“Soldier not happy very much is.  I sink soldier heart sorry.”

The Red Cross orderly looked up from his work, and his eyes followed her gesture.

“He is hurt bad,” he said shortly; “no legs, no arms.”

“So—­deska?” she said politely, then repeated his words in puzzled incomprehension:  “Nowarms?  Nowarms?”

When she returned to the soldier she gathered up the flowers which she had dropped by the wayside, and timidly offered them to him.  For a long moment she waited, then her smile faded mid her hand dropped.  With a child’s quick sensitiveness to rebuff, she was turning away when an exclamation recalled her.

The prisoner was looking at her in a strange, distressed way; his deep-set gray eyes glanced down first at one bandaged shoulder, then at the other, then he shook his head.

As O Sana San followed his glance, a startled look of comprehension sprang into her face.  “Nowarms!” she repeated softly as the meaning dawned upon her, then with a little cry of sympathy she ran forward and gently laid her flowers on his breast.

The cavalcade moved on, under the warm spring sun, over the smooth white road, under the arching cryptomerias; but little O Sana Sun stood with her butterfly net over her shoulder and watched it with troubled eyes.  A dreadful something was stirring in her breast, something clutched at her throat, and she no longer saw the sunshine and the flowers.  Kneeling by the roadside, she loosened the little basket which was tied to her obi and gently lifted the lid.  Slowly at first, and then with eager wings, a dozen captive butterflies fluttered back to freedom.

* * * * *

Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners.  To one of the small rooms at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the only way she knew.

O Sana San’s heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand.  Her mother, in whom smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after day to the hospital.

The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her visits became a matter of course.

And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of gloom.  He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he turned his head to listen for the patter of the little tabi that was sure to sound along the hall.