y of the House," said Mata, now more severely, "I
came to announce your bath. The august father having already entered
and withdrawn, it is your turn."

This time Ume answered her, not, however, changing her position. "I do
not care to take the bath to-night. You enter, I pray, without further
waiting. I--I--should like to be left alone, nurse. I myself will
unroll the bed and light the andon."

Mata leaned nearer. Her voice was a theatrical whisper. "Is it that
you are outraged, my Ume-ko, at your father's strange demand upon you?
I was myself angered. He would scarcely have done so much for a Prince
of the Blood,--and to make you appear before so crude and ignorant a
thing as that--"

Ume sat upright. "No, I am angered at nothing. I only wish to be
alone. Ah, nurse, you have always spoiled me,--give me my way."

Mata went off grumbling. She wished that Ume had shown a more natural
indignation. The hot bath, however, notwithstanding Kano's five lost
years of pain presumably in solution, brought her ease of body, as did
the soothing potion, ease of mind.

All night long the old folks heavily slept; and all night long little
Ume-ko drifted in a soft, slow rising flood of consciousness that was
neither sleep nor waking, though wrought of the intertwining strands of
each. Again she saw the dark face in the gateway. It was a mere
picture in a frame, set for an artist's joy. Then it seemed a summons,
calling her to unfamiliar paths,--a prophecy, a clew. Again she heard
his voice,--an echo made of all these things, and more. She tried to
force herself to think of him merely as an artist would think; how the
lines of the shoulders and the throat flowed upward, like dark flame,
to the altar of his face. How the hair grew in flame upon his brow,
how the dark eyes, fearless and innocent with the look of primeval
youth, indeed, held a strange human pain of searching. The mere
remembered pictures of him rose and fell with her as sea-flowers, or
long river grass; but when there came remembered shiver of his words,
"I drink no more until my cup of troth with the maiden yonder!" then
all drifting ceased; illusion was at an end. With a gasp she felt
herself falling straight down through a swirling vortex of sensation,
to the very sand-bed of the stream. Now she was sitting upright (the
sand-bed had suddenly become the floor of her little room), her hands
pressing a heart that was trying to escape, her young e