This insinuation was enough to plunge Pao-yü into a fresh fit of exasperation. Hastening up to her: "Do you still give vent to such language?" he asked. "Why, it's really tantamount to invoking imprecations on me! What, are you yet angry with me!"
This question recalled to Lin Tai-yü's mind the incidents of a few days back, and a pang of remorse immediately gnawed her heart for having been again so indiscreet in her speech. "Now don't you distress your mind!" she observed hastily, smiling. "I verily said what I shouldn't! Yet what is there in this to make your veins protrude, and to so provoke you as to bedew your whole face with perspiration?"
While reasoning with him, she felt unable to repress herself, and, approaching him, she extended her hand, and wiped the perspiration from his face.
Pao-yü gazed intently at her for a long time. "Do set your mind at ease!" he at length observed.
At this remark, Lin Tai-yü felt quite nervous. "What's there to make my mind uneasy?" she asked after a protracted interval. "I can't make out what you're driving at; tell me what's this about making me easy or uneasy?"
Pao-yü heaved a sigh. "Don't you truly fathom the depth of my words?" he inquired. "Why, do you mean to say that I've throughout made such poor use of my love for you as not to be able to even divine your feelings? Well, if so, it's no wonder that you daily lose your temper on my account!"
"I actually don't understand what you mean by easy or uneasy," Lin
Tai-yü replied.
"My dear girl," urged Pao-yü, nodding and sighing. "Don't be making a fool of me! For if you can't make out these words, not only have I ever uselessly lavished affection upon you, but the regard, with which you have always treated me, has likewise been entirely of no avail! And it's mostly because you won't set your mind at ease that your whole frame is riddled with disease. Had you taken things easier a bit, this ailment of yours too wouldn't have grown worse from day to day!"
These words made Lin Tai-yü feel as if she had been blasted by thunder, or struck by lightning. But after carefully weighing them within herself, they seemed to her far more fervent than any that might have emanated from the depths of her own heart, and thousands of sentiments, in fact, thronged together in her mind; but though she had every wish to frame them into language, she found it a hard task to pronounce so much as half a word. All she therefore did was to gaze at him with vacant stare.
Pao-yü fostered innumerable thoughts within himself, but unable in a moment to resolve from which particular one to begin, he too absently looked at Tai-yü. Thus it was that the two cousins remained for a long time under the spell of a deep reverie.