“Why so silence, little girl?  Say, I love you, I love you like all foreign girls say.  I am husband now.  I never go away from this house until you kiss me.  You understand?”

Asako gasped.

“Mr. Ito, it is very late.  Please, come some other day.  I must go to bed now.”

“Very good, very good.  I come to bed with you,” said Ito, rolling out of his chair and putting one heavy leg to the ground.  He was earing a kimono none too well adjusted, and Asako could see his hairy limb high up the thigh.  Her face must have reflected her displeasure.

“What?” the Japanese shouted; “you don’t like me.  Too very proud!  No dirty Jap, no yellow man, what?  So you think, Madame Lord Princess Barrington.  In the East, it may be, ugly foreign women despise Japs.  But New York, London, Paris—­very different, ha! ha!  New York girl say, Hello, Jap! come here!  London girl say, Jap man very nice, very sweet manner, very soft eyes.  When I was in London I have five or six girls, English girls, white girls, very beauty girls, all together, all very love!  London time was great fine time!”

Asako felt helpless.  Her hand was on the hilt of her dagger, but she still hoped that Ito might come to his senses and go away.

“There!” he cried, “I know foreign custom.  I know everything.  Mistletoe!  Mistletoe!  A kiss for the mistletoe, Asa San!”

He staggered out of his chair and came towards her, like a great black bird.  She dodged him, and tried to escape round the deck chair.  But he caught hold of her kimono.  She drew her sword.

“Help!  Help!” she cried.  “Tanaka!”

Something wrenched at her wrist, and the blade fell.  At the same moment the inner shoji flew open like the shutter of a camera.  Tanaka rushed into the room.

Asako did not turn to look again until she was outside the room with her maid and her cook trembling beside her.  Then she saw Tanaka and Ito locked in a wrestler’s embrace, puffing and grunting at each other, while their feet were fumbling for the sword which lay between them.  Suddenly both figures relaxed.  Two foreheads came together with a wooden concussion.  Hands were groping where the feet had been.  One set of fingers, hovering over the sword, grasped the hilt.  It was Tanaka; but his foot slipped.  He tottered and fell backward.  Ito was on the top of him.  Asako closed her eyes.  She heard a hoarse roar like a lion.  When she dared to look again, she saw Tanaka kneeling over Ito’s body.  With a wrench he pulled Sadako’s dagger out of the prostrate mass.  It was followed by a jet of blood, and then by a steady trickle from body, mouth and nostrils, which spread over the matting.  Slowly and deliberately, Tanaka wiped first the knife and then his hands on the clothes of his victim.  Then he felt his mouth and throat.

“Sa!  Shimatta! (There, finished!)” he said.  He turned towards the garden side, threw open the shoji and the amado.  He ran across the snow-covered lawn; and from beyond the unearthly silence which followed his departure, come the distant sound of a splash in the river.