“My mind is as refined crystal before your compelling glance,” admitted Lin.  “Ever since it has been your custom to wear the funeral robe fashioned by Shen Heng has your noble shadow suffered erosion.”

This answer, converging as it did upon the doubts that had already assailed the merchant’s satisfaction, convinced him of Cheng Lin’s discrimination, while it increased his own suspicion.  He had for some little time found that after wearing the robe he invariably suffered pangs that could only be attributed to the influence of malign and obscure Beings.  It is true that the occasions of his wearing the robe were elaborate and many-coursed feasts, when he and his guests had partaken lavishly of birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, sea snails and other viands of a rich and glutinous nature.  But if he could not both wear the funeral robe and partake unstintingly of well-spiced food, the harmonious relation of things was imperilled; and, as it was since the introduction of the funeral robe into his habit that matters had assumed a more poignant phase, it was clear that the influence of the funeral robe was at the root of the trouble.

“Yet,” protested Wang Ho, “the Mandarin Ling-ni boasts that he has already lengthened the span of his natural life several years by such an expedient, and my friend the high official T’cheng asserts that, while wearing a much less expensive robe than mine, he feels the essence of an increased vitality passing continuously into his being.  Why, then, am I marked out for this infliction, Cheng Lin?”

“Revered,” replied Lin, with engaging candour, “the inconveniences of living in a country so densely populated with demons, vampires, spirits, ghouls, dragons, omens, forces and influences, both good and bad, as our own unapproachably favoured Empire is, cannot be evaded from one end of life to the other.  How much greater is the difficulty when the prescribed forms for baffling the ill-disposed among the unseen appear to have been wrongly angled by those framing the Rites!”

Wang Ho made a gesture of despair.  It conveyed to Lin’s mind the wise reminder of N’sy-hing:  “When one is inquiring for a way to escape from an advancing tiger, flowers of speech assume the form of noisome bird-weed.”  He therefore continued: 

“Hitherto it has been assumed that for a funeral robe to exercise its most beneficial force it should be the work of a maiden of immature years, the assumption being that, having a prolonged period of existence before her, the influence of longevity would pass through her fingers into the garment and in turn fortify the wearer.”

“Assuredly,” agreed Wang Ho anxiously.  “Thus was the analogy outlined to me by one skilled in the devices, and the logic of it seems unassailable.”

“Yet,” objected Lin, with sympathetic concern in his voice, “how unfortunate must be the position of a person involved in a robe that has been embroidered by one who, instead of a long life, has been marked out by the Destinies for premature decay and an untimely death!  For in that case the influence—­”