The answer already on her lips, did not escape him, though Yodogima hesitated; she had read him in time to save herself--surmised that he knew more than she would express or deny--and cogitating a happier conclusion endeavored to leave him standing as near the brink of certainty as it had been his pleasure to assume. "You would have me disown a sister?" "I would know you better." "Then judge me with less compassion and more of wit; I take the responsibility--" "Not of war?" "No; but of its cause and consequence." "I admire you all the more for that, though you leave me without a peg to stand on. Nor shall I surrender one whit the ground I've gained, no less an opinion formed. Take the whole family along, if you like: their gadding, a virtue stands you none the less in hand; to-morrow Hideyoshi shall know--" "How it is to be tricked." "Ha, ha--you think me easily done." They sat upon the beach, in the afternoon of the following day, Hideyoshi listening with rising anticipation and Yodogima straining every wit she had, prolonging and intensifying the illusion. She did not know that Esyo had deliberately, if falsely, precipitated the conflict, nor was she aware of Hideyoshi's perusal of her own correspondence with Ieyasu--all of it, excepting only the last letter, in which she had advised him to make peace at any price, save honor. Yet she was conscious that a conflict raged, was perhaps at that moment fighting to the death, between two unequal forces, in which no quarter should be asked or given, and that her own lover was desperately pitted in that struggle against the very man who held her captive, grovelled at her feet a weakling and a beggar. "Why should I not surrender, if needs be, this frail body of mine to save him?" again and again rose in her mind, as often to be discarded and smothered as a thing utterly impossible. "No; I'll yet win for him by subtler means an equal chance; and when I've done that--a woman cannot do less: should do no more." A heron stalked by, disdaining a small crab that backed and snapped among the slime-washed rocks: Hideyoshi strained his eyes, meditating momentarily the legend of a bygone day. "A Heike?" queried he, half aloud, rising to examine more closely the supposed Taira symbol. Yodogima's throat filled, and failed of utterance. "It's only a common sort," observed he, returning with the obstreperous little thing clinging tightly to the stick's end.