Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/240

224 general's command. She was in the service, he said.

And Ji-Saburo, too, obeyed like a soldier. In six days he was at her side. She was dead. She lay upon the narrow military bed, with her head resting lightly on her bent arm. Her unbound hair duskily framed her face—very young and beautiful it was now. She was in her dainty wedding-garments. A knot of pink ribbon was pinned above her heart. It held the decoration she had won in the service. And some one—the same good hand that understood and had disposed her thus—had laid beside her, so that her face was partly buried in it, a huge bunch of pink cherry-blossoms. The flowers touched her eyes and lips as if she had kissed them—and they had kissed her. The peace on her wan face had come, they told him, with her last word, which had been his name.