r knees beside him and asked:--

"I wish I might make this a heaven to you, and that I might
seem--truly--like--a heavenly--person!"

"I never knew one on earth who seemed more like one! Be content."

"Alas! that is only because you have been ill and I have been kind to
you?"

"You are very pleasant--very pleasant!" said Arisuga, setting the
current of desire away from the peril of her. "What have you been doing
with me all the while I have been here?"

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding his retreat from sentiment, the
wounded soldier possessed himself of one of Hoshiko's hands--quite by an
unconscious act of fellowship. But one was not enough; he took the
other. As he did it, he remembered and smiled because his hands and his
will were at such variance.

The Lady Hoshi did not stay him. Indeed, she had always liked the
stories of those bandits in the mountains, who took pretty girls and
were never heard of again.

But she had to get away just then, much to her regret, because, out of
her innocent honesty, she was not prepared to answer the question he had
asked her--What had she been doing with him during the period of his
delirious unconsciousness? And he repeated it!

Now to call one a pleasant person is about as far as a Japanese lover
ordinarily goes. But Hoshiko was disappointed with it. What had gone
before promised more.

In her disappointment, her humor became as testy as it was possible for
her humor to become, which was, after all, not very testy. And so it
remained for the day.

THE TASK OF JIZO

X

THE TASK OF JIZO

"Why didn't he take me?" she demanded savagely of Isonna the maid that
night as she was putting her mistress to bed in the adjoining room. "And
quickly! Like that! I would!" She clapped her hands--and then said: "Sh!
Do you think he heard that?"

The maid reassured her.

"But _why_ is a man satisfied with a hand--even two--when by a strong
arm he might have--" she stopped to sigh and to look into the round
mirror which the maid was holding up to her--"all!"

"All of what?" asked the astonished maid.

"Me! This."

"Oh!" said the maid.

"If a man calls a girl an angel when he thinks he is in heaven, he has
no business to call her only--" she stopped and sniffed disdainfully at
the word--"_pleasant_ when he finds he is not."

"What would you, then, have him to call you on earth?" questioned the
puzzled maid.

"Angel still."

"Permit him a little time, mi