e, and
that you may remember my laughter rather than my tears."

She brushed the bright drops away, and brought wine and music and the
melodious _kin_ of seven silken strings, and would not suffer Ming-Y to
speak for one moment of the coming separation. And she sang him an
ancient song about the calmness of summer lakes reflecting the blue of
heaven only, and the calmness of the heart also, before the clouds of
care and of grief and of weariness darken its little world. Soon they
forgot their sorrow in the joy of song and wine; and those last hours
seemed to Ming-Y more celestial than even the hours of their first
bliss.

But when the yellow beauty of morning came their sadness returned, and
they wept. Once more Sie accompanied her lover to the terrace-steps; and
as she kissed him farewell, she pressed into his hand a parting gift,--a
little brush-case of agate, wonderfully chiselled, and worthy the table
of a great poet. And they separated forever, shedding many tears.

* * * * *

Still Ming-Y could not believe it was an eternal parting. "No!" he
thought, "I shall visit her tomorrow; for I cannot now live without her,
and I feel assured that she cannot refuse to receive me." Such were the
thoughts that filled his mind as he reached the house of Tchang, to find
his father and his patron standing on the porch awaiting him. Ere he
could speak a word, Pelou demanded: "Son, in what place have you been
passing your nights?"

Seeing that his falsehood had been discovered, Ming-Y dared not make any
reply, and remained abashed and silent, with bowed head, in the presence
of his father. Then Pelou, striking the boy violently with his staff,
commanded him to divulge the secret; and at last, partly through fear
of his parent, and partly through fear of the law which ordains that
"_the son refusing to obey his father shall be punished with one hundred
blows of the bamboo,_" Ming-Y faltered out the history of his love.

Tchang changed color at the boy's tale. "Child," exclaimed the High
Commissioner, "I have no relative of the name of Ping; I have never
heard of the woman you describe; I have never heard even of the house
which you speak of. But I know also that you cannot dare to lie to
Pelou, your honored father; there is some strange delusion in all this
affair."

Then Ming-Y produced the gifts that Sie had given him,--the lion of
yellow jade, the brush-case of carven agate, also some origin