He was safe. To-day's crisis, at least of the devouring heat, was over. He would awake refreshed and clear. As for her, everything had grown so vague and far-away she cared very little what might happen. The insensibility of reaction bore her outward on a warm tide. Danger lost its meaning, and grew but a shadow-play on life. A Frenchman in Hagané's garden, and a crucial meeting to go on in the house! There was something piquant, fetching, in the idea. Yuki nodded above it and smiled. Oh, she was so tired, so tired of everything! A little malicious something was tapping, tapping, just at the base of her brain. The ache at her heart benumbed her. A desire, dull and insistent as the pain itself, crept to her, just to lie upon the matting near poor Pierre and rest. They belonged together, the weak ones. Chance and disappointment had thrown them about like toys. What had such as they to do with the God Hagané? Yes, she had better fail once more, and it would be the last. Let the grave statesmen come and go, let Hagané seek her! She had nothing to do but the easiest of all things, just to do nothing, and all this benumbing misery would be at an end. She wondered, still smiling, in what way Hagané would kill her. She fingered curiously the stops of a dozen fearful thoughts, and felt no fear. Had law permitted him to carry the two swords of his class, the short one would deal a quick and merciful death. Since he was unarmed perhaps he would simply let one of the servants slay her, not caring to soil his hands with such feeble stains. An influence was coming over her in rhythms, like tepid waves. A delicious lightness blew upon her brain. She gasped for insensibility as for music, dumb, perfumed music, drunk in by pores of the flesh. One small nerve of desire began to tingle. "Oh, let it go on," she cried to her soul; "have no interference! Let me pass into nothingness by this heavenly gliding!" As from a great distance came footsteps and the sound of commonplace voices. Yuki moaned aloud, and crept an inch nearer her companion. "She was seen last coming in this direction," said a speaker; "Ii, the gardener, saw her." "She is not in the adzuma-ya! Can it be that our gracious lady has gone for repose to the tea-rooms?" "Baka!" exclaimed the other whom she now recognized as Tora, the butler; "is not that great official residence sad enough and lonely, that the poor child seeks a more desolate place? I pity her." "Luncheon becomes honorably cold upon the table," murmured the boy, showing compassion in his own way. "And foreign food when chilled, with the grease becoming as wax about the edges, is of all sights the most disgusting." "Arà," sighed Tora, "she eats little enough even when the food is hot."