JUNZO turned his head from Sado-ko. He stood still as a statue, his head drooping, his hands clinched. She broke the strained silence with a command to her attendant.
“Natsu-no, pray draw apart the door at once. The atmosphere is thick with odor of our ladies. It has sickened the honorable artist.”
He raised his head sharply. She had not heard, then! The maid pushed the shojis to either side, thus exposing the apartment to the full view of any without. This was a daily custom and precaution. No spying maid of honor might lurk about the balcony.
While the sliding doors remained open, neither the artist nor the princess spoke, but when a sufficient interval had elapsed and the doors had been drawn together again, the maid whispered a word of command to the guard outside, who silently took his station on the balcony. Then Sado-ko, turning slowly toward the artist, began to laugh in a strangely quivering, and subdued fashion. The sound of the soft laughter hurt the artist. He scarcely could command his words.
“Guileless princess, I pray you do not laugh!”
“Not laugh?” she repeated. “You are to-day a most unflattering artist. Was it only yesterday you said my laughter was as sweet as sweetest music of the sweetest birds?”
She passed her fan over her shoulder to the maid Natsu-no, who, whirling it open, fanned her gently. Sado-ko smiled reproachfully at Junzo, as she sat by a golden screen, near to a shoji through which the sinking sun pierced and slanted just above her head.
Junzo knelt on one knee a short distance from her. His face was sad and serious.
“Princess Sado-ko,” he said, “you have not heard of a most lamentable happening.”
“If,” said she, still smiling, “you allude to the noisy chatter of my ladies, you are mistaken. I have heard.”
He looked half unconsciously toward the now covered canvas. She followed his glance, and still she smiled.
“I have seen, too,” she said.
He regarded her dumbly, marvelling at the trembling happiness which seemed to lurk within her eyes and about her small red lips.
“Come a pace nearer to me, if you please,” she urged. His obedience brought him so close that he could have touched her. She put out a little hand toward him, and spoke his name.
“Junzo!” she said.
He scarcely dared to look at her. She said:—
“I pray you, look at me a space.”
Their eyes met fully now, and then he saw that despite the smile within them, hers were shining with undropped tears. In an agony of feeling he turned from her. He heard her tremulous voice, thrilling now with that strange laughing quality but accentuating the pleading underneath.
“Do not even the birds chatter? Permit my ladies the same pastime.”
“It is of you I think,” he said huskily.
“That is all very well. I—I would not have you think of—of another,” she replied.
“Princess, the gossip of the ladies does injury to your sweet name.”
“If that were so,” she said, “there would be no such name as Sado-ko left in the world. Do you not know that I am the most unpopular princess in Japan?”
“But this late matter, princess, is not merely female resentment at your refusal to accept the Western mode of life within your household. But this new slan—”
“Do not speak the word,” she said quietly.
She took her fan from Natsu-no, and arising crossed the room until she stood before the easel. Pensively she looked at the covered canvas. Junzo had followed her and now stood by her side. There was deep emotion in his voice:—
“Princess, will it please you to sit to-day?”
She turned to raise her eyes to his.
“But,” she said, “you do not paint upon the canvas. You have told me so.”
“I am a sculptor, but I have also attempted the other—”
She interrupted him.
“It would hurt your fame,” she said. “It cannot be.”
“And what does it matter whether I have fame or not?”
“Artist, it was not for that work I bade you stay,” she said.
“But it was thought so by the others, princess.”
“I—I had a desire to learn more of—of Kamakura—of people there—and so I begged you to remain.”
“You did command,” he said in a low voice.
“No,” raising her eyes appealingly, “say that I did beseech you.”
“You did command,” he repeated.
“Well, have it so. I commanded and you obeyed. It was the reason of your staying. Why suggest employment now?”
“To spare the name of the most noble princess in the realm.”
She held her little head proudly.
“Who is it that slanders Sado-ko,” she asked scornfully, and then quickly answered herself. “A few small biting insects, who but sting, not kill, Sir Artist.”
He turned away from her and stood by the garden shoji, from whence he stared moodily without. She followed him with softest step.
“I pray you, do not look without. The sky is gray. The sun is fading.”
She put her hand upon his arm with timid touch. He turned with sudden impulse, and seized it in both his own.
“The sun, O princess, is within,” he cried, “and, O sweet Sado-ko, it is too dazzling bright for such as I to gaze upon.”
When he would have dropped her hand, she held it within his own. Her face filled him with a vague longing. He trembled at her touch. He felt the wavering of her head toward him, then its touch against his arm, where now it rested. A remnant of reason remaining within him, he sought to draw apart from her.
“Do not—do not so,” she cried, clinging to him.
“My touch profanes you, Sado-ko,” he whispered hoarsely.
“It does not,” she denied, with tears in her appealing voice. “Pray you, do not draw your arm away.”
“Princess!”
“I do command again,” she said. After that he did not speak.
Suddenly the silent, immovable figure of the maid seemed to take upon itself the first signs of life. She arose and moved toward her mistress. At a respectful distance she spoke.
“Noble princess!” she said.
Sado-ko, still holding the arm of her lover close about her, turned toward the maid.
“What is your honorable desire, maiden?”
“The chamber darkens, O princess. Will your Highness deign to permit the honorable light?”
“I am quite satisfied,” said Sado-ko, and rested her head contentedly against the artist’s arm. The maid did not move.
“Will not the noble princess permit her evening meal?” she asked in trembling tones.
“I am not hungry,” said the Princess Sado-ko. She smiled up at her lover’s now adoring face.
“Princess, the hour of—”
Sado-ko turned toward the maid with the first show of impatience.
“Pray return to your seat, Natsu-no,” she said, “and when I need your service, I will so advise you.”
Without replying, Natsu-no slowly moved to her seat; but she kept her face toward those two figures now silhouetted in the twilight of the room.
“You still are uneasy?” asked the Princess Sado-ko. “Do you not like the touch of me?”
“It makes me faint with ecstasy,” he said. “Yet, Sado-ko, I am fearful.”
“Oh, be not fearful,” she said.
“On my knees I could adore you, but—”
“But? You do not finish.”
“Princess!”
“Do not call me princess. Forget for but a little while that I am such. I, too, would forget, my Junzo.”
“I must remember for us both,” he said. “My honor—O sweet Sado-ko—thy honor—”
“Sado-ko is ill with honor,” she replied. “Give me for a change a little of that simple love I have not had since my august grandmother died.”
“O innocent princess!”
She laughed softly.
“Junzo, they say that I was born without a heart, that because I was the child of gods I could not love as mortals do. Could you not tell them otherwise, my Junzo?”
The maid was weeping in the darkened room, her sobs clearly audible. They heard her crawling on her knees across the room, and then the soft thud of her prostration before the little shrine. Then came the mumbling words of her prayer:—
“Hear thou the prayer of the most humble one, O mighty Kuonnon. Save thou the soul of thy innocent descendant, she who—”
Sado-ko dropped the arm of her lover and started toward the maid.
“Natsu-no!” she cried out sharply, as the drone of the woman’s prayer ended, “for whom do you pray?”
The maid put her head at the princess’s feet.
“For you, O beloved mistress, I pray that the gods will save you from this artist-man.”
The princess spurned her with her little foot.
“If you make such foolish prayers, the gods may hear you,” she cried. “If they should grant your prayers and take him from me, why, I should be bereft of—Oh-h—”
She made a passionate movement toward the shrine, as though she would destroy it, but strong hands drew her away.
“Do not, Sado-ko, offend the gods! Do not, for my sake!”
She put her hands upon his shoulders and wept against his breast.
