The gray robe, hastily caught back to decorous lines, showed traces of rough handling. Over her head she had thrown a light wrap called a dzukin. It hid her forehead with a nun-like band, was crossed under the chin, and knotted loosely behind the head. Not a strand of hair emerged. Her face, in the dull silver setting, gleamed like a long white pearl. Hagané observed the change in her. The repulsion left his eyes. He waited in patience, and with some curiosity, for her answer. "I came, your Highness," she vouchsafed at length, "because without me you cannot get the paper." Hagané's eyes went instantly to Pierre. "Yuki, for God's sake are you mad?" cried the Frenchman. "I know of no paper. I have assured him that I do not know of it!" "Give him the paper, Pierre," said the girl, gently. "Through me it was lost, and if I am to have a human soul hereafter--give him the paper." Hagané sucked in bitter triumph from Pierre's discomfiture. His eyes crucified the boyish face. Like a brood of dark vultures his conjectures swooped down to the cowering prey. Yet before Yuki's entrance he had, for a moment, felt talons at his own breast. Instinctively Pierre had clutched at his coat, where the document lay concealed. Hagané said softly, "Perhaps it is as well, Madame, that you have disobeyed. Yet on your lover's countenance I do not observe signs of joyous welcome." "I came looking for no welcome, Lord, nor has personal desire directed me. I have done great wrong. Again has my weakness proved my enemy. But a hope of partial atonement has not gone altogether from me." She stretched both hands to Pierre. "Pierre, if you have known love, give me the paper." "I do not understand," stammered Pierre. "Are you against me for that man? Here is the chance of our revenge,--our passport to happiness. I have not harmed him otherwise. Would you take this one possible chance from me?" "I am not against you, Pierre. I am not for Hagané. It is myself, my wretched, shivering self, for which I plead. No, you cannot understand. I am Japanese. I must regain the paper. Through my cowardice you won it. At any sacrifice you can name I must get it back." Hagané saw how she labored to keep her voice gentle and soothing. She had the accents of a suffering mother who tries to coax a sick child. The husband saw more in the calm, ashen face. "You have yet patriotism," he said, so low that she alone heard. To these words she gave no recognition. She watched the Frenchman as Hagané studied her. The folds of her dzukin, heaped high and light about the slim throat, stifled her. She tugged nervously at it until one end came loose and fell. By inches the flexible fabric crawled down from hair to shoulder, then down her body to the floor. The disorder of the thick hair, one blue-black lock almost hiding her left temple and streaming to her breast, gave her an unfamiliar, a weird, even a supernatural appearance.