een the witnesses of our love. Speak of it to no living
person, dearest; and take with you this little souvenir of our happy
night."

And she presented him with an exquisite and curious little thing,--a
paper-weight in likeness of a couchant lion, wrought from a jade-stone
yellow as that created by a rainbow in honor of Kong-fu-tze. Tenderly
the boy kissed the gift and the beautiful hand that gave it. "May the
Spirits punish me," he vowed, "if ever I knowingly give you cause to
reproach me, sweetheart!" And they separated with mutual vows.

That morning, on returning to the house of Lord Tchang, Ming-Y told the
first falsehood which had ever passed his lips. He averred that his
mother had requested him thenceforward to pass his nights at home, now
that the weather had become so pleasant; for, though the way was
somewhat long, he was strong and active, and needed both air and healthy
exercise. Tchang believed all Ming-Y said, and offered no objection.
Accordingly the lad found himself enabled to pass all his evenings at
the house of the beautiful Sie. Each night they devoted to the same
pleasures which had made their first acquaintance so charming: they sang
and conversed by turns; they played at chess,--the learned game invented
by Wu-Wang, which is an imitation of war; they composed pieces of eighty
rhymes upon the flowers, the trees, the clouds, the streams, the birds,
the bees. But in all accomplishments Sie far excelled her young
sweetheart. Whenever they played at chess, it was always Ming-Y's
general, Ming-Y's _tsiang_, who was surrounded and vanquished; when they
composed verses, Sie's poems were ever superior to his in harmony of
word-coloring, in elegance of form, in classic loftiness of thought.
And the themes they selected were always the most difficult,--those of
the poets of the Thang dynasty; the songs they sang were also the songs
of five hundred years before,--the songs of Youen-tchin, of Thou-mou, of
Kao-pien above all, high poet and ruler of the province of Sze-tchouen.

So the summer waxed and waned upon their love, and the luminous autumn
came, with its vapors of phantom gold, its shadows of magical purple.

* * * * *

Then it unexpectedly happened that the father of Ming-Y, meeting his
son's employer at Tching-tou, was asked by him: "Why must your boy
continue to travel every evening to the city, now that the winter is
approaching? The way is long, and when he retu