"Oh!" cried he, inwardly, "am I so lost as to sit here as if mad? This woman is stronger than I, in the face of harsher trials. Be a man, Hideyoshi." Thence he arose, and approaching, vainly seated himself directly in front of Yodogima. The child cooed on, but two strong hearts waxed high over it, with larger interest and harder conflict, as lions trample their brood or the bird-kind but empty a nest in its defense. "Pardon me, Yodogima," begged he, cowering before her, his very soul the price, "it is so sudden--let me see your eyes, Yodogima--speak to me; I cannot bear longer the suspense." Yodogima considerately raised her eyes to his: they reflected back only the likeness of a man who had never yet failed to penetrate deeper, but now the heart seemed obscured by that self-same image. "The child, Yodogima; let me look into its face." Yodogima tenderly, perhaps proudly, tendered the little babe, robed and attended as if want to invite really the gods to worship at nativity's shrine. It was a pretty boy, bearing traces in every feature of its chivalrous ancestry: Hideyoshi had been proud, would have prostituted every virtue that he possessed to proffer it the crown he had wrought, but-- "Ieyasu!" conjured he, half in rage, half in fear. Yodogima turned white, then livid; the child's doom induced the former, but duty quickly inspired thoughts restoring a healthier, heartier action of that one sense underlying the most vital of nature's primal instincts. "Calm yourself, Yodogima; have no fear of man or devil; Hideyoshi would burn down there before the name or a hair of that child's mother should suffer the discredit of a moment's reflection. More I cannot say now: grant me time; it shall not be long; I would go no farther than Azuchi." Bowing low, the taiko withdrew, and not stopping longer than to call the norimonos (chair men) hurried on, each stride burning deeper into his heart the dread that gripped him more harshly than any death. "What is it that makes you reticent?" demanded he, of Oyea, who trembled at his presence. "I thought your discretion, if not his tongue, of better promise." "Spare me, oh, spare me, honorable master; it is not I, but the temple that betrayed you." "Ah--and he was there?" "No." "Then you have been--" "No, no; yes, yes--" "And know the truth, as I do now. Come, demean yourself; I must return; tongues are no doubt already wagging, whereas yours mutely convinces." The taiko returned thence faster than he had come. A cloud had risen from his mind; there in the presence of the one who had stood at his right through all those tempestuous years the truth had at last dawned: success attended insofar as others profited: thirst might be inherited, but genius transmitted--never.