"You were spying; don't contradict me. You deserve to be beaten for this. Go on—get to your room. You are utterly shameless. And you too—" he said sharply to Kuei-lien, "you damned women are all the same, every one of you."
CHAPTER IV
Nancy got away gladly; she stumbled quickly into her room. The episode had made a rent across her childhood so that she could never again be the careless, innocent creature she was. The kiss was bad enough, an intolerable defilement, but the method of the kiss was so beastly that her mind had been wounded past the help of any quick remedy. Her part had been merely an accident; she could not wash away, however, the uncleanness, the sense of incest in the kiss she had received from her father.
She did not want the day to come now. She had no courage to meet the laughing person of Kuei-lien. The concubine very clearly was not embarrassed by the memory of last night's mishap.
"What a laughable business," she cried, "to be kissed by your own father! And how angry he was!"
"Do you call it laughable?" asked Nancy solemnly.
"Pooh!" said Kuei-lien, "don't take the thing so seriously. It was just play. If you choose to go mooning on a dark terrace you can't blame anybody for making mistakes. It was funny the way you fought—and your own father, too. What romantic sensations you must have had. Did you think the Emperor was kidnapping his beauty? What a violent lover he must have seemed."
Nancy blushed.
"I don't want to talk about it," she said. "It was shameful."