Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/211

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KITO
195

VII

"NAMU AMIDA BUTSU!"

All this, as I have said, was ten years and more ago. The rest of Kito's story may be found in a few lines of vertical writing among the records of the police court of Tokio, at the Saibansho. Kito's testimony it is called under the new code. Under the old it would have been Kito's confession under the torture. The difference is mainly one of nomenclature.

Under every great calm there is the quality of suppressed and controlled violence which may break through whenever the limit of compression is reached. So with the calm which Kito had accomplished. The priests no longer aided in the control of the frenzied hope they had conjured up for him. And his frailty admonished him that the end of his life was approaching. Those spasms at the heart were more frequent now, and sometimes he staggered, and fought away a blindness which fell upon him. Was he to die without his hope being