rice-fields for
the day's food.

"Tea-boiled eggs!" cried a vender from beyond the wall. A man stopped at
the gate, put down his shoulder-tray of food, and bargained with the
ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odors of food frying in oil
stole out from the depths of the house behind him. And Dong-Yung, very
quiet and passive in the pose of her body, gazed up at Foh-Kyung with
those strange, secretive, ardent eyes. All around him was China, its
very essence and sound and smell. Dong-Yung was a part of it all; nay,
she was even the very heart of it, swaying there in the yellow light
among the lily-petals.

"Precious Jewel! Yet it is sweeter to walk side by side, our feet
stepping out into the sunlight together, and our shadows mingling
behind. I want you beside me."

The last words rang with sudden warmth. Dong-Yung trembled and
crimsoned. It was not seemly that a man speak to a woman thus, even
though that man was a husband and the woman his wife, not even though
the words were said in an open court, where the eyes of the great wife
might spy and listen. And yet Dong-Yung thrilled to those words.

An amah called, "The morning rice is ready."

Dong-Yung hurried into the open room, where the light was still faint,
filtering in through a high-silled window and the door. A round, brown
table stood in the center of the room. In the corner of the room behind
stood the crescentic, white plaster stove, with its dull wooden
kettle-lids and its crackling straw. Two cooks, country women, sat in
the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of
straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah
filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper
right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols,
with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry
world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of
life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously
watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white
wall, hung a row of brass hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons
with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls for the
day, blue-and-white rice patterns, of a thin, translucent ware, showing
the delicate light through the rice seeds; red-and-green dragoned bowls
for the puddings; and tiny saucer-like platters for the vegetables. The
tea-cups, saucered and lidde