Читать книгу The Breath of the Gods - Sidney McCall - Страница 3

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The stone dwelling of Senator Cyrus C. Todd, usually as indistinguishable from its neighbors as is one piano key from another, presented at nine o'clock on this night of November third, nineteen hundred and three, a claim to individuality in the excess of light pouring from every window, from the perpendicular wink of every opening door (opened but to close again as quickly); oozing, it would seem, from the very pores of the pale façade, thereby giving to the great flat rectangle of the house a phosphorescent value that set it six feet out into the night.

The upper windows shone more brilliantly than those below. A roller shade had been carelessly left high. Through the film of chamber curtains heads could be seen passing. Once, there was the outflung gesture of a slim, bare arm. Everything bespoke approaching festivity. At this brightest window a silhouette suddenly appeared, sharp, dark, complete. It was that of a Japanese girl with wonderfully looped and curved coiffure, shoulders that sloped tenderly, and a small, straight throat.

Just at this moment, on the shadowed entrance-steps below, answering silhouettes began noiselessly to climb. These were men with thin black legs, and strange burdens, black like themselves. They showed angles as of gnarled roots; one, the great curved body of a gigantic spider. The front door, opening instantly to a ring, disclosed them merely as musicians—Signor Marcellini of Milan and his colleagues—bearing basso, cello, and flutes, secure in swart cases.

The lower rooms of the house were slightly chill. Though flooded with soft light, they were not yet fully illuminated. All doors within stood open. It looked almost as if walls had been taken down, so long and mysterious had grown the vistas. Through all tingled an aromatic smell, something a little alien, like crushed herbs—pungent, and full of vague suggestion. Mrs. Cyrus C. Todd, flowing now down the palm-set stairway in a purple tide of skirts, frothed with dim lace, stopped at a switchboard half concealed in vines, sent forth a gloved, determined hand, and in an instant the secret of the odor was revealed. The rooms, to their farthest angles, literally exuded chrysanthemums. Senator Todd was said to have expended five thousand dollars for these flowers alone. Perhaps he wished to stamp in gold upon the memory of Washington this coming-out party of his idolized, only child. The conceit was fair enough, for Gwendolen was bright, and blonde, and golden in herself. Statesmen and the wives of statesmen did not fail to observe that chrysanthemums were the insignia of official Japan, and that November third happened—they emphasized "happened,"—to be the birthday of Japan's beloved Emperor. These two facts, joined with the third, that Senator Todd even now had aspirations to the Tokio mission, made a trio of keen angles to be used as wedges for further speculation.

The walls of the lower story had been spread for the occasion with yellow satin, upon which alternated delicate upright strokes of silver and of white. Around, under the ceiling, grew a frieze of living flowers. The great, coarse, woody stems crossed in a lattice-work, with clusters of huge blossoms and green leaves breaking the angles at points of decision possible only to a trained artist, or to a Japanese. The white duck floor-covering spread to a border hand-painted, to match the frieze. Where wall and canvas met, the real flowers again arose—thick parallel stalks of differing heights, upholding a wainscot border of shaggy gold. Mantles were heaped with them. Japanese pots of them in bloom alternated with conventional ferns and palms. Each electric bulb jutted from the heart of a living flower. The very air had an amber tone.

Overhead, invisible footsteps scurried in short flights. They sounded feminine, young, full of excitement. "Heavens!" Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd was crying, "where on earth is my other glove? I am sure I just laid it here! And my orchids! Has anybody sat on my orchids? I think I'll have to marry the young person who sent them, though I forget now who it was!"

"A person of the name Dodge, n'est-ce-pas?" ventured the little French dressmaker, on her knees beside the fair white vision. Pins, retained at the corners of her mouth, added a crushed softness to the pronunciation. She rhymed it with "targe."

"Yes, a name like that, I believe," said Gwendolen, indifferently, and craned her long neck over. "Mother called him some sort of a snip. Are you certain that my dress hangs right now, Madame?"

"Oui, oui. It is perfection," declared Madame, sticking the remaining pins into the black front of her dress.

"Then at last I am actually ready. I believe there's mother calling now. Where did Yuki go? Oh, I see, over there by the window, as calm and cool as if we were going to church instead of to our first ball!"

