iko.

"It is the forgetting which heals," said the maid.

"I do not wish to be healed," answered her mistress.

"Then must you be always ill of this thing."

"So be it. That is better than a forgetting."

"But it must go no further," pleaded the servitor. "There must be no
touches, no eyes, no beatings of the heart."

"Can you stop the beating of the heart? The adoring of the eyes? Can any
one?"

"Yes. In your room waits always the goddess of tranquillity. Go there.
Stay there. She will soothe you."

"Yes, when he is gone--quite gone--then we will try for that
tranquillity. We had it before he came!"

"We shall have it again," cheered the maid. "As soon as he is gone--"

"Oh!" A flash of Hoshiko's old manner energized her. "I know a better
and happier way to insure that tranquillity."

"What is it?"

"Ask him to--stay! You!"

The maid only gasped.

"Yes," said her mistress, more timorously than she had ever spoken of
him.

"Ask a man to stay?"

"Certainly! That is what I said. Am I so hard to understand?"

Hoshiko spoke with more pain than asperity.

"You may--with honor--" pleaded Hoshiko. "He doesn't love you. You do
not love him."

"And if the asking of these lips and hands and eyes and this voice, all
that are permitted you, are not potent--how shall I be? How shall any
one or anything be? Let him go."

"Stop!" cried her mistress. "He is a god. We are creatures. What we wish
we must petition for as we do the gods. Yet I dare not--will not you?"

"No!" said the maid. "I know the penalty. I do not wish you to know
it."

BUT WHAT COULD HE DO?

XV

BUT WHAT COULD HE DO?

However, it all came out involuntarily when, at last, he began with
tremendous difficulty to go away. He was already at the courtyard gate
when she sobbed. He was gone--oh, it mattered not now what she did!

But Arisuga hearing this, of course, returned. His renewed presence only
renewed the Lady Hoshi's tears.

"But what can I do?" he kept on asking politely.

"Stay!" cried the Lady Hoshi, madly, forgetting everything but that one
wish.

"Oh!" said Arisuga.

"Gods!" breathed Isonna.

"Only till to-morrow; that is but one day; to-morrow, lord--lord of my
soul!"

"Oh!" said Arisuga again, and, at once entirely willing, dismissed his
'rik'sha.

The next day he took her to the Forbidden City and showed her the
tragic, broken wonders of it, while he puzzled out that scene of the day
before. There