Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/117

 man which the gargoyle shell of his body had always hidden. For one brief interlude their sight was as keen as that of flowers. He was straight and handsome, like a young tree, and his beauty matched hers in perfectness. Like beaten mice Pu Chiang and his friends crept down from the hilltop. They had sinned by interfering with the strange ways of destiny.

From that day forth misfortune dogged the footsteps of Pu Chiang. His business did not prosper. His customers fell away. They complained that his tea was bitter. When he brought them honeysuckle blossoms and rose petals to flavor it with, strange bugs peeped out from the flowers whose bite was poison. At last not a customer remained to Pu Chiang, the garrulous.

More and more he sought solace in his pipe. He grew nervous and irritable. He had lost his wealth and his health was fleeing. He became a victim of his own hallucinations. Always he had controlled his dreams but now his dreams controlled him. He believed that on moonlight nights more of the moon-glow came to his house than to any other. The moon was spying on him. The moon was alive. It was an enemy, a great animal whose breath was poison. It tore at his reason. When it was moonlight he cried and moaned as though the moon were beating him with bamboo sticks.

One morning his reason broke free from its moorings. He rushed from his deserted tea-house to the swamp-garden. After all life was a veritable swamp. No matter how hard one struggled the end was