"Why in the flesh, if the spirit rebels? I am yours in death as I have been in life. Do not turn me from you: let me die with you," begged she, bowing low down, on the mat before him. "What greater joy could heaven contain?" responded he, wholly absorbed. Then a fox vainly leaped among them, and Shibata stared hard past Yodogima--a head stood perched upon a faggot at her back. "Cannot you see them? Two--one on either side, reaching farther than Fuchu--Sakuma weeps: Katsutoya laughs--Yodogima!" "Yes, father." "Do you not--help me?" "I had thought to let--but some strange thing seems to possess us." "What is it, daughter?" Yodogima hesitated. "You have eyes?" suggested he. Her heart throbbed painfully. "You would not deny me?" plead her father. The blood rushed into her face; and Katsutoya laughed outright: Shibata tremblingly urged: "Speak, daughter." The one pleading, the other taunting, drove hard the will, yet thought rebelled, and Yodogima's face turned rigid. Peace had been his and faithfulness her own had not this, the bitterest test of living, come at last to stay the hand of death. She might have evaded him, but the very thing she sought forbade it. He must dishonor her were the truth known. She had sinned, and tradition proffered not repentance. What was it, then, that moved Yodogima to answer as she did? Some subtle influence had wrought her father's decline; they were then contemplating together the virtue of an only salvation, and--Yodogima, too, saw a face: it beckoned: she answered: "Ieyasu!" "He? The maker of our destiny?" demanded Shibata. "Yes. My lover." "How so, Yodogima; you had not mentioned this?" "You denied me the privilege--as you imagine me now." "Ah, ha--you would mock really a parent? Then go from me; and learn what it is to desecrate the gods. And that you may drink to the dregs, I send your two sisters along to do you service thereat. No daughter of mine shall disgrace me in death--be gone!" The fires were then lighted in the rooms all around them. Shibata and Asai, his wife and only hope, withdrew into an inner chamber. The floors had been covered with straw, and the flames leaped up--Yodogima turned to go, and two faces, one hideous, the other smiling, greeted her. A cross and an image bore they--thence duty called her; the purpose stood revealed. CHAPTER VI With her eyes thus opened, mysticism disappeared: the elements crackled, and out of consciousness there arose a determination to survive any test that might be imposed. All her tender life had been surrendered faithfully and uncompromisingly to the harsher edicts of conventional man; and stern realism had bidden her renounce every impulse; there had seemed no alternative to save honor--the gods demanded it, the family claimed it, and self had not dared deny death its sole reward.