r seem to wane, and the hoar frost comes on the grass, and I'm
always waiting. Christ! Why should I go back? I've forgotten Venice.
I've even forgotten my God for her!"

"Sanang," says Kubla Khan to the magician, "couldn't you do something
for this poor lad?"

It was now dusk in the garden by the Lake of Cranes...

"I don't need any damned wizard to bring my wife to me," raged Marco
Polo. "If she were to come, she would come, and I in the dark of the
moon and the moorfowl calling. She would have come because my heart
needed her." And he raged through the dusk by the Lake of Cranes...

"Now, Marco, dear lad, don't be flying off again, but remember that
there is science needed to all things. And think, too, that maybe she
was not permitted. The older we get, the more we understand the
destiny that rules all things, with now a nudge, with now a leading
finger, with now a terrible blow over the heart, and what we think at
twenty-five was a trifling accident, at seventy-five we know to have
been the enormous gesture of God. We are not asked when we like to be
born, Marco, nor is it up to us when to die.

"And again, Marco, consider. If she were to have come to you in the
dark of the moon-time, in the strange mystic hours when you can hear
eternity tick like a clock, your eyes would have been not on this
world, but the next. Your look would have been vacant that's now keen
to discover injustice. Your body would have been flabby that's now
whalebone and steel. And there would have been no memory of you in
China, that's now like sweet honey in the mouth.

"Would a wee dead spirit be proud of a man, Marco, and he just crying,
crying, crying, and letting the days go by while even the brown bee
works, and even the grass grows that cattle may fatten and men eat? She
might be sorry, but would there be pride on her? Even a dead woman
wants a strong man.

"Now, I'm not saying that the silent dead should not have a voice in
our affairs when we need them. But they have wisdom, else what is the
use of having died? And if the Sanang can bring her, she'll come now
and join with us in asking you, now being the time she's needed.

"Child, be guided by us three ancient men. I have lived long and have
knowledge of the world. Li Po has lived long and has knowledge of the
heart. The Sanang has lived long, and knows the secrets of the dead.
If to our three voices, who love you, there is added a sign from Golden
Bells,