Page:Frank Owen - The Scarlett Hill, 1941.djvu/28

 with him. He listened, munched grapes, spat out the seeds and all offers. His rejections were not decisive. A woman grows more alluring when dangled before covetous eyes.

Yuhan was thankful, curious and satisfied. Though her uncle consulted her about nothing, she had contrived to make known to him her wishes. With artful suggestion, she had conversed with him and he had absorbed her thoughts.

Yuhan was fair to gaze upon; her beauty was celebrated throughout the Province. Secretly, she vowed, her fame would rise so greatly that it would sweep over the whole of China like the Yellow River in flood. Now she was glad that since childhood she had devoted so many hours to study. She knew the Classics, the works of the Master, wrote so beautifully that her grasswriting brush strokes were written pictures. She played the lute as sweetly as Ling-lun who invented music. When Ling, in the Kwen-lun Mountains, cut a reed of bamboo and blew upon it, birds gathered 'round him. At first he imitated the birds, but when he had perfected his talent, birds imitated him. Yuhan, too, liked to imitate birds. Nightingales flying in the blue dome of heaven, so far away their small bodies were not discernible. They never came to her, but other birds of gay plumage hopped about near by. And once a pet parrot had been so affected by her song that he fell down as though he were drunk.

She was a slender, graceful dancer, not slender enough to satisfy herself, but few about her could find