"A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely. A bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place—his own soul was like that!
"Would it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side, unruffled and unsoiled?"—Walter Pater.
"To radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip—this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings—most of all in that perpetual auto-da-fé where young womanhood is the sacrifice."—O. W. Holmes.
CHAPTER XI
THE GREAT FURNACE FOR A GREAT SOUL
Being the Story of Ai Do
MRS. FAN'S second daughter came into the world under the shadow of sorrow, for apart from the fact that she was a girl, whereas a boy had been ardently desired, her first lusty yells revealed the fact that she was born with a tooth visible. This was well known by every woman in the village to indicate antagonism to her mother's life, and disaster would surely ensue were she not promptly drowned or thrown out to perish by the riverside.
Her fate seemed sealed, but that a woman seeing what a dear little baby she was, was moved with pity, and declared herself willing to take the responsibility of asserting that the child was hers in order that the demons which were ordering these events might be deceived, and thus her real mother would escape the fate which threatened her life, if the baby were not killed.