"Then all my coolness is stopping on my outsides," said the Japanese girl, with a little incipient shrug and giggle, breaking at once into the merriest of low laughs. She crossed the room swiftly, with an unusual, swaying rhythm of movement. "Ah, Gwendolen, my heart it go like yellow butterflies to be downstairs."

Gwendolen turned a radiant face to greet her. "Now isn't she a vision!" cried the girl aloud, in fresh access of admiration for her friend. "Madame, what do you think those French painters of yours would say to her—Chavannes, De Monvel, Besnard—who owe so much to Yuki's art?"

"You omit Monsieur Le Beau, who is a painter," said the little woman, shyly. She was on good terms with the girls, and had made Yuki, as well as Gwendolen, chic gowns with the breath of Paris upon them. "I knew well the family of Monsieur Le Beau in France," she hurried on, seeing the distressed flush in Yuki's face. "Non, non, Mamselles. I am a chattering old femme. Let me look at you together before you descend the stair." She sat back upon her heels to enjoy the picture.

"Yes," cried Gwendolen, "that's right. Take us both in." Laughingly she drew Yuki's arm, with its long, trailing sleeve of gray, tightly within her own. They rested together, swaying—smiling—Yuki's cheek still warm with the name of Pierre Le Beau, two types as far apart as the two sides of earth which had given them race.

Gwendolen was fair almost to the extreme of golden blondness. Her features were small and perfectly related; her nose deliciously interrogative at the tip. Her brows and lashes, drawn in a darker hue, gave touches of character and distinction. She was very slender, erect, and was poised as though she grew in the wind. The long tulle draperies shook and stirred as if vitalized by her energy. She was all white and gold. Her heaped-up skeins of hair, amber necklace, gloves, slippers, and stockings gleamed with a primrose hue, and the freckles on her orchids (poor flowers, just caught up hastily from an ignominious corner) repeated the yellow note.

Beside her, Yuki Onda, a few inches lacking in height, impressive, nevertheless, and held with a striking yet indefinable difference of line, smiled out like a frail Astarte. Her pallor had an undernote of ivory, where Gwendolen's was of pearl. Her head, with its pointed chin, bore, like a diadem of jet—balanced, like a regal burden—the spread wings of her hair. Beneath a white, low brow her eyes made almost a continuous, gleaming line. The little nose came down, straight and firm, with a single brush stroke. All the humanity, the tenderness, the womanhood of her face lay in the red mouth and the small, round chin. Her smile was startling, even pathetic, in beauty. Gwendolen had once said, "There is sometimes something in Yuki's smile that makes me want to fight God for her."

Yuki's robe, in deference to hours of pleading from Gwendolen and Pierre Le Beau, was Japanese to the least detail. Mrs. Todd had protested in vain for the "civilized" coming-out gown of white. The robe hung about the girl in long, loose folds of crêpe, mist-gray, rising in soft transitions from the dark band of the hem to pearl tones at the throat. Under it were garments of heavier silk, dawn-colored, showing like morning through thin clouds. Into the curdled substance of the crêpe, cherry-flowers were dyed, or rather, breathed in, by a smiling, wrinkled brown magician at the rim of Yuzen Creek—pale shapes which glimmered and were gone, rose to the surface and sank again, as though borne in moving water. Besides the black note of her hair there was one strong crash of contrast in the obi, or sash, a broad and dominating zone, black, too, with fire-flies of gold upon it. For hair-ornaments she wore a cluster of small pink flowers that had the look of cherry-blooms, and a great carved ivory pin, pronged like a tuning-fork, an heirloom in her father's family.

"Gwendo—len! Yu-kee! Come down instantly!" rose the voice of Mrs. Todd. "You should have been down ten minutes ago."

"Ah, Madame Todd calls," exclaimed the dressmaker, scrambling to her feet.

"But you are sure you really admire us, Madame?" challenged Gwendolen, before she would stir.

"Oui, charmante, charmante, both are perfection apart—and a vision of paradise together. But go, young ladies, the good mother calls again."

The spoiled child stopped for another instant, this time in the doorway. "All right, mother. Coming this instant!" she hurled downstairs; then to the little Frenchwoman she said, "Do not attempt to sit up, Madame. Yuki is to stay all night, and will help me with the pins. After a glimpse at the reception and some of the goodies below, you must hurry home to your little Jeanne. Take plenty of bonbons with you, and I wish to send that great bunch of daisies, with my love. All children love daisies, n'est-ce-pas?"

