And, before it was light:—
"Kuan Yü is slain."
Liu Pei, when he heard it, gave one great cry and fell fainting to the ground.
Herrick listened as though these things had not happened centuries and centuries ago, as though the three men still whispered beneath the flickering torches of the palace. He saw the King cast down by his mighty grief to the cold stones of the pavement. It was as if Kuei-lien herself had sung away the Golden Age and its heroes. He turned to the girl; her face was almost luminous in the dark. His heart was too burdened for speech. She had sung away his own Golden Age, sung away his lustihood and strength.
"Why do you deceive me, ah, why do you deceive me, Kuei-lien?" he asked sadly, echoing Liu Pei's words with a meaning which the girl understood for a moment, but never understood again.
CHAPTER XXII
Long before this Nancy was happily asleep. Thoughts of sun and moon had gone glimmering before the joy of her welcome. Helen and Elizabeth and their uncle had come far along the road to meet the chairs of their guests and out they pulled Nancy and Edward for a gay walk home. It was so like their coming a year ago and so different, the same dusky winding down the mountain path to the settlement, the same bright lights and noise of music from a score of summer homes, the glimpse of the verandah through the trees with servants bustling to set knives and forks on the table. But Nancy came now without fear, like one who had her own place in this merry family. She welcomed Mrs. Ferris's arms and Mrs. Ferris's kisses and followed the chattering twins to the room she was to share with them.
Not even dinner could frighten her, nor her place of honor at Nasmith's right. She caught sight of the amah's face beaming through the door and infectious echoes of her laughter over being once more, after all these years, with people whose ways she understood. The old servant was holding forth princely gossip in the kitchen and the same light-hearted key prevailed in the conversation of the table, so that Nancy's eyes glowed and her lips broke into more smiles than they had shown for months. Hosts and guests, one and all, as if by unquestioned consent, had put away troubling thoughts and forgotten the sorrows of the morrow in the joys of the day. Beresford's quips were never more brilliant. Even Nasmith himself forgot his pain and was satisfied to have Nancy next to him, where he could watch glints of light from beneath her long eyelashes as she answered the amused irony of his sentences.
By common arrangement it was decided that Nancy and Edward must be English during the two weeks of their visit. Yet it was a surprise to the man who hardly dared admit himself her lover when he saw the girl in the morning. Elizabeth and Helen had repeated their magic and led out a maiden who, save for a little hesitating awkwardness, might have belonged to the West through all her seventeen years. Edward with his usual carelessness of clothes had slipped easily into shirt and trousers, but Nancy wore her dress of blue muslin with a deliberate grace which charmed the attention of those who watched her walk slowly forward. The curve of her throat had never had fair play behind the high collar of her Chinese jacket; her hair was gathered loosely from her forehead and bound round her head with just that effect of wind-blown negligence which the twins, who had shared between them the task of dressing their guest, delighted in as the conspicuous triumph of their labor. But the girl still moved stiffly, not quite sure of herself before Nasmith's approving glance, not quite sure of her bare arms and the tenuous clothing of her legs, a little frightened for the exiguous under fabrics into which they had made her step, not thoroughly certain the men could not read the secret of these dainty garments and how insecurely they seemed to cling to her shoulders. She kept her hands stiffly at her sides lest her skirts, by which she was embarrassed enough to expect any mischief, part company from the black silk stockings which overreached her knees.