THE DRAGON PAINTER
eyes away. "I think I can walk now," she said.
Tatsu rose instantly, and drew her upward by the hands. A shudder of remembered horror caught him. He pressed her once more tightly to his heart. "Umè-ko, Umè-ko, my wife,—my Dragon Wife!" he cried aloud in a voice of love and anguish. "I have sought you through the torments of a thousand lives. Shall anything have power to separate us now?"
"Nothing can part us now, but—death," said Umè-ko, and glanced, for an instant, backward to the river.
Tatsu winced. "Use not the word! It attracts evil."
"It is a word that all must some day use," persisted the young wife, gently. "Tell me, beloved, if death indeed should come—?"
"It would be for both. It could not be for one alone."
"No, no!" she cried aloud, lifting her white face as if in appeal to heaven. "Do
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