“I knew you would come back,” she said presently, her voice quivering between laughter and sobs. “When I touched your robes and felt you tremble I knew that you loved me, and when you took hold of my wrists you do not know what happiness came over me. I felt as if you were going to pick me up and fly away forever to that heaven you have spoken of so often. Then—then you threw me to the floor.”
She felt the Breton shudder, and she reached down and took hold of his ears and tilted his head back. For a moment she looked into his eyes, then for the first time in many months the room echoed softly with her laughter.
“You must not look that way,” she cried roguishly as she twitched his ears. “Don’t you know that that was a most happy parting compared to the first time you went away, when you left me without a word, chained by torturing doubt? But this time you threw me to the floor, and then I knew that you loved me. I have not been unhappy, nor have I been joyful these many weeks, but I have been contented, and in the airy tapestry of my dreams have I embroidered ten thousand times just such a scene as this. Each day at that time, when you were accustomed to come, I sought my stool here beside the screen, waited, and now you have come as I knew you would.”
Impulsively she knelt down beside him and in the gathering dusk soon one figure could not be distinguished from the other.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE GROTTO OF THE SLEEPLESS DRAGON
Few spectacles are ever given for man to witness more melancholy than the dissolution of an ancient dynasty; an end inevitably tragic and often leaving its solemn sign, as did the dissipation of the Mings, forever upon the people.
For two centuries and a half had this family of the acolyte ruled over a wide portion of earth and then did it go out, tragically, but in a manner befitting a dynasty whose past had been so filled with greatness.
When Tongshing—the last of his race to rule from the Dragon Throne—found that the east gate of his capital was invested by besieging armies, he retraced his steps to the Palace and sounded the gong to summon his courtiers. None appeared. Then alone with the eunuch, Wen Chenan, the old monarch sought his favourite spot on Wansui Hill, and there beneath its solitary tree wrote this, his final protest:
“For seventeen years I have reigned from the Dragon Throne and now even rebels come to insult me in my capital. Evidently this is a punishment sent by Heaven. But I am not alone guilty. My ministers are worse than myself. They have ruined me by concealing the true condition of affairs.
“With what countenance shall I after death be able to appear before my forefathers? You, who have brought me to this unhappy end, take my body and hack it to pieces. I shall not protest. But spare my people and refrain from doing them injury.”