A common Chinese practice is for man and wife to have one jade bangle
split so as to form two bangles, and to wear one each, with much the
same idea as our Mizpah rings.

The woman looked as if turned to stone. She moved not a muscle, but
with livid face and hard, glassy eyes kept her position in the open
grave, leaning on one hand across the coffin and grasping with her
other the mouldering arm of the corpse, so that the two bangles were
laid side by side.

Silently and reverently the old hermit stole away, leaving the living
with the dead, and rowed back across the river to his home without
once turning his eyes, for curiosity he had none, but in its place the
Oriental's deep and mystic knowledge of life and death.

In the lonely grave amongst the rank grass and sand mounds the woman
stayed, oblivious of the cold and soaking rain. For a long time she
rested absolutely motionless as if also dead. Then a few upward
movements of the head told of her silent agony. By-and-by a low,
tremulous moan broke from her ashen lips. Almost inaudible at first,
her sobs increased until her whole frame was convulsed. She called
upon her husband, she poured blessings on his name, she craved
blessings from his spirit. Long and loud, with all her soul, with all
her strength and in most absolute sincerity, she bewailed her dead, as
is the custom in the East, until exhaustion overpowered her and she
slept.

It was almost dark when the hermit returned and thus found the
faithful woman, sodden by the rain, her hair unbound and trailing in
the sand. Gently rousing her and speaking soothing words he held out
his humble offering of two little bowls containing rice and samshu,
some sticks of incense and a few tiny candles. These the poor woman
took, but without a sign, for her gratitude was too deep to show, and
reverently placed the bowls, the lighted candles and smouldering
incense-sticks in position round the grave.

Then, having kowtowed many times before the corpse, the lid of the
coffin was replaced and covered with a few inches of sand, after which
she turned as one in a trance and followed the hermit to his boat. Her
husband was dead, she had bewailed him and burnt incense at his grave,
and what further could this poor, broken woman do?

What her intentions then were I do not know, but a few days later,
when returning at dusk from Kiukiang to the pagoda, she was stopped in
a lonely alley outside the western gate by a man who said,