University of Virginia Library

IV.

A few days later she was sitting at her desk, writing to him. She wanted to see him—badly. Then her maid brought in a letter from her father, and her hands fell limply upon the sheet before her.

Her hair hung in a glossy, dusky cloud about her. A dressing gown, all silken and lace, a feminine, exquisite thing, fell about her in long, loose folds as she stood up slowly. For a moment her glance, almost unconsciously, wandered about her room, the delicately tinted, faintly perfumed chamber of an American girl of refinement and wealth. The dressing table with its pieces of chaste ivory, the chintz-covered chairs, the soft white mull curtains, topped with the colonial ruffle of the same chintz; and the flowered ceiling, the old rose-covered[3] rugs, the long cheval glass—all part of the life to which she had thought, but a moment since, she purely belonged.

She read her father's letter through slowly, studiously, her face becoming fixed and stern. Suddenly she reached over, and catching up the sheets of that other letter she had been writing, deliberately tore them across. The clear- eyed, winning face of Lieutenant Burrows looked up at her insistently from the photograph on her desk. She turned it over. Then, as though something snapped within her, she ran to the window seat, slipped to her knees, and hid her face.

The stars came out in the dark vault of heaven. Night was beautiful, even in this city of monstrosities. Below, in the darkly glistening street, the flaming eyes of countless automobiles went glimmering by. The distant clang of the street cars, the grumbling roar of the great city floated up to the girl as she crouched there by the window. What menacing, engulfing tones they seemed to her! Like those of a monstrous enemy, closing in about, as if to throttle a frailer adversary.

Presently her weakness passed. Tossing back her head bravely, she gathered up the great mass of hair into her hands, coiling it securely against her neck. She dressed quickly and without ringing for her maid's

assistance. Nor did the latter accompany her, as, slipping into a taxicab, she gave to the driver the address of the Japanese consul.

She did not falter once in the task her father had set her. She was buoyed up chiefly by the many accounts of the Japanese subjects in San Francisco, at this time appearing daily in the American papers. Half-American herself, though she was motherless, she exaggerated the importance of even the most insignificant of these incidents, and when the papers loudly proclaimed the probability of war, she firmly believed it. At an age when a girl's head is full of transient ideals—false or otherwise—Sakura greedily read and learned all she could of other women before her who had served their countries, as she wished to serve hers, and, indeed, as her father had ordered her to do.

She was now pure Japanese. All thought of self, of friends, of relatives even, for she had many here in America- -must be put aside. And love! Duty was the greatest word in the language of her ancestors. Every thought now must be concentrated upon the accomplishment of one purpose only.

Thus, she sought her friends and relatives only when she needed to make use of them, and with her eyes wide open, she accepted the invitation to visit at the home of her lover's parents, and traveled down to Washington.

There, in the house of a cabinet officer, the father of the man who loved her, she learned all she had set herself to learn, and with copies of plans and maps of certain American forts and points of weaknesses, she suddenly cut short her visit—and disappeared.

Lieutenant Burrows was stationed at F——— when a letter from home apprised him of the visit of the Countess Sakura Sano. Impetuously he cursed his luck. She, it seems, so wrote his mother, had unexpectedly accepted possibly the fiftieth invitation they had tendered her. There was no end to the teas, and parties, and what not, given in her honor, and, as his mother lovingly wrote, she had endeared herself to both his father and herself. Of course the Lieutenant instantly applied for leave of absence, and after an unnecessary amount of red-taped delay, obtained it; but the day before he reached Washington the prized guest had

unexpectedly been called away. He followed her to New York, presuming she had returned to her home. There he found the house closed. Inquiry among her relatives revealed the fact that every one believed she had gone to a different place!