you lock yourselves in during full daylight, and groan and
embrace each other?"

They felt the blood flow to their faces, and answered nothing. The
mother's hands and feet were trembling with rage. She seized hold of
her daughter:

"You are playing some pretty trick. Let me talk to you a little."

And she dragged her into an empty room. The attendants who saw her
asked each other why the girl was being dragged along like that. But
by this time the mother had locked the door. When the attendants came
and looked through the holes in the paper, they saw her lifting a
stick, and heard her crying:

"O wretch, tell me the truth, or I shall strike you! Why were you
weeping?"

At first Prudence thought of denial. Then she said to herself that
it would be better to confess and to beg her parents to break off her
betrothal with the family of P'ei, so that they might marry her to
Yu-lang. If they refused, she would die. That was all. So she told the
whole matter without evasion.

"We are husband and wife. Our love is boundless, and our vows will
endure for at least a hundred years. My brother is recovered, and
we fear that we shall be separated. Yu-lang wishes to return to his
parents, to send his sister in his place. It seemed, then, to your
daughter that a woman cannot have two husbands, and that if Yu-lang
cannot marry me, I must die."

As she listened to her, her mother's breast opened with rage, and she
stamped her feet: "This rotten carrion has sent his son here and
has deceived me. And now my daughter is lost. I must beat him
unmercifully!"

She seized her stick, opened the door and ran forth. Her daughter,
forgetting her shame, tried to prevent her; but the old woman pushed
her away violently, so that she fell down. Prudence got up and ran
after her. The attendants also ran.

Now Yu-lang had very well understood that all was discovered when
Liu's wife had dragged her daughter away. A moment later, the nurse
hurried in.

"O my Gods! And, ah unhappiness! All is well lost! Prudence is being
questioned with the stick."

It seemed to him that two knives were piercing his heart. He burst out
into sobbing. But the nurse was already taking out his hair-pins and
clothing him as a man. In a state of stupor he let himself be hurried
to the main door and through the streets. A few moments later he was
back at his parents' house.

His father did not fail to say to him:

"I told you to play the girl, not the man. Why