The Way Of The Gods Part 12

"And again," she rioted with him, "one's heart, which was here (in herself), is gone--gone--utterly gone--"

"That is quite proper," the soldier said. "For if you kept your own, you would have two and I none!"

"It is trying to get out!" she cried in mock alarm, holding it in.

"Let it come!"

But, just then, they heard the sigh of a moving screen, and the acid face of Hoshiko's mother looked in. She said nothing, only let her eyes rove from face to face. But that was very cooling. She closed the shoji and went away--apparently.

Now, for the benefit of her mother, whom she knew to be still behind the fusuma, Hoshiko tried to look very severe. She had taken the poppies from behind her ear and had pinned a napkin about her hair, and turned up the sleeves of her kimono, making herself all the lovelier as she very well knew in this fashion of a nurse.

"You are to wash your hands in this cold water to refresh you. Then I will take it away and bring you other water for your face."

But, in the end, she washed his hands for him, and his face, too, amid a great deal of laughter and splashing.

"And now," he said, "I will take every advantage of my defenceless enemy. I will make her give me my breakfast."

Though she demurred, Hoshiko was quite mad to do it.

"Beware!" she whispered, as she let a persimmon slip from between her chopsticks into his mouth. "In the East, walls have not only ears but eyes!"

"And no conscience!"

"What would you?"

She hoped that he might desire walls without senses, where they might be fearlessly alone.

"Another persimmon!" he laughed.

"No," she pouted, for his punishment, "nothing but the rice."

"Not all the hard hearts," he sighed, "are behind the walls!"

Then she gave him the most luscious of the persimmons.

"You haven't told me yet," he insisted, "what I did and what you did while I was unconscious. That is always interesting."

She filled his mouth with rice.

"But what did you do and what did I do?"

It came through the rice.

"Please drink," she said.

"What did you do, what did I do?" he sputtered.

"Pardon me while I wipe your mouth."

"But what--"

"Nothing. I did nothing, you did nothing."

"It must have been very dull for you," sighed the defeated soldier.

"Jizo--" she was praying to the G.o.ddess at her small shrine that night--"I am going to conceal and lie! I pray you to intercede with the Lord Shaka for my pardon. He loves me--and he must not know. It is for happiness, Jizo. _His_ happiness, do you understand, dear Jizo?"

She cried out savagely in her further confidences to Jizo that night, when she was ready for bed.

"I _was_ very busy--yes, _very_ busy--falling in love with him! And you must intercede with Shaka for my forgiveness. It was a lie. But could I tell him that I was busy falling in love with him?"

The maid had come in to put her to bed.

"Strange prayers!" she said.

The mistress turned, intending to rebuke her. But she laughed.

"Come here and stop that laughing. He will hear!"

"Mistress, I did not laugh."

"Come here!"

When the maid was abject before her she said:--

"Why do you stare?"

"At the joy."

"Where?"

As if it were a symptom of disease.

"In the face."

"I have a trouble of the heart. Feel! That is why!"

"Yes!" said the maid, pretending terror.

"It will kill me!"

"Yes!"

"It will not!"

"No!"

They fell, laughing, together, to the floor.