"

"Because in your case the incentive will be deeper. Destined, as you
doubtless are, to espouse Melodious Vision, the Forces connected with
marriage and its Rites will certainly endeavour to inspire you. This
person admittedly has no desire to nurture one who should prove to be
of merely human seed, but your objection to propagating a race of
dragonets turns on a keener edge. Added to all, a not unnatural
disinclination to be dropped from so great a height as this into so
deep and rocky a valley as that will conceivably lend wings to your
usually nimble-footed mind."

While speaking to Chang Tao in this encouraging strain, Pe-lung was
also conversing suitably with Fuh-sang, who had by this time joined
them, warning her of his absence until the dawn, and the like. When he
had completed his instruction he stroked her face affectionately,
greeting Chang Tao with a short but appropriate farewell, and changing
his form projected himself downwards into the darkness of the valley
below. Recognizing that the situation into which he had been drawn
possessed no other outlet, Chang Tao followed Fuh-sang on her backward
path, and with her passed unsuspected into the dragon's cave.

Early as was Pe-lung's return on the ensuing morning, Chang Tao stood
on a rocky eminence to greet him, and the outline of his face, though
not altogether free of doubt, was by no means hopeless. Pe-lung still
retained the impressive form of a gigantic dragon as he cleft the
Middle Air, shining and iridescent, each beat of his majestic wings
being as a roll of thunder and the skittering of sand and water from
his crepitant scales leaving blights and rain-storms in his wake. When
he saw Chang Tao he drove an earthward angle and alighting near at
hand considerately changed into the semblance of an affluent merchant
as he approached.

"Greeting," he remarked cheerfully. "Did you find your early rice?"

"It has sufficed," replied Chang Tao. "How is your own incomparable
stomach?"

Pe-lung pointed to the empty bed of the deflected river and moved his
head from side to side as one who draws an analogy to his own
condition. "But of your more pressing enterprise," he continued, with
sympathetic concern: "have you persevered to a fruitful end, or will
it be necessary--?" And with tactful feeling he indicated the gesture
of propelling an antagonist over the side of a precipice rather than
allude to the disagreeable contingency in spoken words.

"When th