XVI The Making of a Goddess 153

XVII The Eta 161

XVIII To the Emperor 169

XIX On Miyagi Field 175

XX Faded Glory 183

XXI In the Andon's Light 195

XXII Tadaima-Tadaima! 203

XXIII The Pity of the Gods 215

XXIV The Land of the Brave 225

XXV Jones 231

XXVI The "Tsarevitch" 241

XXVII The Small White Death 251

XXVIII "Present for Duty" 261

XXIX The Reincarnation of Shijiro Arisuga 269

XXX Zanzi, Lover of Battles 279

XXXI The Tomb of Lord Esas 285

XXXII When the Watch Passed 297

XXXIII Teikoku Banzai 303

XXXIV Afterward 311

TADAIMA

I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a
thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still
for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his
head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed
it to the publisher.

"Well?" I inquired, testily.

"Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god.

"Why should They not?" demanded I, loftily.

"It has, among other unusualities, (I hope you like the gentleness of
the word!) those dashes which--You ought to have learned by this time
that They don't like to read over dashes."

"Why not?" asked I, again. "_I_ like them. And, they are my own!"

"Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration. It stands for something
which you trust your reader to supply. That is unfair. If you are
writing a book and receiving an honorarium for it, do not expect him to
do it. It is a bit like eating. One does not go to a restaurant, and pay
for his food, then cook it himself."

"I have seen it done," cried I, "by particular people!"

"Ahem!" murmured the polite god: more polite on this day than I had
recently observed him--which meant some sort of propaganda.

"It is not an ahem!" I went on in the unregenerate heat which the
friction of the god often engendered in me. "Have _you_ never seen it
done?"

"I have," admitted the effigy, "seen a waiter sorely vexed to bring the