At last they were off. Madame could hear Mrs. Todd, relieved, yet petulant, scolding them the whole descending scale of the stairs. Moving through the perfumed disorder of the room, Madame sought out the daisies, and, with filling eyes, whispered aloud in French, "Now may the good God be kind to that loving heart, and send to it only blessing."

Stockings, scarfs, fans, underwear—a thousand dainty trifles must be gathered up before the little Frenchwoman could give herself consent to go. Madame and Miss Todd had been kind friends to the widowed exile.

Far over to one side of the room she stumbled upon a dark heap that showed gleams of a cherry-colored lining. It emitted, as if consciously, an aroma, subtle, faint, unforgettable, strange scented echoes of a distant land. It was Yuki's long black "adzuma-coat," worn from the Japanese Legation, where Baroness Kanrio and the maids had assisted her to dress, and which, in this bright room, she had slipped laughingly to the floor and forgotten. Madame held it out for a moment. Then she folded and laid it softly on the foot of the bed. Her expression had changed slightly. As if with relief, she snatched up a dressing-gown of blue flannel, that cried "Gwendolen" from every turquoise fold.

"Gwendolen, where is your father hiding?" demanded Mrs. Todd, severely, as the two girls reached the hall.

"Why, how should I know? Dad hasn't worried my mind. Isn't Yuki simply a dream of spring?"

"You forget that I have admired Yuki upstairs," said the harassed matron, and turned her back. "There's another carriage sounding as if it wanted to stop! Every wheel goes over my nerve-centre. Cy, Cy—rus! Where is that wretched man? The musicians should be playing now. The guests will pour in any instant. There is a carriage stopping! It has stopped! Heavens, I shall go mad!"

"Shall Yuki and I run for the drawing-room, mother?"

"Yes, yes, dear. Right under that tallest palm. Be sure to stand ahead of Yuki. Cyrus! Cy—rus! Oh, he is never anywhere when I want him." Her wails preceded her down the hall.

"Are you looking for me, dear?" asked the senator, innocently, strolling out in a leisurely manner from his study, where, against orders, he had been smoking a cigar.

"Am I!" panted his wife. "And you've been smoking!" But indignation must be swept aside. "The carriages are stopping, man! Don't you hear them? I'll be in bed for a month if I live through this night! Start up the musicians, and join us immediately in the front drawing-room."

"Musicians—musicians?" murmured Cyrus, looking about, "where are the musicians?"

"Not under the hatrack, nor yet in my china-closet," cried his lady, with angry vehemence. "Over there! Yes, there—where you saw the piano wheeled this afternoon; behind that hedge of chrysanthemums!"

"Oh, yes, there in the duck-shooters' lodge. All right, old lady. I'll start 'em. Don't get excited!"

Guests now streamed upstairs toward the dressing-rooms. Signor Marcellini began his most seductive waltz; and the senator stood beside his heaving spouse just as the first smiling acquaintance crossed the door-sill.

"Ah, Governor! Ah, my dear Mrs. Jink!" chortled Mrs. Todd. "This is surely a good omen—my daughter's first official congratulations to come from you. Gwendolen, let me present Governor Jink and Mrs. Jink, fresh from our own dear Western state. Miss Yuki Onda of Tokio, Mrs. Jink—Gwendolen's most intimate school-friend, and my Oriental daughter, as I call her. Ah, Sir George! Punctuality is one of the British virtues. Mrs. Blachouse, my daughter, Miss Todd."

The reception swung now, full and free, into the sparkling waters of felicity. Laughter, lights, and the rustling of silken skirts on inner mysteries of silk; music held back by the multitudinous small sounds of human intercourse, with now and then a protesting wail from violins and the guttural short snore of a cello! Laughter, and the clink of glasses on metal trays, the scraping of spoons against porcelain, tinkling of ice in fragile vessels, and incessantly the shuffle of footsteps on soundless, unseen floors! Perfumes of dying flowers and foliage, odors of essences, fumes of fresh-cut lemons, and of wine!

Outside, at the curbing, a continuous roar and rattling of carriages went on. The covered entrance-way, like an elastic tent drawn out, sheltered a thin moving stream of faces. Behind them the scrape of wheels, stamping of horses, and vociferous bawling of drivers sent a premonitory tingling through the blood. At intervals there came the snort and hiss of that modern Fafnir, the automobile, followed by the nauseating taint of gasoline.

