All the while Sim Ching lay hidden in the center of the flower without the King’s once suspecting it. All day the leaves were closed about her, and only at night did they open to allow her to come forth.
The first time they unfolded, she was very much surprised to find herself in a room of a palace, instead of out upon the sea as she had supposed. Wondering, she looked about her, and then she stepped from the flower and began, timidly, to examine the apartment to which she had been brought. The beauty of it delighted her. She rested among the soft cushions, and bathed in the fountains, and dressed her hair. But toward morning she reëntered the flower, and the leaves closed about her so that she was again hidden from view.
For some time life went on in this manner. All day Sim Ching slept in the flower, and only at night did she come forth, and as the King only visited the room in the daytime he never saw her, nor even guessed that a living maiden was inclosed by the leaves of the flower he admired so greatly.
But it so happened that one night the King could not sleep, and he took a fancy to visit the flower and see it by the light of the lamps. He therefore made his way along the corridors, and fitting the key into the lock, he turned it without having made a sound.
What was his surprise, when he opened the door, to see a maiden of surpassing beauty sitting beside a fountain and amusing herself by catching the water in her hands.
When Sim Ching saw the King, she gave a cry, and would have run back into the flower to hide, but the King called to her gently, bidding her stay.
“I will not harm you,” said he. “Do but tell me who you are and how you have come here. It must be you are some spirit or fairy, for no human being could be as beautiful as you.”
“I am no spirit, nor am I a fairy,” answered Sim Ching, “but only the daughter of a poor blind beggar, and as to how I came here I know not. I was placed inside that flower by a Water Spirit, but who has brought the flower here, or why, I cannot tell.”
The King then told her of how he had seen the flower floating on the sea, and how he had had it brought to the palace, and had ordered this room to be built for it, and after he had made an end of speaking, Sim Ching told him her history from the time her father had become blind and fallen into the pit, to the hour when the Water Spirit had bade her enter the flower and the leaves had closed about her.
The young King listened and wondered. “Yours is indeed a strange story,” said he, “and this mischievous priest shall be sought out and punished as he deserves. And yet it may be his promises shall all come true, and you shall indeed be exalted to the highest place in the kingdom.”