father's ghosts will fight with me.
That is what we need! The ghosts of our ancestors! Who can vanquish
them? And, O ye augustnesses,--" he addressed the spirits of his own
ancestors,--"bring it about! For ye--ye alone can vanquish this upstart
foe. And ye must--ye _must_ permit me to make for my father the red
death! Ye must--ye must."

Do you not see that he was gone quite mad?

Yet every insane word was a stabbing accusation upon the soul of
Hoshiko, for whom it had all been. And she fancied that she was no more
worth the sacrifice than was one of the morning-glories which were now
only a memory. For she was now as pale, as sad, as evanescent and
fleeting, as they: those morning-glories in their garden in happy China,
unto whose beauty in the dewy morning she had once been wont to liken
her life with this mad Arisuga. Unto whose beauty he had used to liken
her!

THE SMALL WHITE DEATH

XXVII

THE SMALL WHITE DEATH

He was not called. The war went terribly on. The bewildered giant was
buffeted, dismembered, at will by the shy pygmy. All about Shijiro fell
the pink tickets, everywhere he met his mad, happy countrymen hurrying
to the seaports, looking askance, but nothing came to him. Perhaps it
was this. Perhaps it was too much work, exposure, and anxiety. Perhaps
too little food. Perhaps all of these together. But presently he was in
an hospital with his temperature at a hundred and five. Hoshiko was
there always. And sometimes he forgot the harshness of his later life
and fancied that it was again that day he first saw her by the Forbidden
City. So he would live again through all that happy life until he came
to the battle--whence he always came. Often in his fancy he was in the
very presence of that glorious death he had sworn to die. Then Hoshiko
was forgotten again. And presently she went out of his sick mind as she
had long since gone out of his shattered life, and nothing but battle
lived there. She did not strive to recall herself by so much as a touch.
So the gods wished it to be; this was their will. She had entered upon
her eternal penance for happiness, and she did not again question its
time or place or form. The happiness was gone. It could return no more.
But with the sense that she had impiously raped her joy from the heavens
themselves came the exultation that not even the gods could ever take
that from her. It had been. She had had it.

He knew, one day, in a sane moment, that he