Yodogima paused; it had come to a parting with the one or the other. Blood and love are elemental within the human, but only for love there had been none to measure in the light of soul; heart and instinct might have gone on hand in hand, yet an Infinity's unvarying prudence saw fit to match understanding against the one; love is an affinity. "Then accept my blessing," urged the mother, thoughtfully, after a while; "mine is run." "And give you, as well, my protection; have no fear; go as you like; do what conscience bids, and the gods shall render you justice." "Harunaga?" commanded he, directing his further conversation to him. "Yes, my lord." "Do not call me lord--not to-day; to-morrow you may, but if you would serve me now attend my mother; old men should yet be of some help, and if there are any others, of a like mind, behind these walls, let them, too, depart; this is going to be a hot place, perchance worse, if I interpret Esyo's message correctly." "Esyo!" gasped Jokoin. "Yes; it is she; and, you are safe at Kyogoku's." "I shall remain here," replied Jokoin, unobserved by Yodogima; whose interests had already settled upon one thought only. These went their way, Yodogima accompanied by Kyogoku, to the latter's yashiki, a commodious dwelling, nestled away among the samurai huts fringing the castle grounds all round well under the outlying city's over-crowding borders. It was a sightly place and a safe one to which the honor-bound Kyogoku, a trusted intermediary, had led the proud, if anxious, princess, there to meet and do with life's final consummation. The very walls around seemed to echo some fain portent, in keeping with time's most cruelly adjudged, if seemly ending. Harunaga lay hidden in the fastness of an humbler shrine builded farther up on the hillside overlooking the walls and guarding eagerly each approach. No deed of the hand or foulness of a heart should harm or hinder his ladyship's grace as long as he might serve; he had divined well her secret, and marshalled afresh his own hardening courage: sought as best he knew to induce the moral which every man must finally know as in prudence wisely revealed. She had gone there that Hideyori's hand might not be stained, that a nation should rise upon the hard-burned figments of ambition, that her love attain its just reward, and an ideal come down from heaven to earth--a life's work rounded out in God. Weighing over against his own feelings a greater force, the obligations that he had incurred, this gray-haired bonze, faith's most truly devoted, resolved in his own heart that she had chosen well, and that so long as he might prevent, her confidence should not be abused or Ieyasu's word broken. Harunaga sat there, as he had lived, the sphinx, grinning against the gray and the dawn of duty.