Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/22

 he followed the old Chinaman who now arose and entered the house, if house it could be called, for it was a huge ambling affair of mystery and shadows. Together they groped their way through multitudinous rooms, silent, weird vast through which scarcely even the faintest suggestion of daylight penetrated.

"I keep my house forever dark and shadowy," explained Hi Ling, "in order that it may always be in harmony with life."

"You think, then," said Steppling, "that life is clothed in shadows."

"I do indeed," was the quick response. "The shadows of earth quite outweigh the pleasures. Over almost everyone there is a shadow constantly hanging."

As he spoke they emerged into a great room which somehow suggested a shrine to Steppling. The air was fragrant with the pungent perfumes of the East, preeminent among which was the incense of aloes-wood and musk. In the center of a slightly raised black platform there stood a jade green vase. In the vase was a single branch, withered and old, a branch whose shrivelled appearance somehow suggested the gaunt face of Hi Ling. The flower if flower there had been had long since fallen from it. Above the vase hung a soft-toned yellow lantern, as round and coolly brilliant as an autumn moon, first rising above a range of blue-mist-crested hills.

Hi Ling prostrated himself flat on his face before the altar. He chanted some jumbled garish Chinese verses