Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/65

 standing very still, with a cloud of red silk gauze heaped at their feet.

Wu made a sudden sound that was almost a sob, and held out his arms.

"My flower," he said.

All night long the perfume of the flowers, the sweet, shrill voices of the sing-song girls, and the soundings of the guitar and the flutes stole softly in through the chamber casements; all night long they heard the throb, throb of the drums and of old barbaric love-songs; and all night long each felt the beating of the other's heart.

After that Wu Li Lu forgot that she had had a father and a mother, brothers, girl-friends and a home in Pekin. And Wu let all the days slip by, forgetting business of his own, affairs of China, life-plans, life-schemes, almost forgetting his grandfather; scarcely remembering, his wife's soft hand in his, to make obeisance before the old, old tablet in front of which their children would bow and worship them in far-off years to come, when he and Wu Lu should be dead.

For a year they lived in paradise, the pretty paradise that comes but once and does not come to all.

Mrs. Wu was as sweet, as delicate, as the graceful pet names he called her. She had no great strength of character, and little distinction of mind. How long it would have taken the infatuated man to learn this is impossible to guess. Whether, when learned, it would have diminished her fascination in the least is as difficult to determine, but, on the whole, probably not, Wu being Wu in China China.

When their first year closed in she bore him a daughter, and in bearing died.