Chapter 8 DREAM-OF-A-STAR

When Arisuga saw the face of "Hoshi-no-Yumé," some days later-and this "Dream-of-a-Star," as he at once called her, was well enough worth seeing-he said first:-

"It is not like what I thought it, angel."

Referring, of course, to the great red death, which he thought he had suffered-and what had necessarily followed.

"No," answered Hoshiko, comfortingly, remembering what the surgeon had said, that when he came out of his delirium he would probably be a bit queer.

"I suppose, after all, that the earth-heavens are much like the earth."

"Yes," from Miss Star-Dream.

"I don't think you understand me, since you answer only yes and no?"

"I understand your words perfectly. I am Japanese!" answered the lips of Hoshiko, while they slowly smiled. "But your thought-"

"How lucky! For, I suppose here all peoples are mixed."

"Yes. There are all sorts: Russians, Germans, Americans, Frenchmen-"

She was thinking of the allies.

"It looks like Japan."

This was the interior which he was seeing.

"But you think it is China?"

"Yes! Out there it is precisely like the place where we fought."

"Yes," said puzzled Hoshiko.

"I suppose the gods surround us in the heavens with the things which have pleased us most on earth."

Something made him look at the girl who flitted near, and the same thing made him connect her with this state of celestial bliss.

But he sighed and turned from her. In the heavens, of course, she was incorporeal, and, while patent to the eyes, would fail like the air itself to the touch.

He looked through the window, then, at the Forbidden City.

"But there is no fighting here now," ventured the girl.

"Naturally," agreed the soldier.

"The Forbidden City is taken."

"I am glad to hear it. How long have you been here?"

"About thirteen years."

"You couldn't have been more than three or four when you died! I don't understand."

But, now, Hoshiko at last did. And she laughed.

"Excuse my levity," she said. "I am not dead, and you are not. I am not an angel, and this is not a heaven!"

"Oh!" said Arisuga; and then, "All right," as if it were a thing to be endured. He ended by also laughing. "But you must excuse the mistake. It seems a good deal like a heaven, and you more like an angel."

Still, as he looked about, and at the girl, he was not sure. That is what they were likely to tell a sick man.

"Might I touch you?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" cried the girl, with a pleasure which challenged his attention. She put herself within his reach.

"It is not a heaven," he agreed, when he had passed his hand along an exquisite arm.

"I am honorably glad that you are not dead," breathed the girl, bravely. "Are not you?"

And every little atom of her showed that she was glad and begged that he might be. Though the mists were still in the brain of Shijiro Arisuga, he could not help knowing both of these things: her innocence had uncovered them so completely. For a moment he studied her. Then he answered a tardy yes to her question.

"For such as you it is good to live-yes-and-" The soldier stopped to sigh. "Good for others to live near you for the little while."

"For a little while, lord?"

She thought it the mere hyperbole of their race.

"Oh, you shall be old, old, old, and beautiful, with long white hair and perhaps a beard, and all the earth shall worship your piety-"

Arisuga laughed and caught a hand to stop her.

"Lord," she went on, "most vast lord, I will make you. Yes! I have thus far made it to be. When they brought you they said you would die. So said my father and mother. But I-"

She turned and summoned her maid with fierce irrelevance.

"Isonna, come here!"

The maid hastened from the next room, where, it is almost certain, she had lain with her ear to the fusuma, and then Hoshiko's mysterious purpose appeared.

"But I-Isonna and me-this is Isonna, my ugly maid-Isonna and me prayed for you-wept for you; you were so beautiful and bloody. And Benten-see, I have Benten always near! Benten loves the tears of sympathy, and to her we prayed, so-"

"I owe you and Isonna my life," laughed the soldier.

"No, Benten," whispered the girl, now answering his laugh with a smile. "And she will grant other prayers of ours-Isonna and me-will she not, Isonna, you little beast? Why do you not speak?"

Isonna corroborated her mistress by a deep prostration.

"And so we have asked for long life for you, very long, until the pebbles grow to boulders and the moss grows to your shoulders-"

Arisuga laughed, in frank joy of her.

"And suppose, you who are so powerful with the goddess of beauty-for which I do not blame the goddess-suppose I have sworn to die the great death, to release my father's soul from the Meido so that he can be born again, and for the glory of the emperor?"

"Oh!" gasped the girl.

The soldier went on.

"-what will the other gods think of me, saving Benten, if I stop here and forget to die because a woman has hands, a voice, and eyes?"

"No, no!" cried Isonna, in sudden strange anguish.

Then she prostrated herself in abjection.

Arisuga rose on his elbow to look at her.

"What have I said to cause such sorrow?" he wondered. "Let me see. It was about your hands and voice and eyes."

"Yes!" cried mistress and maid together.

But it was the maid who went on:-

"And you must not, mighty lord. You must not find any beauty in my mistress's eyes and hands and voice. None anywhere. It is evil for both you and her!"

"Who said I found any beauty there?" smiled Arisuga, languidly.

"There is a secret, lord-" the maid went on in a frenzy.

But Star-Dream, suddenly grasping the place of her heart with both hands, cried out to the maid, as if she were desperately wounded:-

"Go, go, go, little foul beast! What do you do here? Who called you? Go!"

The maid disappeared like a spirit. Star-Dream found herself upon her feet, still gasping with ecstasy and terror together. Then she at last turned slowly toward the bed and smiled a sick mechanical smile.

"Lord, you said," she prompted. "Say on. Do not listen-do not observe the ugly Isonna. She has a trouble of the head."

Hoshiko drooped her own in some sort of gentle guilt.

"Ah, but I displeased you also," said Arisuga.

"Lord-I-no. I have a distemper. In it I am harsh to Isonna. That is what she is for. That is why my father keeps her. That she may bear my distemper. Presently I will go and put my arms about her, so, and all will be well!"

She illustrated with her own person.

"So?" asked the soldier, laughing; "certainly all will be well!" and she came with another laugh and knelt at his bed. She touched him. She chattered on helplessly.

"Truly, all will be well. She loves me, wicked as I am to her, and with a touch I can win her!"

"Yes!" he agreed. "Or any one, I should fancy!"

Thus, at least, she had cunningly won him from his wonder at the scene he had just witnessed, if she had not won all else she had hoped for.

"May I ask a question?" said the girl.

"A hundred," said Shijiro.

"Lord, you said-you called me-"

"Yes," laughed Arisuga. "The eyes, the hands, the lips-"

"I am not beautiful-"

"I did not say so."

"My hands are not-"

She held them out that he might see that they were not. The soldier examined them and then said:-

"No, the maid was right. I find no beauty there."

"And my eyes-they are only beast's eyes-"

"Let me see," begged the soldier.

She came closer, and seriously opened them upon him. It was very hard for Shijiro looking into them to nod his assent that they were beast's eyes.

"Then the question is," said the girl, with innocent mirth, "why, if I am not beautiful, if nothing about me is, why did you do so?"

"Do what?" demanded the soldier, with a pretence of savagery.

"Look so into my eyes, touch so my hands, listen so to my miserable voice?"

"I supposed that I was in a heaven, and that you were an-attendant," said Arisuga.

"But after you knew that you were not in a heaven?"

The soldier gave up with a laugh.

"I see that we shall be very good friends," he said. They laughed together.

"Lord," she said, "I do not know whether you speak true!"

"I," said the soldier, "have the impression that I have lied to you about you."

"Shaka!" breathed the girl, between laughter and fear.

"Did you wish it-what I did-said?"

"Lord," confessed the girl, "I wish to be as beautiful as the sun-goddess, so that you must-do-say-!"

She crept closer. It was as if she caressed the soldier.

ISONNA