Chapter XIV: The Going of the Soldier

For the soldier must go. There was not a vestige of excuse for remaining longer. The terrible mother had entered his chamber, had looked at him, had said briefly that he was quite well. And Hoshiko herself had done everything but ask him flatly to stay. How could she do that? Isonna had warned her constantly of the sort of woman who did that in Japan. The mere asking would be enough--in such a woman--to advertise her as of joy. And for want of this word of asking, the heaven she had made was closing.

But Isonna and some of the circumstances of the case had taught her more and more that any more forwardness would be seriously misconstrued by the invalid.

"You are awake," said Isonna, mysteriously, who was not blind to the maturing of the thing called womanhood.

"Ah," sighed the happy and miserable girl, "if to wake means this, then I wish that I might always have slept."

"You did not sleep," said the still mysterious maid.

"What did I then, little beast?"

"You dreamed."

"Then," begged the girl, with a piteous smile, "make me to dream again, and take care that I never wake."

"Ah, sweet mistress," said the maid, "there comes to all, in the matter of men, a time to sleep, a time to dream, and a time to wake. The sleep is best. For in that one knows nothing. The dream is sweet. But it never lasts. The waking sometimes is good--sometimes evil. Good it is if all is fair between a man and a woman. Evil it is if all is not. And, mistress dear, all is not fair between you and him. So there is another thing after the waking--which the gods make."

"What is that, wise little beast?" laughed Hoshiko.

"It is the forgetting which heals," said the maid.

"I do not wish to be healed," answered her mistress.

"Then must you be always ill of this thing."

"So be it. That is better than a forgetting."

"But it must go no further," pleaded the servitor. "There must be no touches, no eyes, no beatings of the heart."

"Can you stop the beating of the heart? The adoring of the eyes? Can any one?"

"Yes. In your room waits always the goddess of tranquillity. Go there. Stay there. She will soothe you."

"Yes, when he is gone--quite gone--then we will try for that tranquillity. We had it before he came!"

"We shall have it again," cheered the maid. "As soon as he is gone--"

"Oh!" A flash of Hoshiko's old manner energized her. "I know a better and happier way to insure that tranquillity."

"What is it?"

"Ask him to--stay! You!"

The maid only gasped.

"Yes," said her mistress, more timorously than she had ever spoken of him.

"Ask a man to stay?"

"Certainly! That is what I said. Am I so hard to understand?"

Hoshiko spoke with more pain than asperity.

"You may--with honor--" pleaded Hoshiko. "He doesn't love you. You do not love him."

"And if the asking of these lips and hands and eyes and this voice, all that are permitted you, are not potent--how shall I be? How shall any one or anything be? Let him go."

"Stop!" cried her mistress. "He is a god. We are creatures. What we wish we must petition for as we do the gods. Yet I dare not--will not you?"

"No!" said the maid. "I know the penalty. I do not wish you to know it."

BUT WHAT COULD HE DO?