“You do not need to remember. You already know of whom I speak.”
“She was a tall woman with thin cheeks, yes?” he inquired with attempted guile.
The minister answered by tightening his grip upon the man’s collar, and pushing his knuckles hard upon the neck. Okido shrunk fearfully from the large hand of the white man. He felt sure it would hurt hard. After a moment:
He slipped down to the minister’s feet and beat his head, seeking to shake off that hand at his neck.
“Listen,” said Richard Verley, “I will give you five minutes in which to answer. At the end of that time——”
“Excellency will not beat a poor man. Ah, surely not!”
“Excellency will kick the life out of you.”
“No, no.” Okido cast a fearful glance at the minister’s boots. “I will speak truth. Surely!”
At those words, the minister for a moment forgot his caution, and slackened the tension at the man’s neck. But in that moment Okido was free. He had slipped not only from the minister’s grip, but had disappeared as if by magic through the wall against which he had crouched.
Richard Verley was alone. He strode from one to the other of the four walls of the shoji. He threw them all apart and penetrated into the interior apartments. The servants fled before him with the speed of wings and disappeared as silently and swiftly as their master. Suddenly he found himself on the door step. He went down slowly into the street.
Some one called his name. “Excellency! Master—sir!”
He turned quickly and saw the woman Natsu following him.
Her name burst in a cry from his lips, and he rushed toward her.
“Natsu! You! Your mistress—quick, how—where is she?”
Her eyes shifted from his face. She covered her own with her sleeve, and thus she stood, the picture of sorrow.
The minister stared at her, horrified. When he spoke his voice was strange.
And so she had died—his little, laughing Azalea, his beautiful child-wife, had died while he was away from her. He put out his hands blindly, as the inclination to faint overcame him. He hardly understood the words the woman spoke.
But the woman’s voice recalled him. He stared at her mechanically. Mechanically he spoke.
“Dead!” repeated the woman, and shook her head. “No, no, not dead; better that than what is, O master—sir!”