To Gwendolen and Yuki it seemed as if the line of visitors would never end. "Yuki, Yuki," whispered the former, "if they keep popping by like this, each with that wooden grin, I shall certainly go into hysterics! Did you see how nearly I broke down in the face of that last fat lady in tight gray sleeves? She looked like a young rhinoceros in its little sister's skin."

"I no longer perceive anybody at all," said Yuki, tranquilly. "I only see the small duck called 'oshi-dori' bobbing down, then up, on the Sumida River."

"Hush!" whispered Mrs. Todd, in evident excitement. "Here comes the Russian ambassador with his entire suite. I was wondering whether he would snub us because of the war-talk, and Yuki, and the chrysanthemums, and the Mikado's birthday! Now, girls, smile your sweetest!"

But the good lady was given a surprise. Yuki leaned back to touch her arm. At the look of irritated inquiry the Japanese girl said clearly, "You must excuse me from this, dear Mrs. Todd; I cannot shake hands with that person. If I shook, I would be the hypocrite." Without waiting for permission or remonstrance, she turned and hurried from the direction in which the Muscovites now approached. Mr. Todd, with hand already extended in welcome, saw nothing of the little by-play. Gwendolen heard, sympathized entirely with Yuki, but wisely held her peace. Mrs. Todd, after a gasp of outraged dignity, recalled herself, perforce, for the new greetings.

Yuki had slipped from the line quietly enough. She walked away now quite slowly and with apparent calm. Within, she was turmoil and distress. Had she done right? Had she offended, beyond forgiveness, her kind friends, the Todds? But, looking from the opposite point, how could she touch, even in social insincerity, the hand of a man whom she felt by instinct to be a subtle enemy of her native land? This very minister was suspected by many to be one of the strongest who urged the weak Czar into insult and hostility. Would Mrs. Todd reprove her publicly? Would Baron Kanrio, when he heard, defend the childish impulse?

A greater one than Kanrio would soon be here. In the agitation of the moment she had forgotten that tremendous fact. Prince Haganè, her father's feudal lord, or daimyo, often called the "Living War-God of Japan," was to come, for a few moments, to this reception, and partly because of her. A Japanese, no matter how great, seldom neglects the privileges of humanity. Yuki's parents had written that the Prince was to see her, and deliver news. What would he say now—what would her father say—if told of this rude and un-Japanese yielding to a personal distaste? "Yet," muttered Yuki to herself, through small clenched teeth, "even should Lord Haganè himself command me, I think I would not touch that Russian's hand."

Moving forward slowly, but always in a straight line, she came full against a small white surface on a level with her face, a thing shield-shaped, and framed in black. It did not move aside for her, as similar white patches, vaguely seen, had done. Brought up suddenly, she realized it to be a shirt-front, and presumably behind the shirt-front there must be a living man.

"Oh, beg pardon!" she faltered, shrinking back. "I begs much pardons, sir."

Two eager hands caught her own. A gay, low voice said, laughing, "I have watched your coming. I willed it. How straight you sped, you beautiful, strange bird!"

But Yuki, dazed for the moment, did not answer. She panted slightly, and tried to draw her hands away.

"I have waited here, by the conservatory door. You must be tired with standing. Come in with me, and rest."

Still unable to command herself, she let the speaker lead her into the warm shadows. She hoped he had not seen her rudeness to the Russian minister. Mrs. Todd swept round an angry glance just in time to see them disappear.

Pierre Le Beau found a sheltered seat, and gently, yet in a masterful way, forced her down beside him.

"Oh, Yuki, but you are beautiful to-night! Was I not mad enough with love without this new gray snare of mist, these blossoms drifting along an irresistible tide? It is a lifetime since I have seen you."

The beating of the girl's heart slowly slackened. "The lifetime of a flower, then," she said, smiling upward. "It was but last night, you know, when we all work so hard with the decorators and the chrysanthemums."

"Last century!" he laughed. "I really exist only in the moments when I am with you. All else are dungeon hours, locked with your last 'Good-bye.' Do not shrink from me now, darling. Let me hold you in my arms once this wonderful night."

"My hair you will disarrange, and others notice," she pleaded, holding him back with one white hand. "And, dear Pierre, you rumples my mind more than my hair. I must be calm to-night, and cheerful with many. I am the débutante."

