A power unseen, unfelt, unknown, held supreme. The best that the energies of men had yet devised stood symbolized in this one man Ieyasu--nobody disputed that: not even he himself at heart could deny the truth. The exigencies of birth, the value of training, and the force of purpose alike marked this man as a leader among men. A full consciousness of the responsibilities urged him unequivocally to the fulfillment of his mission. He would do for his kind no less than the gods had done for theirs. But here, confronting him, arose, commanding attention, a new authority. Heretofore men and women had been considered one--man. Were it possible, after all, that they, too, were separated by a gulf as wide as that between heaven and earth? A destiny as incomprehensible as nirvana itself? A province as distinct as that revealed by the principles positive and negative? And did God but stand between and the devil behind them? Was it the devil between and the gods behind? Or were the gods beckoning them alone, and unhindered except by man himself? These were stirring questions for Ieyasu, who had conceived Shinto, then suffered Buddha, at last to become threatened of Christ. Thought crowded upon him till his head seemed in a whirl and only the body responded--to what he did not know; no lone man could tell. Yodogima sat upon the lacquered bench, underneath the spreading lespedeza, innocent of a thought beyond the duty to which she, the eldest daughter of the host and betrothed of a superior, Katsutoya, had been assigned. Her place in the household made it incumbent upon her to entertain at this hour of the day a guest and patron of the rank and standing of Ieyasu. The flowers overhead bespoke her innocence; the verse she sang portrayed a devotion unquestioned; while the dressing of her hair, the manner of her garments, and the method of her doing signified an age, station and disposition not to be mistaken. Yet the pathos and the inspiration of her voice revealed an inner consciousness that is neither bought of preferment nor satisfied with precedent. The plaintive mournful notes, the anxious eager accents, the glad forgiving tones, all invited repose, stirred the interest and awakened impulse. Ieyasu conjured within his over-burdened conscience a duty consistent alike with inner compulsion and outward exigencies. He would surrender position, opportunity, everything to save his manhood: the very soul of being called aloud from the uttermost depths of unreality--the real paled with insignificance, the things around him shrivelled into nothingness, the earth itself rocked upon an uncertain axis, and the heavens alone bade him do.