the days stretched into weeks; the weeks into months. it is not possible to account for the various delays that arise in time of war.
four months had passed since his marriage to ohano, when at last the welcome summons came. his honorable regiment was to go to the front!
gonji felt like one released from a cruel bondage. his very heart leaped within him like a mad thing. even to ohano he spoke, and although his words had a deep ulterior meaning, she was gratified and elated. they stood as a proof at least to her of her elevation. he had noticed her! undoubtedly she had leaped forward a thousand paces in the estimation of her lord. he recognized her importance now at the crucial moment.
naturally vain and proud, ohano’s mind had been entirely concerned with the attention she was attracting from all as the wife of the lord saito gonji. people pointed her out as she rode abroad in the lacquered carriages of the saito family, and everywhere was recounted the illustrious history of his ancestors and of her own important mission, now when the last of the exalted race was sacrificing his life for japan.
and now her lord himself had condescended to notice her, and for the first time his somewhat wild eyes had looked at ohano with an element of gentleness and kindness. his words were curious, and long after he was gone to the city ohano turned them over in her mind and pondered their meaning; and when, that night, he returned to her for the last time, she begged him to repeat them, saying that the presence of the parents-in-law had confused her hearing. she wished rightly and clearly to understand his words, so that when he was quite gone from her she might the better carry out his wishes.
with solemn dignity he repeated the instructions:
“take care of your honorable health and of that of my descendant. choose wisely a companion upon the long journey, for it is lonely to travel. the world is peopled with many souls, but only two may travel the final path together.”
again she pondered the words, and she shivered under her husband’s melancholy glance. what did the strange words imply? consideration for her future merely? surely he must know that, as the wife of one so illustrious as he must become, she would never marry another in his place. (every japanese woman resigns her husband to war service with the proud and pious belief and hope that he will not return, but will gloriously sacrifice life for the cause.)
finally she said, as she watched his face stealthily:
“it will be unnecessary for the humble one to choose another companion. glorious will be the privilege of awaiting the time when she will join your honor on the journey.”
he gave her a deep look, which seemed to pierce and search to the very depths of her heart.
“ohano,” he said, “thou knowest i did not marry thee save for the time of this life.”
she sat up stiffly, mechanically, moistening her dry lips. all the petty vanity with which she had upheld herself since the day when she had married saito gonji now seemed to drop from her in shreds. her many days of supreme devotion, and even adoration, for the lord gonji—and they stretched back as far as her childhood days—came up to torture her. looking into her husband’s face, ohano knew, without questioning, who it was who would make the final precious journey with him. she was to be wife only for the short span of his lifetime. that other one, the spider—whose image in effigy she had pricked so mercilessly with a thousand spiteful pins in order to destroy her soul, as she fain would have done her body—she was to be the wife of saito gonji for all time! she who had stolen him from ohano upon her very wedding-night!
her face became convulsed. the eyes seemed to have disappeared from her face. presently, breathing heavily, her hands clutching her breast to repress the emotion which would show despite her best efforts:
“i pray you permit your humble wife to attend your lordship upon the journey,” she said. “who else is competent to travel at your side, my lord?”
he did not answer her. he was looking out of an open shoji, and his face in the moonlight seemed as if carved in marble, so set, so rigid, immovable as that of one dead.
ohano rose desperately to her feet. she felt unspeakably weak from the excess of her inner passion. at that moment gladly would she have exchanged places with the homeless and outcast wife of saito gonji, who in the end was to come to that eternal bliss so rigorously denied to ohano.
she caught at her husband’s hand. he drew it up into his sleeve. there had never been any caresses between them. always he seemed rather to shrink from contact with her.
“lord, let us call a family council,” she cried, shrilly. “let them decide where is my proper place, lord saito gonji. it is not for the time of one life only that we marry. i have plighted my troth to you for all time!”
slowly he turned; and the deep, penetrating look scorched ohano again.
“and i,” he said, “have plighted my troth with another.”
“lord, it was dissolved,” she cried, breathlessly, “by the honorable laws of our land. the spider is now an outcast. ah!”—her voice rose shrilly on the verge of hysteria—“it is said—it is known—proved by those who know—that now—now she is an inmate of the yoshiwara. she—”
he had gripped her so savagely by the shoulder that she cried aloud in pain. at her cry he threw her from him almost as if she had been some unclean thing. she fell upon her knees, and upon them crept toward him, stretching out her hands and beating them futilely together.
“my lord gonji! my husband! i am your honorable wife before all the eight million gods of the heavens and the seas. it is impossible to forsake me. i will not permit it. i will cling to your skirts and proclaim my rights—ah, yes, to the very doors of hades, if need be!”
he seemed not even to hear her. with his face thrust out like one who dreams, he was recalling a vision. it was the face of moonlight as he had seen it last with that exalted, spiritual expression of self-sacrifice and adoration upon it. she an inmate of the cursed yoshiwara! the thought was grotesque, so horrible that a short laugh came to his lips.
he strode by the agonized woman on the floor without a further word, and sharply snapped the folding doors between them. this was their farewell.
as he passed down the street, on his way to join his regiment, he was halted by the throngs pressing on all sides. the whole country seemed to be abroad in the streets. the people marched about carrying banners, and even the little children seemed to have caught the spirit of yamato damashii (the soul of japan), and stammered their little banzais in chorus. it was an inspiring sight, and he wandered about for some time, with no particular purpose, unconscious where he was, in what direction his feet carried him, following the throngs as they pushed along through the streets.
suddenly he came to where the lights were brighter; and the sounds of revelry seemed to shriek at the very gates. gonji paused, concentrating his attention for the first time upon the place.
all at once it dawned upon him that he was before the gates of the yoshiwara! the words of ohano seemed to ring in his ears. as if to shut out their loud outcry, he covered his ears and sped like a madman down the street. he swore to his very soul that it was an accursed lie ohano had uttered, and yet—
he stopped suddenly and threw a furtive, agonized glance toward the infernal “city.” then his head drooped down upon his breast and he staggered toward the barracks like one who has been wounded mortally.
