At first short smokes gave him relief from worry. Just one on the way to work in the morning stilled the desperate growing pain in his chest, seemed even to still his coughing. Then as the months went by, the amount needed for relief grew greater. He came to have a hunted desperate look in his face if he did not get the opium at the usual time. The smoking made necessary his leaving home earlier than formerly if he was to keep from Kuei Ping the knowledge of his fear. He laid the first stone in the barrier which grew up between them when he did not share with her his anxiety. Kuei Ping, carrying her second child, was more sensitive than in normal times.
The frosts of late autumn had turned to dried husks the beauty of the garden. Was it to be so with their love which had begun with such happiness? Thus Kuei Ping found herself questioning day after day. Even little Bo Te did not seem to call unto himself as much of his father’s attention as formerly, yet he grew more fascinating every day, his mother felt.
Fuh Tang, fighting the weariness that crept further upon him, came to leave the shelter of his home with a sense of relief. Outside he could smoke and let down under the strain of pain and the necessity to struggle against his growing absent-mindedness.
Thus the first shadows of a wall of doubt separating Kuei Ping and Fuh Tang cast their length across the tidy courtyard of their youthful love.
Wherein
there is
deepening
sorrow
KUEI PING’S second son lived but a few hours. Chang, preparing the burial rites, sobbing her grief and disappointment even as she summoned the soothsayer to examine the Imperial Calendar for the lucky day upon which to place the small body in its coffin, felt utterly baffled by the quiet passiveness of the mother. It was to Fuh Tang that she must turn for every decision and whom she must help to still his grief while the message requesting burial in the Chia family burial grounds was written and dispatched by messenger.