Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/144

 restful corner. Nang Ping had fifty pictures of great price, and more ivories, each a gem, but all the pictures save one, all the ivories save one, were stowed away always, and just one at a time placed where it might joy her sight; and most often she moved softly about her home habited in plain raiment of neutral tints as gentle as a dove's.

Her hair took her longest. She had never brushed it before, and the unguent took time to remove. But at last even that was done, the jeweled pins heaped away, the long black strands braided about her head.

And then she sat down on the floor again, her cold, ringless hands clasped at her knees, and waited and listened until her father's gong should strike.

She knew that she should hear it presently.

Once she started, and caught up from the floor a little scented bead. She held it to her face, and then laid it away in her bosom. It was her father's, one of a string he often wore, and in her bitter misery she was pathetically a little happier for the proof it gave her that his own hands had carried her here. She would keep it in her bosom always—while she lived.

Twice servants came in with trays of food and drink; blanc-mange, soup, tea and wine. They made deep obeisance to her when they came and when they went. But she did not speak to them, nor they to her.

And no message came until the message of the great gong's soft boom.