r, wailing loud and long.

Hunger and cold had given such a piteous accent to his cry that none
could have listened unmoved.

Miss Li heard it from her room and at once said to her servant, "That is
so-and-so. I know his voice." She flew to the door and was horrified to
see her old lover standing before her so emaciated by hunger and
disfigured by sores that he seemed scarcely human. "Can it be you?" she
said. But the young man was so overcome by bewilderment and excitement
that he could not speak, but only moved his lips noiselessly.

She threw her arms round his neck, then wrapped him in her own
embroidered jacket and led him to the parlour. Here, with quavering
voice, she reproached herself, saying, "It is my doing that you have
been brought to this pass." And with these words she swooned.

Her mother came running up in great excitement, asking who had arrived.
Miss Li, recovering herself, said who it was. The old woman cried out in
rage: "Send him away! What did you bring him in here for?"

But Miss Li looked up at her defiantly and said: "Not so! This is the
son of a noble house. Once he rode in grand coaches and wore golden
trappings on his coat. But when he came to our house, he soon lost all
he had; and then we plotted together and left him destitute. Our conduct
has indeed been inhuman! We have ruined his career and robbed him even
of his place in the category of human relationships. For the love of
father and son is implanted by Heaven; yet we have hardened his
father's heart, so that he beat him with a stick and left him on the
ground.

"Every one in the land knows that it is I who have reduced him to his
present plight. The Court is full of his kinsmen. Some day one of them
will come into power. Then an inquiry will be set afoot, and disaster
will overtake us. And since we have flouted Heaven and defied the laws
of humanity, neither spirits nor divinities will be on our side. Let us
not wantonly incur a further retribution!

"I have lived as your daughter for twenty years. Reckoning what I have
cost you in that time, I find it must be close on a thousand pieces of
gold. You are now aged sixty, so that by the price of twenty more years'
food and clothing, I can buy my freedom. I intend to live separately
with this young man. We will not go far away; I shall see to it that we
are near enough to pay our respects to you both morning and evening."

The "mother" saw that she was not to be gainsaid and fell