Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/80

 it at your feet. Do you know how my mother died? She died when she bore me to her lord my father. And I would gladly die so, only the child must be a son, to worship at your grave and to teach his sons and his sons' sons to worship so." The pretty, delicate creature clung to him in an ecstasy of devotion, all her fresh womanhood dedicated to him, and then she laughed softly, pressed her hands together in a lightened mood. "Oh! I would gather the dew from the cherry blossoms to bathe me in its scent, to make me more beautiful to thee!" And this, too, was an old, old cry, as old as woman-sex.

"You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am: though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better; yet, for you I would be trebled twenty times myself."

A girl in Belmont put it so, in a dream a man dreamed beneath an English mulberry tree. And girls have said it countless times, each girl after her own sweet fashion, and men have accepted it, some in manhood splendidly, some in dastardy cravenly. Basil accepted it in shame, drinking the bitter cup of his selfish brewing.

"But," he said, bending over her tenderly as she clung to him, "you are as beautiful as the cherry blossom itself, Nang Ping."

She bent back and looked up searchingly into his face, and then she broke away and danced a little from him, as if too quick with her own joy to stand longer still. "And as happy as heaven!" she cried. "Ah! and when they see me, will they not guess?"

"Oh! but you mustn't let them; you must not," his answer came quickly.

She shook her head slowly. "But I am all happiness