to
harlotry for their husbands' cause."

"Yes, lord, to-morrow," answered the trembling little woman. And though
each day there was a little more money, she did not go to Moncure Jones.
She could not. Some things are impossible!

All day she was gone, and he thought her there, with the yellow-fanged
dragon, and did not care! Nothing had hurt her heart so much as that.
Each night she came back to him with her pitiful wage in her sleeve.
Arisuga might have thought this strange had he not ceased all thought of
her--that Jones permitted her to come home to him each night with each
day's wages. And he might have noticed, if he had still adored the hands
of satin, that they were stained: now with red, now with blue, yellow,
green. But he never touched the hands any more, and was become impatient
when they touched him void of money. But the little wage, the sixty or
seventy cents which he seized eagerly and put away--you will want to
know how she got them.

Try, then, to fancy as she did that this was the beginning of her
punishment for the happiness of being his wife. To stay away from the
chance of being with him, from early morning until late night. To watch
the slow-going clock; the shadows as they crept up the wall to the red
stain first, then the blue, then that pale yellow one, scarcely to be
seen at seven o'clock; and then still (for her wish always outran the
shadow) to wait until the clock in the cathedral struck before she
might stop making muslin flowers "for the happy occasions" and go wanly
home to unhappiness. She was a flower-maker--this flower of another land
made flowers for weddings, christenings, festivals, soiling them only,
now and then, with a tear. Yet no one had ever made prettier flowers
"for the happy occasions" than she who had, now, no happy occasions.

But the war went on, on, and he was not called.

"Gods!--yes!" he cried to her in his madness. "I understand. I am an
eta! The damned word has passed all through the army. It stands opposite
my name. It makes all my oaths, all my obligations before the gods,
naught. There is but one hope. They will not call me unless the last man
must be put into the field. Then--_then_ they will take the eta. Gods of
the skies! Gods of the earth! Gods of the seas and caverns below--let it
be so! Let my country be among the dregs at the bottom of the cup of the
nations' despair! I--I, Shijiro Arisuga, will bring it--lead it--to
victory with my flag! I! For my