“They are thine.  Do with them as thou wilt, but no more set them up in this stove corner and offer them morning rice.  They are but painted, plastered gods.  I worship the spirit above.”

Foh-Kyung sat down at the men’s table in the men’s room beyond.  An amah brought him rice and tea.  Other men of the household there was none, and he ate his meal alone.  From the women’s room across the court came a shrill round of voices.  The voice of the great wife was loudest and shrillest.  The voices of the children, his sons and daughters, rose and fell with clear childish insistence among the older voices.  The amah’s voice laughed with an equal gaiety.

Dong-Yung hid away the plastered green-and-gold gods.  Her heart was filled with a delicious fear.  Her lord was even master of the gods.  He picked them up in his two hands, he carried them about as carelessly as a man carries a boy child astride his shoulder; he would even have cast them into the fire!  Truly, she shivered with delight.  Nevertheless, she was glad she had hidden them safely away.  In the corner of the kitchen stood a box of white pigskin with beaten brass clasps made like the outspread wings of a butterfly.  Underneath the piles of satin she had hidden them, and the key to the butterfly clasps was safe in her belt-jacket.

Dong-Yung stood in the kitchen door and watched Foh-Kyung.

“Does my lord wish for anything?”

Foh-Kyung turned, and saw her standing there in the doorway.  Behind her were the white stove and the sun-filled, empty niche.  The light flooded through the doorway.  Foh-Kyung set down his rice-bowl from his left hand and his ivory chop-sticks from his right.  He stood before her.

“Truly, Dong-Yung, I want thee.  Do not go away and leave me.  Do not cross to the eating-room of the women and children.  Eat with me.”

“It has not been heard of in the Middle Kingdom for a woman to eat with a man.”

“Nevertheless, it shall be.  Come!”

Dong-Yung entered slowly.  The light in this dim room was all gathered upon the person of Foh-Kyung, in the gleaming patterned roses of his gown, in his deep amethyst ring, in his eyes.  Dong-Yung came because of his eyes.  She crossed the room slowly, swaying with that peculiar grace of small-footed women, till she stood at the table beside Foh-Kyung.  She was now even more afraid than when he would have cast the kitchen gods into the fire.  They were but gods, kitchen gods, that he was about to break; this was the primeval bondage of the land, ancient custom.

“Give me thy hand and look up with thine eyes and thy heart.”

Dong-Yung touched his hand.  Foh-Kyung looked up as if he saw into the ether beyond, and there saw a spirit vision of ineffable radiance.  But Dong-Yung watched him.  She saw him transfigured with an inner light.  His eyes moved in prayer.  The exaltation spread out from him to her, it tingled through their finger-tips, it covered her from head to foot.