cannot tell. I think of thee by day and I dream of thee
by night. I never want to hurt thee nor cause thee a moment's sorrow.
I would fill my hands with happiness to lay down at thy feet. Thou art
my life, my love, my all, and I am thine to hold through all the years.

13
My Dear One,
It is the time of school, and now all the day from the servants'
courtyard I hear their droning voices chanting the sayings of
Confucius. I did not know we had so many young lives within our
compound until I saw them seated at their tables. I go at times and
tell them tales which they much prefer to lessons, but of which thine
Honourable Mother does not approve. I told them the other day of
Pwan-ku. Dost thou remember him? How at the beginning of Time the
great God Pwan-ku with hammer and chisel formed the earth. He
toiled and he worked for eighteen thousand years, and each day
increased in stature six feet, and, to give him room, the Heavens rose
and the earth became larger and larger. When the Heavens were
round and the earth all smooth, he died. His head became mountains,
his breath the wind and the clouds, his voice the thunder. His arms
and legs were the four poles, his veins the rivers, his muscles the hills
and his flesh the fields. His eyes became the stars, his skin and hair
the herbs and the trees, and the insects which touched him became
people. Does not that make thee think of thy childhood's days?

They crowd around me and say, "Tell us more," just as I did with my
old amah when she stilled me with the tales of the Gods. Yesterday,
one small boy, the son of the chief steward, begged for a story of the
sun. I had to tell him that my wisdom did not touch the sun, although
I, in my foolish heart, think it a great God because it gives us warmth
and we can feel its kindly rays. I said, "Thou hast seen the coolies
tracking on the tow-path with their heavy wadded clothing wet with
rain. If it were not for the kindly sun which dries them, how could they
toil and work and drag the great rice-boats up to the water-gate? Is he
not a God to them?"

I told them also of Chang-ngo, the great, great beauty who drank the
cup of life eternal. She went to the moon, where the jealous Gods
turned her into a great black toad. She is there, forever thinking,
mourning over her lost beauty, and when we see the soft haze come
over the face of the moon, we know that she is weeping and filling the
space with her tears.

I perhaps am wrong to tell