she would be alone and unmolested. Even when the gong brayed out the call of evening rice she made no sign. Wu Low Soong brought a tray of food and laid it gently on the floor, with a timid supplicatory clatter, beneath the purple scarf, and, after listening a moment as she knelt with her hands still on the tray, crept ruefully away. She had shared in the outer edges of all Nang Ping's love raptures, shared the dangers of the forbidden sweetnesses, and it was very hard to be shut out from the newer excitement of what was evidently a jagged love-*rift.
Nang Ping lay very still all night, uncushioned and uncovered on her polished floor. Her frightened eyes were closed, but she was wide awake—wider awake than she had ever been before.
She felt Basil linger. She heard him go. She heard each night-sound all the night long. She heard her household's every stir, and heard it hush.
In the morning, before any but the night-watchman stirred, she stole out into the garden and wandered about it aimlessly. But she did not enter the pagoda.
While it was still very early she went back to her own room, beat on her own gong, a little burnished steel disk, summoning her women. And when they hurried to her, surprised and heavy with sleep, she bathed and put on fresh garments. It was her habit to chatter gayly with her women while they dressed her, but to-day she scarcely spoke and they scarcely dared speak. She sat quite motionless in her ivory chair while Tieng Po dressed her hair. Tieng Po was one of the cleverest tire maids in China, and wonderfully quick. It rarely took her more than three hours to do her lady's hair, and today she did it in even a little less. But she had never done it more elaborately, and all the time her mistress watched
