His first failure brought no impatience to the statesman. With more elaborate care he again knotted the obi-domé and drew it. He succeeded now in securing the fluttering hands. His one sign of agitation was deep, heavy breathing. As he raised his head from the task, on the white balls of his eyes tiny crimson threads broke through. Yuki stared upward, dazed, into his face. "Look not on me," he said, as he prepared to rise. "Put your false face to the earth. If I thought a shiver of obedience, of loyalty were left in your cringing soul, I would command you to stay here quietly--and seek not to follow, and so make more open this disgrace. Hide your eyes, I say! Sooner would I caress a grave-worm than thee!" He pushed her down with some violence, rose, and hurried to the rear of the house. Yuki turned her face sidewise to follow him. "A kuruma," she heard him call, "and three swift runners! Ten yen each to the men if they start within the moment!" He stood bareheaded in the sunshine, his watch opened in his hands. As if by invocation, the kuruma and the grinning coolies appeared. Yuki crawled a few inches, and strained her dry throat outward, listening for the address he was to give. No effort had been needed for hearing. His voice had the ring, the resonance of a deep bell, as he said aloud, "To the French Legation!" * * * * * Yuki, when she was sure that the whole place had fallen quiet, slowly lifted herself to a sitting posture on the foreign carpet, in the very centre of a huge bunch of vermilion cabbage roses. She gazed with intense scrutiny at one of these unearthly blossoms. It reminded her of something, a very terrible something, which had happened to her long ago. She tried to put a hand out and trace the irregular circle, but something held her hands together. She stared now at the hands, at the twisted obi-domé. Its golden clasps, now broken, hung down and clinked together like the toys on a lady's chatelaine. The sight recalled her to the present, and solved the suggested mystery of the harsh red rose. It was of sealing-wax the flowers had reminded her,--of a great crimson seal, of enamelled paper. "But I kept him back quite a little while," she said aloud, and nodded in satisfaction. "Less danger will come to both because I held Hagané back. How could he know it was Pierre? How could he think so quickly to go to the French Legation? Will Pierre be really there? Oh, he is a terrible man, that great Hagané! Even the voices of the air speak to him! He called me 'carrion,' rather would he fondle a grave-worm than little Yuki! Ah, his eyes said not so this morning, no, not this morning, my great Lord Hagané."