tried to escape round the deck chair. But he
caught hold of her kimono. She drew her sword.

"Help! Help!" she cried. "Tanaka!"

Something wrenched at her wrist, and the blade fell. At the same
moment the inner _shoji_ flew open like the shutter of a camera.
Tanaka rushed into the room.

Asako did not turn to look again until she was outside the room with
her maid and her cook trembling beside her. Then she saw Tanaka and
Ito locked in a wrestler's embrace, puffing and grunting at each
other, while their feet were fumbling for the sword which lay between
them. Suddenly both figures relaxed. Two foreheads came together with
a wooden concussion. Hands were groping where the feet had been. One
set of fingers, hovering over the sword, grasped the hilt. It was
Tanaka; but his foot slipped. He tottered and fell backward. Ito was
on the top of him. Asako closed her eyes. She heard a hoarse roar like
a lion. When she dared to look again, she saw Tanaka kneeling over
Ito's body. With a wrench he pulled Sadako's dagger out of the
prostrate mass. It was followed by a jet of blood, and then by a
steady trickle from body, mouth and nostrils, which spread over the
matting. Slowly and deliberately, Tanaka wiped first the knife and
then his hands on the clothes of his victim. Then he felt his mouth
and throat.

"_Sa! Shimatta_! (There, finished!)" he said. He turned towards the
garden side, threw open the _shoji_ and the _amado_. He ran across
the snow-covered lawn; and from beyond the unearthly silence which
followed his departure, come the distant sound of a splash in the
river.

At last, Asako said helplessly: "Is he dead?"

The cook, a man, was glad of the opportunity to escape.

"I go and call doctor," he said.

"No, stay with me," said Asako; "I am afraid. O Hana can go for the
doctor."

Asako and the cook waited by the open _shoji_, staring blankly at
the body of Ito. Presently the cook said that he must go and get
something. He did not return. Asako called to him to come. There was
no answer. She went to look for him in his little three-mat room
near the kitchen. It was empty. He had packed his few chattels in his
wicker basket and had decamped.

Asako resumed her watch at the sitting-room door, an unwilling Rizpah.
It was as though she feared that, if she left her post, somebody might
come in and steal Ito. But she could have hardly approached the corpse
even under compulsion. Sometimes it seemed to move, to try