No further or greater low proving and encouraging of an inspiration born within, and the spit-ball propitiously thrown--not with vulgar meaning--the gates on either side the lofty emblem swung ajar--Yodogima had gained the promise of an inner sanctuary, where moods and morals are the more finely, if not subtly, wrought and there dwells no other god or goddess than communion withal. Yodogima chose the right approach and her prognosticator the left. As an affinity draws, so it resolves only the transverse of an attending unity. The positive and the negative harmonize upon grounds no more irreducible, and that bonze followed his prey as the quadrant confronts a Cardan. Lying there, at one side, behind closed doors, his own view unobstructed, this godly man, with the aid of Oyea, a Christian accomplice's assurances, had penetrated deeper than the veil donned in faith gained and worn as a security provisioned, and discerning the motive augured a fulfilment that Yodogima alone had striven for in vain. Once inside the four walls of this more than sacred, an over-beautiful, a divinely wrought, and suggestively potent place, our vainly beguiled and no less hard-pressed princess dropped hopelessly to her knees and gazing round saw no other thing than one bewilderingly done round and covering of modestly drawn yet bewitchingly significant prisms or reflections that led apparently to or from nowhere, yet emanating in or symbolizing afar the one ideal that had lured her thither. "At last!" whispered she, as the sun above gathered and mellowed, merging and intertwining the fanciful and the real, till comprehension ceased and ideality carried her aloft the world she knew. Only the soft matting underneath served her now prostrate form; the spirit ceased its aching quest: a reality bordering the extremes of ethereal generation possessed her. The great sun seemed marshaling its hosts. Glad bugles sounded. A myriad cupids, winged as doves and armed with bows and arrows, balanced and made ready for the flight. The great father of fathers reached into his mighty knapsack, and Yodogima breathed sparingly lest he withdraw empty the hand she longed to realize filled. The good benefactor smiled, and that she sorrow no more revealed to her the jewel--it was a son. And as the troopers charged earthward, their purpose revealing itself in every fiber, the glad tidings of a fulfilment worthy and complete filling her to overflowing, Yodogima opened wide her eyes, and--Katsutoya stood over her. Her dream, then, was in truth an unthinkable reality: faith, as designed, a pregnant hoax. Words were worse than useless now, and the body as helpless; thus Yodogima only stared, the harder: with one furtive glance Katsutoya read her innermost thoughts, and flushing to the full bent his knee with partings still baser: "Trust me, Yodogima: henceforth I am Harunaga."