!

It was three days before she could smile. Then she said wanly:--

"What will you do with _me_, Ani-San? Must I die, too? You cannot go
back to China with me."

"By all the gods in all the skies we shall part no more! We can
die--yes--together--but part never!"

"Alas! that is all we can do now, beloved, for I have harmed you in
coming here."

"You have brought me the happiness I do not deserve. I will never again
put it in jeopardy."

But you are to understand that even that, dying together, perhaps, with
her obi binding them close to each other, walking arm in arm, into the
sea, or the moat, until they could but dimly know that the sun was yet
in the heavens, on through the green water, more and more dim unto
darkness, peace, sleep--you are to understand that this, death with him,
was next in its sweetness to life with him.

He meant to go to the colonel; but not yet. You remember how she raped
those few days of happiness out of the very hand of fate in China. So
now Arisuga said Tadaima! Wait!

For again his little wife had to have a trousseau, and she was yet very
weak and tired. And on the way she had sold her pretty hair-pins for
food--these had to be replaced. But so potent is happiness, that it was
not three days more till all her loveliness had returned and bloomed
again--just in time to be adorned by the new kimono of blue crepe, and
the new kanzashi of tortoise-shell and gold.

Still it was Tadaima!

For three days more Arisuga lived in his paradise and then went
resolutely to the colonel.

"I am married," he said bluntly, with his salute.

"What?" roared the colonel.

"I was married when I was here before."

Finally the officer smiled. That is the way he would have been likely
to do it at the color-bearer's age.

"I remember that you said you did not mean to marry! You _were_ married!
Well, well, if she is a samurai--"

"She is an eta," said Arisuga. "That one in China."

"Ah! After a little while you can divorce her. No one need know of it."

"I beg your pardon."

"You will not?"

"I cannot."

"You understand your position the moment this becomes public?"

"You cannot make me an eta in the army. I am a soldier."

"You will ask for a furlough. Time indefinite upon recall. It will be
granted," said Zanzi, coldly.

This was the color-bearer's dismissal from the regiment. For a moment he
could not speak.

"You are too ill for service," continued the colonel, less coldly. "I