“You told that,” said Miss Drake, “as though it had really happened.”

“If you believe, these things have reality; if not, they have none.”  His gesture, as he repeated the native maxim, committed him to neither side.

Miss Drake looked back toward the hills.

“Her dream was play, compared to—­some.”

“That,” he answered, “is abominably true.”

The curt, significant tone made her glance at him quickly.  In her dark eyes there was no impatience, but only trouble.

“We do better,” she said, “when we are both busy.”

He nodded, as though reluctantly agreeing, not so much to the words as to the silence which followed.

The evening peace, which lay on the fields and hills, had flooded even the village streets.  Without pause, without haste, the endless labor of the day went on as quiet as a summer cloud.  Meeting or overtaking, coolies passed in single file, their bare feet slapping the enormous flags of antique, sunken granite, their twin baskets bobbing and creaking to the rhythm of their wincing trot.  The yellow muscles rippled strongly over straining ribs, as with serious faces, and slant eyes intent on their path, they chanted in pairs the ageless refrain, the call and answer which make burdens lighter:—­

“O heh!—­O ha? 
 O ho ho! 
 O heh!—­O ha? 
 O ho ho!”

From hidden places sounded the whir of a jade-cutter’s wheel, a cobbler’s rattle, or the clanging music of a forge.  Yet everywhere the slow movements, the faded, tranquil colors,—­dull blue garments, dusky red tiles, deep bronze-green foliage overhanging a vista of subdued white and gray,—­consorted with the spindling shadows and low-streaming vesper light.  Keepers of humble shops lounged in the open air with their gossips, smoking bright pipes of the Yunnan white copper, nodding and blinking gravely.  Above them, no less courteous and placid, little doorway shrines besought the Earth-God to lead the Giver of Wealth within.  Sometimes, where a narrow lane gaped opposite a door, small stone lions sat grinning upon pillars, to scare away the Secret Arrow of misfortune.  But these rarely:  the village seemed a happy place, favored of the Influences.  In the grateful coolness men came and went, buying, joking, offering neighborly advice to chance-met people.

A plump woman, who carried two tiny silver fish in an immense flat basket, grinned at Miss Drake, and pointed roguishly.

“See the two boats going by!” she called.  “Her feet are bigger than my Golden Lilies!” And laughing, she wriggled her own dusty toes, strong, free, and perfect in modeling.

An old, withered barber looked up from shaving a blue forehead, under a tree.

“Their women,” he growled, “are shameless, and walk everywhere!”

But a stern man, bearing a palm-leaf fan and a lark in a cage, frowned him down.