Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 9 (1943-01).djvu/18

 pass me by, for even you have no power over death itself, I shall be gratified."

"Death will halt, I promise you that. In the meantime, I shall muse over an old precept, 'Never lightly esteem a friend or an enemy.'"

OURS later Trent was alone in the sleeping room that had been assigned to him. He paid no attention to the embroidered rugs and draperies. The flowers were so lifelike they seemed to give forth perfume. In one corner of the room there was a silken bamboo thicket that seemed to sway in the breeze like slender girls dancing. Above them was a verse embroidered in equisite characters: "The bamboos are admirable when fresh with rain. In the hills we love the time of sunset." Trent had always enjoyed this mixing of art with written characters that is so typically Chinese. He had several landscapes in his apartment in New York, dating back to middle Ching upon which there were numerous verses, one written by the original painter, others by poets who had enjoyed viewing the picture and had set down their thoughts as one might scribble marginal notes on the pages of a beloved book. There were also a couple of seals that attested to its authenticity. One had the simplest of lines, "Oh, these Mountains, Oh, these Great Mountains—" as though the artist, overcome by their grandeur had been unable to go on. But now Trent gazed at the inscriptions of the tapestries with unseeing eyes. In the bamboo grove he imagined he could see the amber girl dancing to the rhythm of the swaying bamboos. His eyes were glazed with the wonder of her, nor did he see her with his eyes alone. He saw her with his heart and his flesh. His whole body longed for her, his mouth was dry with a dryness of a thirst nothing could quench. He cast off his clothes and put on the Chinese lounging garments that were spread on a chair beside the bed. They were cooler than his own clothes but still that amber fire burned within him, the fire of love without reason and without regard. He must have the girl, hold her for one immortal moment in his arms though he die for it the next moment. Death would mean nothing to him then, for he would be like unto a man who had drunk the stars and walked through the highroads of the sky. There was madness in his thoughts, divine madness.

He threw himself upon the bed and tried to rest. Sleep dug at his eyes but it would not enter. The silken coverlets were warm to his touch as though a fire had been kindled underneath the kong as is customary in China during four-coat weather. But it was mid-summer, though he was not sure of the season. Time in China is very elastic and one never cares about the days of the week or the weeks of the months. The earth turns without man's effort. Why toil? The heat intensified, the fever of longing which he could not endure. He did not even know the name of the girl enclosed in the amber, yet her image had come to live in his heart. His body was in torment, and then out of the whispering night a daring plan took root in his thoughts. He was a man of action. The war had made him so. He rose from the bed, put on his felt-soled slippers, and slipped through the curtains of his room. He was thankful that there was no door to creak an alarm.

It was not difficult for him to find the way. The lanterns in the various rooms were still lighted, since within the caverns daylight never penetrated. His padded slippers made no sound, nor did he meet anyone. Within the mountain all were sleeping or enjoying inactivity. It took but a moment for him to reach the amber shrine of his beloved. A gentle smile seemed to hover about the corners of her