The light of battle came into the stony eyes of the girl. She clapped her hands almost viciously. The little maid appeared.
"Tea!" she said.
The maid brought the tea; and with that splendid light of danger still in her eyes, Cho-Cho-San served it. With the air of a princess she put on in an instant all the charms of a mousmee. She gave back smile for smile now, and jest for jest. She begged Yamadori, with the most charming upward inflections, to put away his cigarette and take her shippo pipe, and he did it. That was Japanese, she said, her cigarettes were not. Was it not so?—with a resistless movement toward him. She let him touch her hands in the passage of the cups. She enveloped him with the perfume of her garments. She possessed him wholly in one dizzy instant.
"I will give her a castle to live in," said Yamadori, breathlessly.
The nakodo sighed. Cho-Cho-San refilled his pipe with an incomparable grace.
"Ah!" she permitted her lips to breathe—very softly.
"She shall have a thousand servants."
There was no audible response from the nakodo, but his eyes gleamed avidly.
