"Is one alone in a shining company of spirits, Lord?" asked Yuki, a wonderful glow now kindling in her long eyes. "Will that youth of whom you told us be lonely, though he stand singly against a squadron of Cossacks? Where is his mother's soul? O Gods of my country! O my dear Christian God! why was it not given to me to be a man?" "Do you think that the soul of a woman who shirks would be less cowardly if put into the body of a man? Even your Christians could tell you better." "Lord! Lord!" cried the girl to him in great stress, "am I indeed of the coward's heart? Is this thing I call fidelity but a shirking?" "A Japanese has no fidelity but to his Emperor!" thundered Onda. "Be quiet, Tetsujo! Listen, poor wavering little heart; I will try to make you understand. You cannot be allowed to marry this man, not because we wish to thwart you, but--" "I said I would not marry him, now,--not now!" "Then what will you do?" asked Hagané. "All are striving to their utmost. What will be your part? Do you intend to sit sullen and inactive here, at home?" "The wench shall remain no longer under my roof!" raged Tetsujo. "She will remain under your roof, good Tetsujo, and be treated with courtesy," corrected the prince. "Let me go as a nurse! Oh, I could never stay with them! Their harsh eyes would flay me! I feel even now their hatred!" "Not mine, my baby, my only child!" wailed Iriya. "Think not so of your mother's imperishable love!" Yuki at last hid her face. The note of anguish in her mother's voice overcame her pathetic defiance. "My official residence is cold and lonely," remarked Hagané, sipping slowly at some tea. "It sorely needs a mistress well acquainted with foreign etiquette. Foreigners are to be met and conciliated. The Emperor himself, and his shining spouse, would receive one who so served her land, and hear from her own lips impressions of America, and the sentiments of the people there toward us. A woman's intuition is keen, and penetrates farther than a man's weightier judgment,--just as the tendrils of a vine creep into lattices which a tree would only darken. It is in such a capacity, Yuki-ko, that you could do immediate good. My disorganized servants would again be set into grooves of usefulness. Another reason, which must not be spoken openly, as yet,--I may soon be called to the front, and the several residences should not be closed." "Lord! You would trust with such responsibilities a weak, untutored girl like me?" "Yes, little one, I would trust you." "And I would be in all respects--your--wife?" asked Yuki, in a very low tone.