"You are hard to win," said Pierre, "but I believe I like it so. Your Japanese etiquette is a thorny hedge. More than once I've torn my soul upon it. Ah, but even that could not keep me quite away. You struggled hard, you elf of pearl and mist, but at last you said you loved me—that you wished to be my wife."

He brushed away the hand and caught her. She gave a little shuddering movement in his arms. "That was a terrible, bold thing for a girl of the samurai class to say. My heart shake a finger at me yet, that I have confessed so immodest a thought. I should hereafter be very circumspect with you, to pay for that bad thing!"

"Circumspect!" laughed Pierre. "Yes, we shall both be circumspect like this—and this!" She wrenched herself from his kisses, and stood upright in the narrow path. "No, Pierre; I mean it. Please do not do such things, or my frightened spirit never will return. I must go to Mrs. Todd; I fear she is angered."

"Angered—with you?" asked Pierre, arrested by the sincerity of the girl's protest. Yuki turned her head away. Suddenly he recalled the Russian minister's approach, and connected it with Yuki's flight. He stared at her averted countenance. "Yuki, did you leave your friends—would you offend them—rather than greet the Russian ambassador?"

"Yes," whispered Yuki, trembling.

The radiance of Pierre's face went out, his head sank. "So that was the reason. You would not touch a Russian! As you know, my mother is a Russian."

"Oh, it is not all Russians! Do not think that I would wound you. Many are good. Mr. Tolstoi, Mr. Wittee, your honored mother, too, I am sure. They hate, as we, the tyrants that wish to crush the people, and to bring on this cruel, unjust war. I saw the petals of our Emperor's flowers shrivel as he passed them by! I, too, would have shrivelled—my soul would have turned black—at his breath."

"No war will come!" cried Pierre, vehemently. "I have told you this before. I know it from the inside. There will be no war. Your country will not face Imperial Russia!"

"If those bad ones push us just too far—if they delay replies, and provoke us just a little more—Nippon will fight, and I think that God will let us win!"

"Your Christian God must side with Russia. He cannot aid a nation that does not believe in him!" Pierre's eyes held curiosity and a challenge.

Yuki turned slowly to him, answered the look with sombre brooding, and then stared upward to where close moisture of the high glass dome curved space into a frosted shell. "Perhaps, though," she said, pausing between each word, "the Christian God—believe—in—us!"

Before his surprise found vent her mood and tone had changed. "But, no, no, Pierre; we talk no more of tragic things this night, not of war, and hate, and destiny. It is our ball, Monsieur Pierre Marie Le Beau—I begs you to remember that. And me and Gwendolen are now in society. I am in society—is it not nice? Come, let us return to society at once." She caught his arm, laughing, and tried to urge him from the bench.

"You witch of moods!" said Pierre. "Are other Japanese girls like you? When I hold you closest, then do you seem most far away. I seize you in a thousand tantalizing forms, only to fear, each time, that never yet have I seen the real Yuki. Ah! take me to your land, my love, and make me one with it. What do I care for war, for Russia, even for France, if once I could believe you entirely my own? You know I am fighting hard to sail with you next spring. The French ambassador here gives me much hope, and in France my relatives are working."

"Yes, yes, we shall go together on that great ship," said Yuki, soothingly, "and together we shall seek my dear parents, and ask them for our happiness."

Pierre's face lighted. "But you will be true to me no matter whether they give consent or not?" he cried. "Swear it, Yuki."

"I will be true to you, Pierre," said Yuki. "You wish to hear that many times, do you not? But I cannot say I will marry you without their consent. But they are kind—they must like you, Pierre." She flushed delicately. "We—we will make them to say 'yes,' Pierre."

Still the young man hesitated. "This condition that you hold so stubbornly is our menace," he began. "I don't urge you to marry me at once, without their good wishes, only to promise that, after trying in every way to gain them, you will take your life into your own hands and come to me."

"Why do we fret and worry about such things so far away? You will take from me all joy of our party. Will you not return to the room with me?"

"No," said Pierre, seizing a hand in his, "I shall hold you until this is a bit more clear. No, Yuki—"

"Yuki—Yuki!" came a cautious voice, an echo, it seemed, to Pierre's last word. "Where are you? Mother has sent me here. Prince Haganè asked for you. She says to come at once."

"Let my hand go. I must hurry. It is Prince Haganè," whispered Yuki, and, slipping deftly from Pierre, she hurried to join her friend. He followed quickly, stopped in the doorway, and stood there, scowling.

