ces.
Karma entered with her into the little guest-room where she was to
dance and charged the very air with revelation. The words of the old
classic poem she had in her ignorance believed familiar, she knew that
she was now for the first time really to sing.

"Not for one life but for the blossoming of a thousand lives, shall I
seek my lover, shall I regain his love," she sang. No longer was it
Ume-ko at all, but in actual truth the Dragon Maid, held from her lover
by a jealous god, seeking him through fire and storm and sea, peering
for him into the courts of emperors, the shrines of the astonished
gods, the very portals of the under-world.

And Tatsu listened without sound or motion; only his eyes burned like
beacons in a windless night. Kano wriggled himself backward on the
matting that the triumph of his face might not be seen. Now and again
he leaned forward stealthily and filled Tatsu's cup.

The unaccustomed fluid was already pouring in a fiery torrent through
the boy's vivid brain. His hands, slipped within the tattered blue
sleeves, grasped tightly each the elbow of the other arm. His ecstacy
was a drug, enveloping his senses; again it was a fire that threatened
the very altar of his soul. Through it all he, as Ume-ko, realized
fulfilment. Here in this desert of men's huts he had gained what all
the towering mountains had not been able to bestow. Here was his
bride, made manifest, his mate, the Dragon Maid, found at last through
centuries of barren searching! Surely, if he should spring now to his
feet, catch her to him and call upon his mountain gods for aid, they
would be hurled together to some paradise of love where only he and she
and love would be alive! He trembled and caught in his breath with a
sob. Kano glided a few feet nearer, and struck the matting sharply
with his hand.

Suddenly the dance was over. Ume-ko, quivering now in every limb, sank
to the floor. She bowed first to the guest of honor, then to her
father. Touching her wet eyes with a silken sleeve she moved backward
to the rear of the room where she seated herself upright, motionless as
the wall itself, between the two tall candles. Tatsu's eyes never left
her face. Old Kano, in the background, rocked to and fro, and, after a
short pause of waiting, clapped his hands for Mata.

"Hai-ie-ie-ie-ie!" came the thin voice, long drawn out, from the
kitchen. She entered with a tray of steaming food, placing it before
Tatsu.