hearing a certain untrue word. For no goddess can be an eta--even
if it were possible for a mortal as beautiful as you to be an eta. So,
even to-day, see," as he gathered her from the floor strongly into his
arms, "you are my goddess--to-morrow you will be my wife."

"Lord, I have no wedding garments! You know that though a Japanese
maiden has always ready her garments for death or marriage, an eta maid
has only those for death ready. It is presumption to have--the--the
others."

"Then there shall be no wedding garment but this," and he touched the
dainty thing she wore. "Where are your parents that I may ask their
consent?"

Hoshiko did not know. But Arisuga suspected that they were close behind
the fusuma listening with staring eyes and gaping mouths.

He suddenly pushed aside the slides--and there they were.

"To-morrow I wed your daughter," he said to them with his soldier's
savagery.

He respectfully gave them time for an answer--but he meant them to
understand that they dare not refuse. And together, when they had the
breath for it, they bowed to the very earth and said:--

"Yea, august lord!"

Arisuga bowed haughtily in return, and closed the slides upon them.

"You see," he said to Hoshiko, "there is nothing but the three times
three between us and our earth-heaven, goddess!"

"Yes, lord," she shivered.

She begged for delay, but he would not grant it, so all that night,
while he slept near, she and Isonna in the next room strove to make a
trousseau out of her shroud.

THE ETA

XVII

THE ETA

Now, even when Arisuga had spoken of marriage, he had the thought that
it would probably not be longer than for his stay in China. At his going
there would be a happy understanding that this meant divorce and that
she might marry again. For he was bound by his oath to the great death,
that she knew; and if this were to be all, it mattered little that
Hoshiko was an eta. In China it was not heinous.

Yet even thus early the thought of some one else finding this wild
flower when he was gone as he had found it--and, alas! of doing as he
was about to do--he did not like that. He did not like his part in it.
It haunted his dreams there in the room next to her and he woke.

She was sobbing. Then he heard her mother:

"Here is the sword," she said, in a voice hard as steel. "Be brave!
First pray!"

"Yes," sobbed Hoshiko.

Arisuga crashed through the paper wall between them like the
thunder