od care!"

Without another word the smiling commanding officer wrote the order for
his transfer.

And the next day Orojii Zasshi was the proudest Japanese in China. For
the imperial sun-flag waved over his roof; the pink ticket, to indicate
that a soldier was quartered there, was tacked to his door-post; and
within, in the most sumptuous room the house afforded, lay Shijiro
Arisuga, color-bearer.

DREAM-OF-A-STAR

VIII

DREAM-OF-A-STAR

When Arisuga saw the face of "Hoshi-no-Yume," 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