After a few thumps his heart resumed its normal beat, and he said: “I did not know that you were there, but it is possible that the curious spirits of the land may have brought our thoughts together, for indeed I was thinking of you and of how you had changed me.”
“This is my home,” she said, “but, even so, I do not think that you and I should be sitting together thus in the dark. I had been thinking, also. Do you know that only my mother recognised me when I came?”
He laughed softly, surprised at the pleasant suggestion of his own laughter. “I thought that you, now that your troubles and your honours alike are over, would not too clearly remember what brought us together. In my experience of women I have always found them ready to forget any inconvenient service which has been paid them, such as the service which my uncle and the eunuch Han Im paid you when they helped you to run away from the palace at Chang-an. If you have been thinking, as you say, I judge your thoughts to have dwelt upon a welcome return to the routine of a woman’s duties, a routine which in spite of its lack of excitement provides for you the alternative to the soft delights of palace life.”
“That was not my thought,” she answered softly. “I was thinking that you, now, . . . Hush!”
Voices were coming towards them. Ah Lai could see nothing of the speakers, and Winter Cherry sat motionless beside him.
One voice said: “Then we shall tell them to-morrow. Such a woman as she is cannot be allowed to live. We must trample her under the horses out there, on the slope of Ma Wei.”
The other voice replied: “What you suggest is very dangerous, but if the opportunity is not seized now, the opportunity will pass. The case of the punishment designed for the fool Seuen is as good a one as is likely to arise. And, if she is killed as well as that fat eunuch Han Im, then we shall at last have a government of men.”
The first voice went on: “Perhaps it will be enough if we kill only the woman. Eunuchs, unlike girls, can be made to see sense. Yes, we must do it now. The Captain of the Guard and General Tung can recognise truth when their noses are rubbed on it, and it is the duty of every loyal man to do for the Emperor what he has been prevented from doing for himself by reason of being woman-ridden.”
The speakers moved off and their voices joined with the gentle movement of the wind.
Ah Lai said: “‘Woman-ridden’. That is the talk of madmen.”
Winter Cherry did not speak, but he was surprised to find that she so far forgot the rules of behaviour as to touch his sleeve gently. From the living rooms a voice sang, just audibly, a song of the Han campaigns.
Ah Lai said: “Life is a campaign, and to him a joyous one. I do not feel to-night that I could ever say to you again the things which I said to you at the Pavilion of Porcelain, but I do not regret having said them. I meant them then, and I am not of those weak ones who veer and back like a lake wind in autumn. Nevertheless I am very tired, and I am going to bed now. I am so tired that for once I am quite content to leave to the military officers the problems which it seems will confront them. You, too, must be tired. Let us bid each other good-night, for if we fell asleep where we are now it might lead to pleasant but awkward misunderstandings. Walk well. If I have seemed to say nothing which was expected of me, you may ascribe that merely to fatigue. Had it been otherwise, I would have spoken otherwise.” He rested his hand for a moment on her shoulder, felt her shiver at his touch in the warm night, took away his hand and rose to his feet. “I was not at my best to-night,” he said as he left her.
Winter Cherry did not for some minutes rise from her seat in the summerhouse, but when she did she was still conscious of his touch upon her shoulder, as a delightfully remembered thing which unbalanced the rhythm of her heart and made it difficult for her to set her mind firmly on what she knew that she had to do on the morrow. Then she went back to her own room.
When Yang Kuei-fei came to the room of Winter Cherry, the girl was sitting on the bed at the end of the room, lost in thought. She started up when Kuei-fei came in, as habit dictates to a minor star when the moon sweeps into the sky.
“You are thinking,” Kuei-fei said, sitting down on the bed and motioning Winter Cherry beside her. “Do not be shy, girl—you and I are in no very dissimilar circumstances. Disaster sniffs at our heels, like a mongrel bitch.”
Winter Cherry replied, sitting down: “Yes. Even when I am awake I seem to be sleeping. I have been so ever since . . .”
Kuei-fei said: “He sent for you, that last night. I was angry with that, for though I did not want him myself, I grudged him to you. Yen told me of it.”
“I had to go,” Winter Cherry told her. “Han Im fetched me. His Majesty talked a great deal.”