The crowd had thinned. He could see the heads and shoulders of the two girls moving and whispering together as they sped. Beyond them, surrounded by his suite of glittering officials, Spanish-looking men in broadcloth and gold lace, rose the dark, impressive figure of Prince Haganè. He was in the dull silken robes of his own land, unornamented but for a single decoration—the highest that a Japanese subject, not a prince of the blood, had ever received.

Pierre's first thought was an inconsequent one of childish irritation that the man bore no marks of age. On the other hand, no one could have thought him young. The massive features, bronze in tone, and set in a sort of aquiline rigidity, the conscious, kingly poise of head and throat rising from deep brawny shoulders, the stiff black hair, touched evenly throughout with gray, had none of them the color of youth. Yet beside him youth looked tame, and old age withered. This man was on the very summit of life, the central point of storms, rather than their object. His deep-set eyes gazed now far beyond to the future, then back into the past, with equal certainty of vision.

Such was the great man Haganè—"Ko-shaku Haganè," feudal, not imperial, prince; a title signifying the highest rank attainable by a subject not descended from the gods. Native ballads called him the "Right Arm and the Left Ear" of the Emperor. Woodcuts of his splendid, ugly head, set by country farmers within household shrines, proclaimed him the Living War-God of Nippon. His victories and innovations at the time of the Chinese struggle had spread his fame through two worlds.

As Yuki and Gwendolen drew near, Mrs. Todd first perceived them. "Here they are. Present me first, Cyrus—then Gwendolen, then Yuki," the matron gave whispered command. Haganè responded to the first two greetings with unsmiling courtesy, offering a perfunctory extension of his thick hand.

"Now, your Highness," said Todd, his thin, jovial voice carrying easily to where Pierre stood, "here's somebody that will look more natural. Step up, Yuki-ko. You aren't afraid!"

Haganè had already fixed keen eyes upon the girl. His hands fell to his sides. A faint smile, merely a gleam on metal, hurried across his face. Pierre saw his lips move. Yuki went closer, hesitated, gained courage, and looked up into the broad face. Pierre saw Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen exchange smiling glances. Todd threw back his head to laugh. The smile returned to Haganè, unexpected, intensified, brilliant, as if a new day had broken. Pierre winced. He saw Yuki sway again—put forth two white hands, falter, then sink suddenly prone, her palms outspread, her white forehead on the floor, her whole slim, crouching body topped by the great black burden of the sash, instinct with reverence not far from adoration.

Haganè lifted her immediately, his smile deepening. Mrs. Todd turned away, embarrassed. The small ripple of excitement in the onlookers died; but Pierre, with angry eyes, sought Yuki, and drew her slightly to one side.

"When you are my wife there will be no such ridiculous kow-towing," he said.

"Who is your friend, Yuki?" asked the great man, stepping condescendingly near.

She performed the introduction well, speaking in English without a tremor of the low voice.

"Ah," said Haganè, speaking also in English, "I am recently from the country of Monsieur, which, I do not mistake in conjecturing, is France? Perhaps you are a visitor here, like myself." He put out the great hand, and after an imperceptible hesitation Pierre thrust his own within it. The grasp turned him pale.

"Your Highness is correct in both surmises," he answered stiffly; "I am of France, and I am a visitor. At an early date I anticipate the pleasure of being in your Highness's country."

"Indeed? Pray remind me of this meeting when you arrive, Monsieur. Shall you sail soon?"

"Not for many months, I fear," said the Frenchman. "But I shall certainly avail myself of your kind suggestion."

Yuki's eyes were urging him to go. The girl herself could not have told why she felt apprehension in the proximity of these two men. Haganè had never been antagonistic to foreigners, and she knew that, in Japan, she and Pierre could not have another friend so powerful. Yet she was uneasy.

Pierre, with a last bow, went. The little episode stirred him. The thought rushed through him, too, that here was possibly an invincible friend. He would make the most of it. Even Yuki's abject obeisance, which before had stung him, shone now in the light of desirable dependence on the great man's word. Let him, Pierre, secure his appointment, and, with Haganè his friend, the old gods might shake their heads and growl in vain.

He went into the street. The long rooms had suddenly grown too small for his aspirations. One friendly cigarette was smoked, and then another. Life seemed a jolly thing, that hour, to Pierre.