For a time which ceased to be hours or minutes, but seemed as a fragment broken off eternity, he stood, motionless but most deeply racked. With an effort he stooped to take the cord, and paused again; twice he would have seized the dagger, but doubt again possessed him. From a distant point of the house came the chant of a monk singing a prayer and beating upon a wooden drum. The rays of the sun falling upon the gilded roof in the garden again caught his eyes; nothing else stirred.
“These in their turn have settled great issues lightly,” thought Weng bitterly. “Must I wait upon an omen?”
“... submitting oneself to purifying scars,” droned the voice far off; “propitiating if need be by even greater self-inflictions...”
“It suffices,” said Weng dispassionately, and picking up the knife he turned to leave the room.
At the door he paused again, but not in an arising doubt. “I will leave a token for Tiao to wear as a jest,” was the image that had sprung from his new abasement, and taking a sheet of parchment he quickly wrote thereon: “A wave has beat from that distant shore to this, and now sinks in the unknown depths.”
Again he stepped noiselessly to the couch, drew the curtain and dropped the paper lightly on the form. As he did so his breath stopped; his fingers stiffened. Cautiously, on one knee, he listened intently, lightly touched the face; then recklessly taking a hand he raised the arm and suffered it to fall again. No power restrained it; no alertness of awakening life came into the dull face. Wu Chi had already Passed Beyond.
CHAPTER VII
Not Concerned with any Particular Attribute of Those who are Involved
Unendurable was the intermingling of hopes and fears with which Kai Lung sought the shutter on the next occasion after the avowal of Hwa-mei’s devoted strategy. While repeatedly assuring himself that it would have been better to submit to piecemeal slicing without a protesting word rather than that she should incur so formidable a risk, he was compelled as often to admit that when once her mind had formed its image no effort on his part would have held her back. Doubtless Hwa-mei readily grasped the emotion that would possess the one whose welfare was now her chief concern, for without waiting to gum her hair or to gild her lips she hastened to the spot beneath the wall at the earliest moment that Kai Lung could be there.
“Seven marble tombstones are lifted from off my chest!” exclaimed the story-teller when he could greet her. “How did your subterfuge proceed, and with what satisfaction was the history of Weng Cho received?”
“That,” replied Hwa-mei modestly, “will provide the matter for an autumn tale, when seated around a pine-cone fire. In the meanwhile this protracted ordeal takes an ambiguous bend.”