onna started. Her mistress recalled her.

"And--and, if there is a way of letting him know that _he_--"

"Yes," answered the maid, understandingly.

"And as to letting him know that I love _him_--"

"Yes?"

"Do you think that necessary?"

"I do not know the ways of love," confessed Isonna.

"You are a little beast," said her mistress. "That can wait--if he once
knows that he loves me. At all events it is too dangerous. Go to bed,
wicked one!"

IMPERTINENT ISONNA

XII

IMPERTINENT ISONNA

But the next day trouble, though not exactly of the heart, did arrive.
It was one of Arisuga's days of retreat from Hoshiko. He asked her why
she lived there--in China--when she might live in Japan, where she
belonged.

She answered him that her father had come there many years before, when
she was a child.

"I will ask him the reason if you wish."

"No, no, no!" laughed Arisuga. "What does it matter, my dear child?"

She ran away from him again. And all that day she kept repeating:--

"'My dear _child_'! I am as tall as he!"

And at night, again, while the maid was undressing her, it was that
still.

"Now he shall never know who--what I am. For I _am_ beautiful. The
mirror says so. As beautiful as if I were not--what I am. Look, look and
tell me!"

This the maid, for the hundredth time since he had come, did.

"You are, indeed, beautiful, dear mistress, yet, nevertheless, it is
your duty to tell him! Otherwise he might wish to marry you. Already he
loves you."

"I will not! And if you do, I will kill you!" threatened Hoshiko. "I
will have these few days of heaven. He will go and not think of me
again. He will never know. He will not have been contaminated. But I
will have the few days in heaven! To him I am only a child."

And she fell to the floor and sobbed for an hour, during which the maid
lay like a graven image at her side. Then she sat up and asked:

"_Now_ you don't blame me, do you?"

"No."

"Anyhow, he will go as soon as possible."

"No, he will not," said the impertinent Isonna.

"He will! You know that he will! Say that he will!"

But the maid knew better.

"That is what men always do when they find out."

"He will not," said Isonna.

"You are very impertinent!" And her mistress punished her maid's
impertinence by flinging her the amber bracelet she wore.

"Now, disobedient one, you shall tell me why you think such a naughty
thing. Yet you cannot know. No one can see