Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/206

 "Greeting," he remarked cheerfully. "Did you find your early rice?"

"It has sufficed," replied Chang Tao. "How is your own incomparable stomach?"

Pe-lung pointed to the empty bed of the deflected river and moved his head from side to side as one who draws an analogy to his own condition. "But of your more pressing enterprise," he continued, with sympathetic concern: "have you persevered to a fruitful end, or will it be necessary?" And with tactful feeling he indicated the gesture of propelling an antagonist over the side of a precipice rather than allude to the disagreeable contingency in spoken words.

"When the oil is exhausted the lamp goes out," admitted Chang Tao, "but my time is not yet come. During the visionary watches of the night my poising mind was sustained by Forces, as you so presciently foretold, and my groping hand was led to an inspired solution of the truth."

"This points to a specific end. Proceed," urged Pe-lung, for Chang Tao hesitated among his words as though their import might not be soothing to the other's mind.

"Thus it is given me to declare: she who is called Melodious Vision is rightly of the house of Shen, and Fuh-sang is no less innate of your exalted tribe. The erring gnome, in spite of his misdeed, was but a finger of the larger hand of destiny, and as it is, it is."

"This assurance gladdens my face, no less for your sake than for my own," declared Pe-lung heartily. "For my part, I have found a way to enlarge you in the eyes of those whom you solicit. It is a custom