was not leading armies to
battle and himself to the great crimson death, but with an immense
horror that he was confined within four deadly white walls, upon a
narrow cot, not the damp, blood-stricken earth. That there were no
belching cannons in front of him, no hell of hoarse shouts behind him,
no curses and death-groans about him, but quiet, terrible, maddening,
only the still, small white death of women and children.

He leaped up to fly from it and made this small death all the more sure.
No prayers to his father, none to the augustnesses, none to the myriad
gods availed. There he saw the still small white death of women closing
down upon him while he lay inert, bound to his bed.

"This is my punishment," he whispered to her in anathema; "this is my
punishment for taking you and forgetting him. Yes, even the gate of the
Meido will be closed on me. I am not fit to meet my father. He must
still wait. And for whom? There is only I! Only I can redeem him! And I
must first descend--and cleanse my sinning face in the waters--the hot,
hot waters of the hells! And when, after many lives, I meet my father--"

His mind could not endure the horror of this. But he turned his fury
upon her.

"For you," he cried, "such a thing as you! Eta, jigoku onna! Hell woman!
Yes, you came to me in the form of a goddess. But the hell woman does
that. And now that death is here my vision sees through that and you are
a skeleton with talons--with a beak--with hell's hollow laughter--the
devils sent you to tempt me and I fell--and am lost--my father's soul
is lost--and you laugh--"

Alas! she did not laugh--she sobbed. For that was one of the days when
the flesh was weak.

"Yes," she said, "I tempted you; I am all you say!"

He fell into coma then and remembered no more: leaving her here on earth
with those fearful words in her heart to remember which had loved him
only too well. Sometimes she half believed them. Once she crept from his
side to look in the glass. She saw no talons or beak, but a wanness
which, indeed, suggested a skeleton.

He knew, before his wits left him, that the objective of the Guards was
the Yalu. And now he fancied himself gloriously leading them. But
half-sane moments came in which he would again suspect the four white
walls.

"Gods!" he whispered hoarsely, in one of these, "am I going to the small
white death of women and children? Have I only dreamed that I was still
leading them?"

"No," said his wife