The lazy native streets were still dull with the end of
labour. At the gate of the camp-ground the rickshaw coolies tipped down
the bamboo shafts, to the ground. Dong-Yung stepped out quickly, and
looked at her lord and master. He smiled.
"Nay, I do not fear," Dong-Yung answered, with her eyes on his face.
"Yet this place is strange, and lays a coldness around my heart."
"Regard not their awkward ways," said Foh-Kyung, as he turned in at the
gate; "in their hearts they have the secret of life."
The gate-keeper bowed, and slipped the coin, warm from Foh-Kyung's hand,
into his ready pocket.
"Walk beside me, little Wife of my Heart." Foh-Kyung stopped in the wide
gravelled road and waited for Dong-Yung. Standing there in the sunlight,
more vivid yet than the light itself, in his imperial yellow robes he
was the end of life, nay, life itself, to Dong-Yung. "We go to the house
of the foreign priest to seek until we find the foreign God. Let us go
side by side."
Dong-Yung, stepping with slow, small-footed grace, walked beside him.
"My understanding is as the understanding of a little child, beloved
Teacher; but my heart lies like a shell in thy hand, its words but as
the echo of thine. My honour is great that thou do not forget me in the
magnitude of the search."
Dong-Yung's pleated satin skirts swayed to and fro against the imperial
yellow of Foh-Kyung's robe. Her face coloured like a pale spring
blossom, looked strangely ethereal above her brocade jacket.
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