n him, this
poor-clad, lean-bellied priest, I sensed the power behind power in all
the palace and in all Cho-Sen. I sensed also, through the drift of
speech, that he had use of me. Now was this use suggested by the Lady
Om?--a nut I gave Hendrik Hamel to crack. I little knew, and less I
cared, for I lived always in the moment and let others forecast, forfend,
and travail their anxiety.

I answered, too, the summons of the Lady Om, following a sleek-faced, cat-
footed eunuch through quiet palace byways to her apartments. She lodged
as a princess of the blood should lodge. She, too, had a palace to
herself, among lotus ponds where grow forests of trees centuries old but
so dwarfed that they reached no higher than my middle. Bronze bridges,
so delicate and rare that they looked as if fashioned by jewel-smiths,
spanned her lily ponds, and a bamboo grove screened her palace apart from
all the palace.

My head was awhirl. Sea-cuny that I was, I was no dolt with women, and I
sensed more than idle curiosity in her sending for me. I had heard love-
tales of common men and queens, and was a-wondering if now it was my
fortune to prove such tales true.

The Lady Om wasted little time. There were women about her, but she
regarded their presence no more than a carter his horses. I sat beside
her on deep mats that made the room half a couch, and wine was given me
and sweets to nibble, served on tiny, foot-high tables inlaid with pearl.

Lord, Lord, I had but to look into her eyes--But wait. Make no mistake.
The Lady Om was no fool. I have said she was of my own age. All of
thirty she was, with the poise of her years. She knew what she wanted.
She knew what she did not want. It was because of this she had never
married, although all pressure that an Asiatic court could put upon a
woman had been vainly put upon her to compel her to marry Chong Mong-ju.
He was a lesser cousin of the great Min family, himself no fool, and
grasping so greedily for power as to perturb Yunsan, who strove to retain
all power himself and keep the palace and Cho-Sen in ordered balance.
Thus Yunsan it was who in secret allied himself with the Lady Om, saved
her from her cousin, used her to trim her cousin's wings. But enough of
intrigue. It was long before I guessed a tithe of it, and then largely
through the Lady Om's confidences and Hendrik Hamel's conclusions.

The Lady Om was a very flower of woman. Women such as she are born
rarely, s