"The youth dutifully kept this longing from the old dame. But she questioned, and through her slow round of domestic services she pondered. Then she came to understand. Perhaps the young soldier-husband, dead for thirty years, had returned--to whisper. Whatever the cause, she came--to--understand." He paused an instant, as if to take a firmer hold upon his voice. "To-day,--scarcely an hour ago, Yuki,--the youth, returning from labor, found his mother--dead--before the family shrine. She had used her husband's short sword. It will be buried with her. The smile upon her old face had gained already the youth and glory of a god's. She left no message; the smile told him all.--To-morrow the son takes passage for Manchuria." Yuki's dawn had come. It hurt her, like the birth of a soul. Hagané saw the same look which, for one fleet instant, he had evoked from her at Washington. His strong heart reeled toward the girl. Iriya was sobbing softly. Tetsujo sat square like a box. He envied the mother and the son. He saw no pathos in the tale, only victory. Those two would be together on the Yalu; while he, Tetsujo, famed warrior, skilled swordsman, must pine at home and listen to the pulings of weak women! The glory grew on Yuki. Above the flowers of the tokonoma, above Hagané's head, hung a tattered battle-flag of their own clan. She recognized it now. Her hands trembled. She lifted them toward Hagané. "Onda Yuki-ko!" he almost whispered, so deep and tense his voice became. "This year, this day, this very hour, may be the pivot of human history upon this planet! And is not the diamond-point on which that mighty turning rests, the Spirit of Japan?" "Banzai Nippon! Dai Nippon! Banzai! Banzai!" shouted Tetsujo, and beat his fists on the matting. Hagané, with a smile that seemed to deprecate yet condone his kerai's vehemence, went on directly to Yuki. "Strange that Western minds--the astute American politician, the journalist, even the cleverest of Europe's statesmen--hardly claim to look forward more than a few years,--five, ten, at best half a century! They want results they shall live to see--after them the deluge! As they have forgotten the very names of their grandfathers, so they ignore their descendants. But we of the East count time in other lengths. We do not bound our horizon with personal aim or the catchword of a day. We owe,--we owe ourselves,--all, to a future that we may not comprehend, but have no right, in our ignorance, to cramp. What we are fighting for at this moment will not be fully realized for two hundred years. Then it will be seen as a great landscape in a valley. Your foreigners are like children that play now in that valley. But every Japanese patriot stands lonely on a mountain,--very lonely, very lonely!"