"Honorably do not concern your august mind with a person so insignificant," said Yuki. Far from resenting his silence, the girl was thankful to be left to herself. She watched the scenes outside with eyes at first vague and unintelligent, but which soon gained a soft, increasing brightness. Earth was waking from its long sleep. Yuki felt what many of her own and other races have in such crises felt,--a gratitude to nature that human grief is given no part in it. The grass still is busy, small waxen blossoms lift the leaves of a fallen year, no matter what men may suffer. In moments of keen personal bereavement, when the soul is dazed and blinded by the wonder of its agony, a certain resentment comes. Like the Ayrshire poet we cry, "How can ye be so fresh and fair?" But such grief was not yet Yuki's. Her emotion still partook more of bewilderment than loss. Pierre was not dead. He might yet be happy, happier than with her. This thought brought no personal sting. Hers was not a nature for jealousy. Because of her marriage, through this stern, grave man who sat beside her, she was to be given her opportunity for loyal service. Mistrust of self, apprehensions that mocked and taunted her, a certain shrinking from responsibilities so thickly heaped, rushed inevitably to her mind. On the other hand she had for guidance his great spirit of untarnished patriotism; she had vindicated to her parents all filial obligation, and springtime peeped at her from among the hills. She saw that a thousand nameless, beloved little flowers traced with bright enamelling the leaden dykes of fields. Seedling rice brimmed with gold-green, small, separate pools. Straw-shod farmers trampled, one by one, the rotting stubs of last year's crop into the slime of fields to be new-planted. On low-thatched huts the old leaves of the roof-lilies fed a springing growth. Everywhere decay passed visibly into re-birth. So, thought little Yuki, "The very sorrow I have endured shall feed my new resolves." At the small Kamakura station jinrikishas were awaiting them, accompanied by two persons, an old man and a comely woman of the peasant class, whom Yuki rightly took for family servants. They prostrated themselves upon the cement floor in an excess of demonstration, whispering old-fashioned phrases of congratulation and of welcome. Hagané came back for an instant to things around him. "These are my faithful servants, Bunshichi and his daughter. I do not now recall her name," said he to Yuki, with his kind smile. "They form our entire domestic retinue at Kamakura, for it is here that I come only when in need of true repose and relaxation." "Hai! hai! Danna-San," cried the servants in polite corroboration, and began a new series of deep bows. "Hai!" murmured Yuki, as if in echo of their subservience. The woman, for an instant, met her young mistress's eyes. There was something in the look of wonder, of great kindness, and then,--or so it seemed to Yuki,--of compassion.