o his sons. But they must take the consequences. Good morning,
sir."

But the color-bearer did not move. He stood there still with his hand to
his forehead.

"Good morning!" thundered the colonel.

And even that could not frighten him. He was momentously deciding
between the emperor and Hoshiko.

"I desire to say, sir, that I shall not marry," said Arisuga.

"I am glad to hear it. The soldier who marries is a fool."

And therefore the little color-guard set himself to fight again, and to
the end, against the invincible thing called love. It makes me smile as
I think of it. Who has ever vanquished it? At first he stubbornly
thought of other battles he had fought and won. But he was surprised
that this brought no courage to the new kind of conflict. She came in
the visions of night, like the sappers and miners, when he was least
defended against her, smiling, beckoning. He could see her and touch
her, and know that she was at his side.

Now all things mightily conspired to make that thing he had once thought
of in China--a temporary alliance,--a going away, an easy forgetting,
another marriage, many--to be more fully than he could have hoped.

It was only necessary that he should remain in Japan. Time would do the
rest. He used to wonder, in the night, under the stars, how long it
would take her to understand, then forget, then to take another husband.
He never got over this latter without waking his sleeping comrade by a
certain wild violence of passion.

He thought of it with a pitying laugh at himself--now mad to go back
where he was denied the going--to have her there who must not
come--whose coming would be ruin.

One night he spoke wildly to this comrade:--

"I tell you that she will never forget, never take another: if she did,
I would kill her! But I am the liar and the scoundrel--I. She chose
me." Concerning which interruptions of his repose his sleeping-mate
continued to complain to headquarters.

A dozen times he sat down to write to her. But what comfort was that? It
was herself he wanted: the bodily presence which could softly touch him,
the voice which could gently speak to him, all the beauty which he might
see! A dozen times he threw the unfinished letter from him.

And so, finally, this fight against Hoshiko became a rout. Every night,
when he should have slept, it came on--like an enemy who knew the time
and place of the weakness of his adversary. If there had only been no
nights to fight