Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/40

 also was the smile from the lips of Li Hsein. One morning his body was found half buried in the yellow mud by the river bank. There was no sign of violence upon it, but his lips had been torn from his face.

This was only one of a series of tragedies in which Li Hsein figured. A shipping agent named Chang wooed her. Later he, too, was found in the river mud; lifeless, with his lips missing. On the occasion of this second death people began to talk. No one spoke boldly, but there were vague whisperings. Li Hsein was a witch woman, daughter of a serpent who drank only human blood. Yet there were many who refused to give credence to such fantastic mutterings. Chief among these was Lin Sing, the scholar. Lin was a great philosopher who spent much of his time on the hilltops lost in profound meditation. He was a worshiper of beauty. That which was beautiful, he believed, was divine. When he saw Li Hsein for the first time his heart beat fast with love. She was a divinity, something to be worshiped, more fragrant than a flower, lovelier than a frost-tipped sunset or dawn rising above a yellow sea.

For a summer their love was something to tell about in legend. It put at rest all the vague mutterings about Li Hsein. Greater love there could not be. He adored her.

One day she returned to her home shrieking and crying frantically. Lin Sing, the scholar, was dead and all that life affords had been snatched from her. She wept and moaned and beat upon her breast. She implored the serpent that slept under Canton to devour her. Tragedy stalked that night throughout Canton. Neighbors wept and mourned with her. She and Lin Sing had been rambling through the mountains far from Canton when they were attacked by a mountain lion. Lin Sing had fought the beast with his bare hands and had succeeded in keeping it back until she escaped, but he paid with his life. The wailing of the women who knew her continued until the body of the scholar was found. It had not been scratched. There was no sign of a struggle. But he had been dead for some time and his lips were missing.

After that people commenced to shun the beautiful Li Hsein. They turned from her on the street. They muttered magic words as they passed her door. And she kept on smiling, although she avoided everyone. During those days it was noticed that she had begun carrying the fan, the orange-red fan of fantastic design. She drew it across her face when she met people in the filthy winding alleys of Canton.

years rolled on. Other lovers came to her home, but they were strangers and no one questioned their coming nor their going. Whether they, too, died, who can say?

Li Hsein never married, and in time her beauty faded, her face became lined and coarse, her lips thickened. All her fine features seemed to slip from their moorings. Her nose grew flatter and the nostrils farther apart. The sheen died out of her hair. Her body grew stouter and stouter until she was but a bloated, shapeless mass. Every night she sat before her doorway with the fan. The years had not been kind to her. Each had extracted a charm from her, until she had no more to give.

One night John Steppling, an American explorer, chanced upon her. She was sitting crooning before her door. Steppling had heard the legends about her, and when she smiled at him, he paused.

"Won't you come in," she said softly, "that I may sing songs to you