“The night thickens, with every indication of a storm,” remarked Hia pleasantly.  “Yet that same impending flash of promised lightning tarries somewhat.”

“Truly is it written:  ’A gracious woman will cause more strife than twelve armed men can quell,’” retorted Ning bitterly.

“Not, perchance, if one of them bares his nails?” Thus she lightly mocked him, but always with a set intent, as a poised dragon-fly sips water yet does not wet his wings.  Whereupon, finally, Ning tore the sheaths from off his fingers and cast them passionately about her feet, immediately afterwards sinking into a profound sleep, for both the measure and the potency of the wine he had consumed exceeded his usual custom.  Otherwise he would scarcely have acted in this incapable manner, for each sheath was inscribed with one symbol of a magic charm and in the possession of the complete sentence resided the whole of the Being’s authority and power.

Then Hia, seeing that he could no longer control her movements, and that the end to which she had been bending was attained, gathered together the fruits of her conscientious strategy and fled.

When Ning returned to the condition of ordinary perceptions he was lying alone in the field by the river-side.  The great sky-fire made no pretence of averting its rays from his uncovered head, and the lesser creatures of the ground did not hesitate to walk over his once sacred form.  The tent and all the other circumstances of the quest of Hia had passed into a state of no-existence, for with a somewhat narrow-minded economy the deity had called them into being with the express provision that they need only be of such a quality as would last for a single night.

With this recollection, other details began to assail his mind.  His irreplaceable nail-sheaths—­there was no trace of one of them.  He looked again.  Alas! his incomparable nails were also gone, shorn off to the level of his finger-ends.  For all their evidence he might be one who had passed his days in discreditable industry.  Each moment a fresh point of degradation met his benumbed vision.  His profuse and ornamental locks were reduced to a single roughly-plaited coil; his sandals were inelegant and harsh; in place of his many-coloured flowing robes a scanty blue gown clothed his form.  He who had been a god was undistinguishable from the labourers of the fields.  Only in one thing did the resemblance fail:  about his neck he found a weighty block of wood controlled by an iron ring:  while they at least were free he was a captive slave.

A shadow on the grass caused him to turn.  Sun Wei approached, a knotted thong in one hand, in the other a hoe.  He pointed to an unweeded rice-field and with many ceremonious bows pressed the hoe upon Ning as one who confers high honours.  As Ning hesitated, Sun Wei pressed the knotted thong upon him until it would have been obtuse to disregard his meaning.  Then Ning definitely understood that he had become involved in the workings of very powerful forces, hostile to himself, and picking up the hoe he bent his submissive footsteps in the direction of the laborious rice-field.