themselves may end. So shall my joy flow on with the eternal will of Heaven!'" Yuki sat upright, her wide eyes fixed, as it were, upon the viewless flight of echo. "And they of the Western world say that my people have no true religion, no deep belief. Their souls crawl, where ours take wings! Nippon, Nippon, my country!" The magnificence of her nation's past, the heroism, self-sacrifice inherent in her countrymen, the passionate craving for what is spiritual and sublime, the belief in watchful spirits of dead ancestors, in the divinity and guidance of dead Emperors manifest in the living flesh, came in a flood and bore up the girl's spirit in a tide of light. What were foreign education, foreign friendship, foreign pledges,--love itself,--to a girl of Yamato Damashii? She was Japanese, one small animate cell in a living tissue of race. To serve her country, that, indeed, should be life's worth. "Pierre, Pierre," she sobbed. "I shall not bring you joy, nor can you give to me the duty that it is my part to bear. Let me go, dear one, let me go, and pray to our Christian God that your kisses fade from me, and your blue eyes be turned away. If I were only myself I would die, or defy for you everything. But I am not myself; I am what my ancestors, my parents and my country have made me; I am only one shivering mote of dust in my country's shining destiny. Let me go, my dear; Kwannon will bless you!" Slow, helpful tears began to course, unfelt, along her white cheeks. All at once the physical exhaustion of long, sleepless nights and days unendurable began to tell on her. The glossy head bent over, lower and lower. Tetsujo, after a long pause, had begun an heroic epic of the Heiké clan. The words were indistinct, a sort of splendid blur. She had an impression of horses, arms, war-shouts, and of fluttering banners on distant hills. Then all sounds began to die away. She smiled faintly, and stretched out her slender young limbs upon the soft matting. Soon she was asleep, with the long, regular breaths of childhood.