In spite of her dread as she squirmed in this new trap, she had an overwhelming impulse to laugh hysterically and say, He wasn't a devil, not to me, not the first time, he left me alive the first time, and not a devil after I changed him. He didn't kill me though I know he was going to, I know he was going to just before I made him leave... Devil, no but even so he deserved to die, had to die...

Mon Dieu, I still don't even know his name, I was so enmeshed I forgot to ask...

I must be going mad to think such things. "Who was he?"

"No one knows. Yet. The Satsuma king could name him now that he's dead but it would probably be a false. They're such liars--that's not quite true, it's just that what we call lying seems to be a way of life with them. Probably the man found the cross at Kanagawa. You don't remember exactly when you discovered it had gone?"

"No, I don't. It was only when I got back here..." Again she saw his probing, questioning eyes and her mind screamed: Did my pulse or pulses tell him my real condition? "It's found. Good, thank God. I can't thank you enough but why should he wear it or keep it, that's what I can't understand."

"I agree, very odd."

The silence grew. "What does Dr. Hoag think?"

Babcott looked at her but she could not read what he was really thinking. "I didn't ask him," he said, "didn't discuss it with him, or with Malcolm." His eyes went back to hers and seemed to take on a deeper color. "Hoag's a Struan man and he, well his rice bowl is with Tess Struan. I don't know why, but I thought I should talk to you first."

Again a silence. She looked away, not trusting herself, wishing she could truly trust him, wanting to trust someone other than Andr`e--his knowing was bad enough--but sure beyond sure it was impossible.

She had to keep to the plan: she was alone, she must save herself alone.

"Perhaps..." she said, "no, surely he must have found my crucifix at Kanagawa, must have seen me there and, and perhaps...." She stopped then hurried on, leading him on, inventing as she continued, "perhaps he kept it to remind him of me to... I don't really know, to what?"

He said awkwardly, "To obviously do you harm, my dear, to possess you, one way or another, kill you. Sorry but that must be the truth.

At first I thought, like everyone else, that he was just one of these outlaws called ronin, but your crucifix changed all that. The moment I discovered it was yours... it must be as you say, he saw you at the Tokaido, he and the other man must have followed Malcolm and Phillip Tyrer to Kanagawa to finish them off, probably to avoid identification. Then he saw you again, found the crucifix and kept it because it was yours, pursued you here and tried to break in to, sorry again, to possess you, whatever the cost.

Don't forget it would be easy for such a man to be infatuated by such a person as you, to be, to be obsessed."

The way he said it made it clearer than ever he too was within her spell. Good, and good that he's realized the truth, she thought, faint with relief that another hazard had been eliminated. Her mind strayed to the little bottles and to tomorrow when she would be cleansed, to start her new life, the future wonderful.

"Japanese are a curious people," he was saying. "Different. But different in one major way, they're not afraid to die. They almost seem to seek it. You were lucky, so lucky to escape.

Well, I'll be off."

"Yes, and thank you thank you." She caught his hand and pressed it to her cheek. "You'll tell Malcolm and Dr. Hoag? Then that will end it."

"I'll leave Malcolm to you." For a second he considered asking her help with his opium addiction but decided it was not yet urgent, and anyway it was his own responsibility, not hers.

Poor Angelique, she has enough to deal with. "As to Hoag, what does it matter to him, or to busybodies and wagging tongues in Yokohama?

None of their affair, or mine, eh?"

He saw her clear eyes in the radiant face smiling up at him, pellucid skin, all of her emanating youth and health together with the magnetic, unconscious sensuality perpetually surrounding her that had, against all medical expectation, increased in power. Astonishing, he thought, filled with wonder at her resilience. I only wish I knew her secret and why some people thrive on adversities that would break most others.

Abruptly the doctor part of him fell away. I can't blame that ronin, or Malcolm, or anyone being mad for her, I want her too. "Curious about your cross," he said throatily, not a little ashamed. "But then life's a collection of curiosities, isn't it. 'night, my dear, sleep well."

The first cramp clawed her out of a crooked sleep that was sated with prison hulks and sloe-eyed, raving demons, the women bloated with child, the men horned and grasping her away from Tess Struan who stood guard over Malcolm like a malevolent ghoul. A second cramp followed quickly and brought her awake to reality and what was happening.

Relief that it had begun obliterated the previous hours of trepidation for it had seemed an eternity before she had slept. Now it was just past 4 A.m. The last time she looked at her clock it was almost 2:30. Another cramp, rougher than before, went through her and concentrated her on the sequence.

Trembling fingers uncorked the second bottle. Again she gagged on the putrid taste and almost brought the liquid up but managed to keep it down with a spoon of honey, all the while her stomach churning with revulsion.

She lay back gasping. Fire seemed to spread from her stomach. In moments sweat poured out of her. Then the sweating passed leaving her limp, soaked and hardly breathing.

Waiting. As before, nothing. Just a bilious, sweet sick disquiet that had, after hours of anxiety, drifted into troubled sleep. Her dismay crested. "Blessed Mother, let it work, let it work," she murmured through her tears.

More waiting. Still nothing. The minutes passed.

Then, unlike before, a startlingly different cramp almost doubled her up. Another. Just bearable. More, still bearable. She remembered the second half of the infusion and she sat up and began to sip it. The taste was bad but not as bad as the liquid in the bottles. "Thank God I don't have to take more of that," she muttered and sipped again. Another sip. After each sip a taste of chocolate...

More cramps, stronger now. An increasing rhythm to them. Don't worry, everything's happening, she thought, just as Andr`e forecast. Her stomach muscles were beginning to feel stretched and angry. More sips and more cramps and then the last drop was down. Honey jar almost empty--last of the chocolate but now even its sweetness could not mask the bilious aftertaste. A draft from under the boudoir door swayed the flame of the lamp on the side table, making the wall shadows change and dance. Stoically she lay back and watched them, her hands holding her belly against the shafts of pain, the muscles tightening and loosening, becoming more tight, knotting under her fingers.

"Watch the shadows, think good thoughts," she whispered. "What do you see?"

Ships and sails and the roofs of Paris and brambles and look, there's the guillotine, no, not the guillotine but a bower covered with climbing roses, why it's our country cottage near Versailles where we would go in the spring and summer growing up, my brother and I, darling Maman dead so long ago, Father gone only God knows where, Aunt and Uncle loving us but no substitute for darlin-- "Oh Mon Dieu!" she gasped as the first of the violent spasms slashed her, then cried out at the next, frantically crammed part of the sheet into her mouth to stop the shrieks that burst out of her and would have brought all the Legation pounding on her bolted door.

Then the chills began. Ice picks into her guts. And more violence, twenty times worse than the worst monthly cramps. Her body heaved against the strain, limbs twitching in time with the waves of torment that ripped from her loins and into her head.