. "This is the dream--these white walls. You are to
die the great red death. God has told me."

"Is it so?"

He gazed distractedly about and still thought he saw the walls.

"It is as I say."

He gripped her hands.

"By all the gods?"

"By all the gods," she swore.

Then, again, for the last time, came full delirium--and again it came in
red.

"You have told me true!" he shouted. "There the devils come! On, on, on!
Banzai! On! Nippon Denji! On! Ah, my sword slips at the handle--it is
red! And the staff of my flag, too! A little earth!" He rubbed his palms
on the bed covers as if they were the ground, and clenched his hands
again. "Ah, now we are on them! Mutsushima! Up, up, up! Too early to
die! You have not killed enough! Up, Banzai! The gods will not redeem
your samurai vow with so few dead enemies of the emperor to your
credit!" Then he must have been struck. "Father! Father!" he cried, and
held out his hands.

After that he lay as one dead for a long time, then woke with slow doubt
to find himself still without the heavens.

"I have not killed enough. That is it. There must be many more before I
can see my father's face. Many more because--because I married an
eta--yes, an eta seduced me. Did you know her? She was a hell woman. She
kept me from my father. Did you know her?"

He stared up at her with half recollection, and then went on to his
battles.

In one of them he lost his colors. No one has ever suffered a sharper
agony than he--until they were retaken.

"But--the flag! The flag! I am hit! Here! Not much! Gods in the skies!
There it is! They have it! The cursed dogs! They have touched it!
Defiled it! Come with me--Kondo--Musima--Tani--Ichimon--now! At them!"

And she knew that he had retaken the flag and was bringing it gloriously
back; each act was faithfully fought.

But then he missed it. He looked in his hands.

"Do you see my flag?"

"Yes," she cajoled, "it is here."

But she did not convince him, and he slept under his opium unhappily.
He thought sometimes that the enemy had again taken it.

When he awoke next morning, still unhappy and in doubt (he had not
forgotten it), the flag was in his hand. There was not one in America
for the little wife. But that night she made one. He shouted with sudden
strength as he gripped it and kept it in his hands until they could feel
no more. And then with it lashed to the foot of his bed he lived the
little remnant of his life in its glory, a