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THE LOVE OF CHRYSANTHEMUM
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was in his home when Chrysanthemum crept, like a hunted thing, thru the garden and into the house. Already Fusi had been told to go and now Sayo faced his wife sternly.
"You come back to the house you have disgraced ? " he asked coldly.
"Disgraced?" she echoed dully. "Perhaps it is disgrace to love another and by him to be cast away? To make my name a laughing stock at the inn!"
Furiously he caught up a knife from the wall and bent over the prostrate, shuddering woman.
Affrighted she shrank from his approach. She did not fear death. That she knew to be the only way to wipe out the stain, but Sayo frightened her. Never before had she seen him in anger, and there was something more terrible than death in this swift change from the impassive man she had known. Her terror seemed to recall that coldness. The knife fell to the floor as he turned away.
"I cannot kill," he cried hoarsely. "I cannot kill— but go!"
Slowly she crept from the room, back into that garden where fate had come to her, to the bench whereon they two had sat, and he had filled her arms with flowers and had called her his Lady of the Chrysanthemums.
His lady! And now his caresses were for another and he was gone.
She pulled a chrysanthemum to her.
Perhaps it might be that his hand had brushed it as he had reached for those with which he had filled her arms.
Ruthlessly she stripped the petals from the stalk, as he had stripped her life of hope, and pressed the bare stem against her beating heart. Her hand touched the handle of the knife she had caught up when Sayo dropped it. One moment it gleamed in the moonlight, then, with a shuddering sigh, her slim body crumpled up and she lay very still, her face pale in the
THERE FUSI FOUND HER LOVED MISTRESS AND FELL SOBBING AT HER FEET.