“You are even more beautiful than the night,” he said.

All during their marriage he’d taken for granted that her beauty belonged only to him, and that he alone possessed her love, despite the twenty years’ difference in their ages. But recently he’d learned otherwise. Betrayal had shattered his illusions. Now, as his wife smiled him, he could almost see the shadow of another man darkening and fouling the air between them. Rage enflamed the samurai.

“What a strange look is on your face,” said his wife. “Is something wrong?”

“Quite the contrary.” Tonight he would redress the evil done to him. He rowed harder, away from the other boats, away from the lights on shore.

His wife stirred and her expression turned uneasy. “Dearest, we’re getting too far from land,” she said, removing her hand from the water that streamed past the boat. “Shouldn’t we go back?”

The samurai stilled the oars. The boat drifted in the vast darkness beyond the colorful bursts of the rockets. The explosions echoed across the water, but the cries were fainter and the lights mere pinpoints. Stars glittered like cold jewels around a filigree gold moon. “We aren’t going back,” he said.

Sitting upright, his wife gazed at him in confusion. He spoke quietly: “I know.”

“What are you talking about?” But the sudden fear in her eyes said she understood exactly what he meant.

“I know about you and him,” the samurai said, his voice harsh with grief as well as anger.

“There’s nothing between us. It isn’t what you think!” Breathless with her need to convince, his wife said, “I only talk to him because he’s your friend.”

But the man had been more than a friend to the samurai. How the double betrayal had injured his pride! Yet the worst of his anger focused on his wife, the irresistible temptress.