ile they were playing as children might do on the mats. Their feet
were against the groove which held the fusuma. The little soldier
reached upward above his head.

"I can touch the other mat," laughed Arisuga.

"And I," laughed his wife, doing the same.

"What!" cried the soldier. "I am taller than you are."

Then Hoshiko understood that she ought not to have said that. It was
heinous to make herself the equal of her lord in anything.

"No, lord," she hastened to say, "I lied--a little lie--while we
sported. I am sorry."

"It is no lie," laughed happy Arisuga once more; for you will remember
that all her daintiness was then his, and that he was not like other
Japanese husbands; "we are exactly the same height."

"No, no, no, lord," pleaded Hoshiko, who fearfully knew that it was so,
"you are much taller than miserable small me."

And, to prove it, she bent her knees within her kimono and stood beside
him, for he had risen to prove the matter.

But he detected the bent knees and straightened them, and, lo! there was
not a shadow of difference in their height.

And when the little soldier laughed and was very happy about it, she
laughed too, timorously at first, then more joyously than he. For to be
his equal in something, and to see him happy about it--well, she
supposed that no Japanese girl had ever before such felicity, and
perhaps she was right.

So, in their playing and laughter, he cried:

"And I shall be punished for my haughty spirit in thinking I was, and
you shall be rewarded for the humility of yours in thinking you were
not."

And the manner of this punishment and reward was for him to strip off
her kimono and put it on himself, and his uniform and put it on her. Oh,
you may be sure that she tried to fly in her terror of him, that she
fought and wept and at last utterly exhausted had to let him have his
way--even to tucking her splendid hair under his military cap. She lay
there happily crushed and disgraced until he had made himself so like
her that she hardly knew him.

But she would not see herself until he brought the mirror and told her
that he was looking at himself. Then she looked, and it was true. With
staring eyes she stood upon her feet and passed the mirror up and down.

Then suddenly she saw the smiling face of a god in the mirror also, and
knew that this was to be the fashion of the reincarnation she had begged
of the gods.

She whispered her husband to look into the mirror.