The Breath of the Gods

The stone dwelling of Senator Cyrus C. Todd, usually as indistinguishable from its neighbors as is one piano key from another, presented at nine o'clock on this night of Novembe...

Hagané's entrance had broken the receiving line. He became at once the personage, the dominating influence. Guests moved about now, or gathered into little social groups at will...

Mr. Cyrus Carton Todd, born in the farming district of Pennsylvania, of English and Scotch ancestry, had, as a mere boy, gone to seek his fortune in the West. This was not, of c...

He came slowly into the day, as though passing from a fair garden into one more fair. That sense of some great good, new-garnered, and in the warm sweet haze of sleep not quite...

Preparations for an unexpectedly early start kept the Todd family in a condition of strained excitement. When the tension did relax (Mrs. Todd had more than once warned them), t...

The first days of any voyage are admirable in proportion as little, or nothing, is said of them. In this, as in other phases of human intercourse, delicacy lies in restraint rat...

The nearness of land as yet invisible gave to the ship next morning that access of animation noted in the approach to Hawaii, and in the day-distant interval from the Golden Gate.

From the square, gray platform of Shimbashi station, terraced by stone steps, hung with tiled eaves, and surrounded by a swarming school of black jinrikishas, each with a chatte...

Next to the zashiki, or guest-room, around by the corner of the big plum-tree on which, now, great snowy pearls of buds opened with every hour, was the master's benkyo-beya, or...

With the Imperial Restoration in Japan--an event, in time, just thirty-five years before the date mentioned at the beginning of this story--many of the nobles of Japan met with...

The short interval between the Todds' visit and Prince Hagané's banquet was wrought, within the confines of the Onda home, of small, shifting particles of disquiet, discontent,...

Prosper Ronsard, the French minister to Tokio, had formed very early in life the ambition to be a Far Eastern diplomat. His way to the goal was made in regular steps of enjoymen...

Into the wide, white streets of modern Yedo, Pierre stumbled alone. There had been no definite thought in his hurried flight, only a craving to flee from the polluting face and...

Returning home from the princely banquet side by side in the double jinrikisha, not a word had been spoken between Tetsujo Onda and his child. The master went at once into his l...

If previous days in the Onda household had been tense, those following were to reach the ultimate limit of nerve-endurance. Immediately after his last tempestuous scene with Yuk...

The month of March was at hand. Tempestuous winds howled and whirled in the pine and camphor trees, in the flame-like, springing bamboo groves, and under temple eaves. The air w...

Prince Hagané sat in the place of honor, his back to the tokonoma, where new flowers bloomed and incense perfumed the space. His robes, of the usual magnificent quality of silk,...

Spring storms in Tokio, as in other capitals, sweep clean a wide pathway of days for sunshine and the coming flowers. On the morning after that great tempest which so nearly cru...

It was inevitable that a lady of Mrs. Todd's social and confidential temperament should already have acquired an inseparable friend. Mrs. Todd had a perpetual thirst for what sh...

The Hagané villa at Kamakura possessed its own green niche cut deep into encroaching hills, its own curved scimitar of gray sea-beach, its individual rocks, its blue ocean, and...

So, without further preparation or experience, was the little Lady Yuki, fresh from her American school, not yet completely readapted to her native environment, installed as mis...

Except in rare cases the ceremony of marriage among Japanese is still unmodified by foreign innovation. These people prefer to regard it as the most intimate of social functions...

A short whispered colloquy between Hagané, the little Princess Sada-ko, and Yuki, during the reception, a few days before, resulted in the decision that the Japanese ladies shou...

Throughout the months of March and early April this strange hiatus in war bulletins hung, like a gray sky, above national enthusiasm. The more dignified of the newspapers still...

During the short, uncomfortable meal Tora stood like a painted stake behind his mistress's chair. The "boy," attempting to supply the watchful efficiency his senior for once app...

Mrs. Todd and her daughter, in driving away from the Haganés' official home, had given the order, "Suruga Dai." To be truthful and more accurate, this euphonious, topographical...

He went through the gesture, revolving one fat pudding of a fist about the other, and closing with an outward fling of both, and a shrug that made his body quake. "No news at al...

Pierre's visible return was preceded by a great chatter of his voice, now in English, again in French. Evidently he had more than one companion. Hagané and Yuki drew apart. Pier...

It had been said of Mr. Cyrus C. Todd that one might recognize him for an American half a mile away. The alertness, buoyancy, and self-confidence of a growing nation had express...

Night in Japan, when the day has been all or partly clear, is a deepening mystery, a revelation of purple tones and velvet shadows. In the French Legation garden (designed origi...

The sumptuous obsequies of the young Princess Hagané, become so suddenly and so securely a leading figure in Tokio's official life; her mysterious death (heart failure, the obli...