atsu, with a low, triumphant laugh.
"I see something different!" Suddenly he reached forward, caught the
long ends of her hair and held them out to left and right, the full
width of his arms. They stood for a moment in intense silence, gazing
each into the face of the other. The rim of the dawn behind them cut,
with its flat, gold disc, straight down to the heart of the world.
"You a mortal!" said the boy again, exultantly. "Why, even now, your
face is the white breast of a great sea-bird, your hair, its shining
wings, and your soul a message that the gods have sent to me! Oh, I
know you for what you are,--my Dragon Maid, my bride! Have I not
sought you all these years, tracing your face on rocks and sand-beds of
my hills, hanging my prayers to every blossoming tree? Come, you are
mine at last; here is your master! We will escape together while the
stupid old ones sleep! Come, soul of my soul, to our mountains!"

He would have seized her, but a quick, passionate gesture of repulsion
kept him back. "I am the child of Kano Indara," she said. "He, too,
has power of the gods, and I obey him. Oh, sir, believe that you, as
I, are subject to his will, for if you set yourself against him--"

"Kano Indara concerns me not at all," cried Tatsu, half angrily. "It
is with you,--with you alone, I speak!"

Ume poised at the very tip of the hill. "Look, sir,--the plum tree,"
she whispered, pointing. So sudden was the change in voice and manner
that the other tripped and was caught by it. "That longest, leafy
branch touches the very wall of my room," she went on, creeping always
a little down the hill. "If you again will write such things to me,
trusting your missive to that branch, I shall receive it, and--will
answer. Oh, it is a bold, unheard-of thing for a girl to do, but I
shall answer."

"I should like better that you meet me here each morning at this hour,"
said Tatsu.

The girl looked about her swiftly, gave a little cry, and clasped her
hands together. "See, lord, the day comes fast. Mata, my old nurse,
may already be astir. I saw a flock of sparrows fly down suddenly to
the kitchen door. And there, above us, on the great camphor tree, the
sun has smitten with a fist of gold!"

Tatsu gazed up, and when his eyes returned to earth he found himself
companionless. He threw himself down, a miserable heap, clasping his
knees upon the hill. No longer was the rosy dawn for him. He found no
timid beauty i