Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck

through. Outside it her serving woman sat, nodding on a wooden stool, weary with waiting, and Yehonala put her hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.
    “Where is your little dog?” the woman asked.
    Yehonala stared at her unseeing. “I put it in the courtyard some time in the night—I forget!”
    “Do not mind,” the woman said, pitying her. “Come, come with me—take your old woman’s hand—”
    And Yehonala let herself be led down the narrow passageways. It was dawn and the rising sun shone upon the rose-red walls along the way, and thus she came again to her solitary home. And while the serving woman made herself bustling and busy she talked to comfort her mistress.
    “They are saying everywhere that never has a concubine stayed so long with the Son of Heaven. Even the Consort spent only a night with him at one time. That eunuch, Li Lien-ying, says that you are the favorite now. You have nothing more to fear.”
    Yehonala smiled but her lips trembled. “Do they say so?” she said, and she held herself straight and moved with her usual smooth grace.
    Yet when she was bathed and clothed in sleeping robes of softest silk in her own bed, though the curtains were drawn, the serving woman gone away, she fell into shivering and deathly chill. Silent she must be so long as she lived, for to no one could she speak. Oh, there was none, for what friend had she? She was alone and never had she dreamed of such loneliness as now was hers. There was not one—
    Not one? Was Jung Lu not still her kinsman? He was her cousin, and the ties of blood cannot be broken. She sat up in her bed and dried her eyes and she clapped her hands for her serving woman.
    “What now?” the woman asked at the door.
    “Send to me the eunuch Li Lien-ying,” Yehonala commanded her.
    The serving woman hesitated. Upon her round face the doubt was plain enough.
    “Good mistress,” she said, “do not be too friendly with that eunuch. What can he do for you now?”
    But Yehonala was stubborn. “Something that only he can do,” she said.
    The woman went away, still doubtful, to find the eunuch, who came in great haste and elation.
    “What, what, my lady Phoenix?” he inquired when he came to her door.
    Yehonala put the curtain aside. She had dressed herself in a dark and somber robe and her face was pale and grave. Beneath her eyes were shadows, but she spoke with high dignity.
    “Bring to me here my kinsman,” she said, “my cousin-brother, Jung Lu.”
    “The Captain of the Imperial Bannermen?” Li Lien-ying asked, surprised.
    “Yes,” she said haughtily.
    He went away, wiping the smile from his face with his sleeve.
    She let the curtain fall and heard the eunuch’s footsteps go away. When she had the power, she told herself, she would raise Jung Lu up, so that no one, not even a eunuch, could dare to say “the guardsman.” She would make him at least a duke, a Grand Councilor perhaps. And while she cherished these thoughts in her mind she felt such a yearning arise in her heart that she was frightened for herself. What could she want of her kinsman except the sight of his truthful face, the sound of his firm voice, while he told her what now she should do? Oh, but she was wrong to send for him, for could she tell him what had befallen her in these two days and three nights and how she was changed? Could she say to him that she wished she had never come to the Forbidden City and beg him now to help her to escape? She let herself sink to the floor and she leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. A strange pain, deep in her vitals, swelled up into her breast. She hoped he would not come.
    Vain hope, for she heard his footsteps. He had come instantly, he was at the door, and Li Lien-ying was calling through the curtain.
    “Lady, your kinsman is here!”
    She rose then and without thinking to look at her face in the mirror. Jung Lu knew her as she was. There was no reason to be beautiful for him. She went to the curtain