I have no regret. Our brother will now be
released from the Meido. He will die for the emperor."

"However, we shall be unwelcome in his presence, so that I shall come
less often."

To this his brother agreed with melancholy.

"Our work is now done."

Thus, Shijiro was much more alone than before, and had many more
thoughts. But all were of war and the great red death, and none of Yone.

And then, presently, he came to join the haughty Imperial Guards, who
had never dreamed of being a soldier, but only of poetry, and
cherry-blossoms, and his samisen, and the soft satin hand of the little
Yone. For it was true, as Nijin said, and as they all agreed, Arisuga
among them, that he was not the stuff out of which the empire made its
Imperial Guards--quite.

It was in this time, in the presence of the obscured picture, that he
wrote his song of "The Great Death."

And his years grew faster than his inches.

YAMATO DAMASHII

V

YAMATO DAMASHII

And, slowly, that fantasy of a great death which infects every Japanese
crept into the life and thought of Shijiro Arisuga. Though it came to
him, in whom it had lain latent, hardly. But, perhaps for that reason,
as is the case with certain diseases, it came with greater certainty and
severity than if it had been always with him.

Yet the Yamato Damashii outstripped them both: the spirit of war--the
ghost of Japan!

He still went with little Yone to Mukojima sometimes, though less
frequently. And the small heart of the small girl wondered and grew hurt
at this. So that she asked him one day:--

"Little lord, why is it that we so seldom come here and that you no more
sing, no more carry your samisen, and are grown too suddenly for your
years a man with a face as serious as the unlaughing barbarians of the
West--why is it?"

They were at Shiba. And Shijiro laughed again, as he had used to laugh,
while he answered:--

"Sing no more! Listen!"

"Reign on for a thousand years of peace!
Reign on for a myriad years of ease!
Till the pebbles are boulders,
Moss grows to our shoulders,
O heaven-born lord of Nippon!"

"The Kimi Gayo!" said the little girl. "You sing the Imperial Hymn with
that light in your face who never sang it before--whose face was never
before so lighted? You answer my fear with fears."

"I sing a war-song, little moon-maid, because I am now a soldier," cried
Arisuga, with a certain fanatical ecstasy in spite of