With stealing step morning crept up on Matsushima. The sky had scarcely
paled to a slumberous gray ere the soft, yellow streaks of the sun shot
upward in the east, tinting all the land with its glow. The morning star
was poised on high, as though lingering to watch the sun’s awakening.
Then, softly, it twinkled out into the vapor.
Hyacinth stirred on her strange couch, her eyelashes quivered sleepily
against her cheeks. One little hand opened a moment, then clutched the
dew-wet moss. The touch of the unfamiliar grass against her hand
startled her, and the girl opened her eyes. They looked upward at the
softly bluing sky. A breeze of morning swept across her brow, moving a
little truant curl. She sat up and stared about her wonderingly. Then
remembrance coming to her, she sat still, silently watching the sunrise.
For some moments she remained in this absorbed silence. Then
mechanically she raised her hands to her head and sought to smooth the
soft hair that the breeze had ruffled.
“How still it is!” she said. Then, a moment after, “Heu! the rock is so
hard, and it is chilly.” She shivered.
Then moving along the rock, she came to the edge and began to clamber
down. There were clefts in the rock which Koma had cut as a boy, and she
had no difficulty in descending. She dropped to the ground as lightly as
a bird. Turning about, a sudden little cry escaped her lips.
She stood as if rooted to the ground, regarding with dilated eyes the
figure before her. He did not speak. His eyes were upon her face, and he
was watching her startled expression with an eager glance. Then she took
a step towards him, holding out both her hands.
“Komazawa!” she cried. “It is you!”
He did not touch her outstretched hands, and she shrank back as if
struck.
“You, too!” she said, and her hand sought her head bewilderedly.
“I, too?” he repeated, stupidly.
“Yes,” she cried. “I understand why you are here, why you do not speak
to me and embrace me as of old. Ah, it is all very plain.”
“What is very plain?” he asked, still keeping his distance from her.
“Why you are here. They have sent you to find me, to give me over to
those strangers. It is cruel, cruel!” she cried, covering her face with
her hands.
“It is not true!” he cried, going to her and taking her hands from her
face and holding them closely in his own.
She did not seek to release them, but permitted them to remain passively
in his, as she looked up into his face through her tears.
“It is not true,” he repeated, softly.
“Yet you were not glad to see me,” she said, tremulously.
“Ah, but I was,” he replied, in that same soft, subtle voice which,
somehow, vaguely thrilled her.
“You did not speak to me.”
“Your face—your sudden appearance—startled me; I could not speak for a
moment,” he said.
“Yet even now,” she said, catching her breath, “you do not embrace me.”
He dropped her hands slowly and drew back a pace.
“It would not be right—now,” he said, huskily.
“I do not understand,” she said. “Have we not always embraced each
other?”
“We were children before,” he said, “but now—embraces are for—for lovers
only.”
She looked at him a long moment in wondering silence, a slow, pink glow
spreading gradually over her face. Then she repeated, slowly, almost
falteringly:
“For—for lovers!”
He turned his eyes away from her face. She put a timid hand upon his
arm.
“Yet,” she said, “Yamashiro Yoshida was my lover, and—and we did not
embrace.”
“Ah, no, thank the Heavens!” he cried, impetuously, again possessing
himself of her hands. “You were safe from such things here, little one.
Yet you have much to learn—much, and I—” His eyes became purple and his
chin squared in strong resolution. “I’m going to teach you,” he said.
“Teach me?” she faltered. “What will you teach me?”
“The meaning of love,” he said, the words escaping him as if he could
not control them.
“You will be my lover?” she said, timid wonder in her eyes.