“Aya!  My uncle, what brings you?”

“I happened to be passing,” he answered carelessly.

“But I should like you to walk a little way with me.”

“In what can I serve you?” she hastened to ask.

Without speaking, he took her into a quiet little tavern.  When they were seated, and the attendant had brought them fruit and dishes of food, he poured out a full cup of hot wine and offered it to her, saying: 

“I have something to ask of you, ma-ma Lu.  But I am afraid that you cannot accomplish it.”

“Without boasting,” she answered with a wide smile, “there are few enterprises, however difficult, in which I do not succeed.  What is it you desire?”

“I want you to arrange a meeting for me with the daughter of P’an, who lives in the Street of the Ten Officials.  Here are five ounces of silver to begin with.  If you succeed, you shall have quite as much more.”

“The small Eternal Life?  The little witch!  I thought her so demure!  I should never have imagined she was a wild flower.  But the matter is difficult.  There are only the parents and the daughter in that house, and the father is dangerous.  He keeps a damnably suspicious watch over his door.  How could you get in?  I dare not promise any success.”

“You have just boasted that you always succeed.  Here are two ounces more.”

The old woman’s eyes gleamed like fire at the sight of the snow-colored metal, and she said: 

“I will take the risk.  If all goes well, it will be your fortune.  If not, I shall at least have done my best.  But give me a proof, for otherwise she would not listen to me.”

Not without regret, Chang took from his bosom the little slipper, and gave it to her, wrapped in his handkerchief.  The old woman at once slipped it into her sleeve with the pieces of money.  As she was leaving him, she said again: 

“The affair is delicate.  You must have patience and not hurry me.  That would be dangerous.”

“I only ask you to do your best.  Come and tell me as soon as you have an answer.”

Eternal Life was profoundly agitated.  Since that moonlit night she had had no more taste for food, but had said: 

“If I married him I would not have lived in vain.  But I know neither his name nor where he lives.  When I saw him beneath the moon, why had I not wings to fly to him? ...  As it is, I had only this red handkerchief.”

Yet she had to live and speak as usual.  But as soon as she was alone she fell again into her musing.

Two days later, old Lu entered their house.  The father had gone out.  The visitor said to mother and daughter: 

“I received certain artificial flowers yesterday, and have come to show them to you.”

She took a bunch of a thousand shades out of her basket.

“Would you not say they were real?”

“When I was young,” said the mother, “we only wore ordinary flowers, and did not dream of marvels like these.”