Page:Frank Owen - The Scarlett Hill, 1941.djvu/160

RV 155 (LADY T'AI CHÊN) edge? What use would be pearls and jade or carpets like crushed pomegranates if you were not mine?"

She stirred in his arms and there was sleep upon her voice.

"Just hold me, hold me tight."

With his head pillowed on her gentle, fragrant breasts, he said, "This is all the Court I desire with little Lady T'ai Chên as the sole envoy."

But not always did they get on so divinely. My lady was quick to anger. Once when her jealousy had been momentarily aroused, she cut off a portion of her hair which she gave to Kao Li-shih.

"Take these tresses to your master," she said. "Tell him to make from them new strings for his lute, so that beneath his touch they will vibrate to the strings of his heart. Kao, do you not think they will bring him back to me?"

She imagined he had gone for a rendezvous with one of the other Palace ladies. This was far from the truth. Memory of her was much too vivid to make any other woman desirable. His absence was occasioned by ordinary routine of state affairs. He had always been deeply concerned with the health and welfare of his people. Any new advancement in surgery or medicine was reported to him at once.

That day he had gone with Dr. Wang Wei to witness an amazing surgical operation. From the Southern provinces a doctor had come unto Changan who had a weird luminous stone attached to a silk thread. When a patient swallowed the stone, it was possible to RV 155 (155)