Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck Page A

and put it aside, and he was there.
    “Come in, cousin,” she said.
    “Come out,” he said. “We must not meet inside your chamber.”
    “Yet I must speak with you alone,” she said, for Li Lien-ying waited, his ears outstretched and greedy.
    But Jung Lu would not come in and so she was forced to leave her chamber, and when he saw her face, how white it was and how pale were her lips and dark her eyes, he was concerned for her, and he went with her into the courtyard, and she forbade the eunuch to follow there. Only her serving woman stood on the steps nearby, so that it could not be said that she was alone with a man, even her cousin.
    Thus she could not touch his hand, nor allow him to touch hers, sorely as she longed for his touch. She moved as far from the door as she could, and she sat down upon a porcelain garden seat, under a clump of date trees at the far end of the courtyard.
    “Seat yourself,” she said.
    But Jung Lu would not sit down. He stood before her as straight and stiff as though he were only a guardsman by the Emperor’s gate.
    “Will you not sit down?” she asked again and looked up at him with pleading in her eyes.
    “No,” he said. “I am here only because you sent for me.”
    She yielded. “Have you heard?” she asked so softly that a bird upon a branch above her could not have known what she said.
    “I have heard,” he said, not looking at her.
    “I am the new favorite.”
    “That, too, I have heard.”
    It was all told in these few words, and what more was there to be said, if he would not speak? She kept looking at his face, the face she knew so well, comparing it with that thin narrow sickly face upon the imperial pillow. This face was young and handsome, the dark eyes large and powerful, the mouth set full and firm above the strong chin. Here was a man’s face.
    “I have been a fool,” she said.
    He did not answer this. What could be answered to it?
    “I want to go home,” she said.
    He folded his arms and looked carefully above her head into the trees.
    “This is your home,” he said.
    She bit the edge of her lower lip. “I want you to save me.”
    He did not move. If one watched him he would have said that Jung Lu stood subordinate to the woman who was seated there under the date trees. But he let his eyes slide down to her lovely uplifted face, and in those eyes she saw his answer.
    “Oh, my heart, if I could save you, I would. But I cannot.”
    The heavy pain inside her vitals suddenly eased. “Then you do not forget me!”
    “Night and day I do not forget,” he said.
    “What shall I do?” she asked.
    “You know your destiny,” he said. “You chose it.”
    Her lower lip quivered and tears shone silver in her black eyes.
    “I did not know how it would be,” she faltered.
    “There is no undoing what is done,” he said. “No going back, no being what you were.”
    She could not speak. Instead she bent her head to keep the tears from running on her cheeks and she dared not wipe them lest the eunuch lurked near enough to see.
    “You have chosen greatness,” he said in her silence. “Therefore you must be great.”
    She swallowed down her tears and still did not dare to lift her head. “Only on your promise,” she said, her voice small and trembling.
    “What promise?” he asked.
    “That you will come when I send for you,” she said. “I must have that safety and that comfort. I cannot be always alone.”
    She saw the sweat start out on his forehead as the sunlight fell through the trees upon his face. “I will come to you when you call,” he said, not moving. “If you must, then send for me. But do not send unless you must. I will bribe this eunuch—a thing I have never done before—to bribe a eunuch! It puts me in his power. But I will do it.”
    She rose. “I have your promise,” she said.
    She gave him one long look and held her hands hard clasped together so that she could not put them forth to him.
    “You understand me?” she