r-rings of the sky-blue stone and sea-tears, and
have thy hair dressed and thy gowns perfumed, and place the two red
circles on the smile of thy cheeks. To-night we will feast. Hast thou
forgotten to-night is the Feast of the Lanterns, when all good Buddhists
rejoice?"

He stood beside her rickshaw, in his imperial yellow garment hemmed with
the rainbow waves of the sea, and smiled down into her eyes.

"But the spirit God of love, the foreign-born spirit God?" said
Dong-Yung. "Shall we feast to him, too?"

"Nay, it is not fitting to feast to two gods at once," said Foh-Kyung.
"Do as I have said."

He left her. Dong-Yung, riding through the sun-splashed afternoon,
buying colored jewels and flowery perfume and making herself beautiful,
yet felt uneasy. She had not quite understood. A dim knowledge advanced
toward her like a wall of fog. She pressed her two hands against it and
held it off--held it off by sheer mental refusal to understand. In the
courtyard at home the children were playing with their lighted animals,
drawing their gaudy paper ducks, luminous with candle-light, to and fro
on little standards set on four wheels. At the gate hung a tall
red-and-white lantern, and over the roof floated a string of candle-lit
balloons. In the ancestral hall the great wife had lit the red candles,
speared on their slender spikes, before the tablets. In the kitchen the
cooks and amahs were busy with the feast-cooking. Candles were stuck
everywhere on the tables and benches. They threw little pools of light
on the floor before the stove and looked at the empty niche. In the
night it was merely a black hole in the stove filled with formless
shadow. She wished--

"Dong-Yung, Flower in the House, where hast thou hidden the kitchen
gods? Put them in their place." Foh-Kyung, still in imperial yellow,
stood like a sun in the doorway.

Dong-Yung turned.

"But--"

"Put them back, little Jewel in the Hair. It is not permitted to worship
the spirit God. There are bars and gates. The spirit of man must turn
back in the searching, turn back to the images of plaster and paint."

Dong-Yung let the wall of fog slide over her. She dropped her
resistance. She knew.

"Nay, not the spirit of man. It is but natural that the great God does
not wish the importunings of a small wife. Worship thou alone the great
God, and the shadow of that worship will fall on my heart."

"Nay, I cannot worship alone. My worship is not acceptable in the s