It was the warder. He stirred her with his foot. She was hauled back to the procurator's court.
"So! Have you considered well?" said the little spotted man. "Will you now confess?"
"How can I confess what I have not done?" protested Asako.
The remorseless inquisition proceeded. Asako's replies became more and more confused. The procurator frowned at her contradictions. She must assuredly be guilty.
"How many times do you say that you have met this Ito?" he asked.
Asako was at the end of her strength. She reeled and would have fallen; but the warder jerked her straight again.
"Confess, then," shouted the procurator, "confess and you will be liberated."
"I will confess," Asako gasped, "anything you like."
With the triumphant air of a sportsman who has landed his fish after a long and bitter struggle, the procurator held out a sheet of paper prepared beforehand, on which something was written in Japanese characters.
Asako tried to move towards the desk that she might write her name; but this time, her legs gave way altogether. The warder caught her by the neck of her kimono, and shook her as a terrier shakes a rat. But the body remained limp. He twisted her arm behind her with a savage wrench. His victim groaned with pain, but spoke no distinguishable word. Then he laid her out on the benches, and felt her chest.
"The body is very hot," he said; "perhaps she is indeed sick."
"Obstinate," grunted the procurator; "I am certain that she is guilty. Are you not?" he added, addressing the clerk.
The clerk was busy filling up some of the blanks in the back evidence, extemporising where he could not remember.
"Assuredly," he said, "the opinion of the procurator is always correct."
However, the doctor was summoned. He pronounced that the patient was in a high fever, and must at once be removed to the infirmary.
So the preliminary examination of Asako Fujinami came to an abrupt end.
_Haru no hi no Nagaki omoi wa Wasureji wo, Hito no kokoro ni Aki ya tatsuramu._
The long thoughts Of the spring days Will never be forgotten Even when autumn comes To the hearts of the people.
The low-flying clouds of hallucination had fallen so close to Asako's brain, that her thoughts seemed to be caught up into the dizzy whirlwind and to be skimming around and round the world at the speed of an express aeroplane. Like a clock whose regulation is out of order, the hour-hand of her life seemed to be racing the minute-hand, and the minute-hand to be covering the face of the dial in sixty seconds or less, returning incessantly to the same well-known figures, pausing awhile, then jerking away again at an insane rate. From time to time the haze over the mind began to clear; and Asako seemed to look down upon the scene around her from a great height. There was a long room, so long that she could not see the end of it, and rows of narrow beds, and nurses, dressed in white with high caps like bishops' mitres, who appeared and disappeared. Sometimes they would speak to her and she would answer. But she did not know what they said, nor what she said to them.