were a woman, there is nothing I should like better than to be your
husband."

Jasmine blushed up to the roots of her hair at having her own thoughts
thus capped, as it were; but before she could answer, Wei broke in with:

"What nonsense you talk! And why, I should like to know, should you be
the only one the 'young noble' might choose, supposing he belonged to
the other sex?"

"You are both talking nonsense," said Jasmine, who had had time to
recover her composure, "and remind me of my two old childless aunts,"
she added, laughing, "who are always quarrelling about the names they
would have given their children if the goddess Kwanyin had granted them
any half a century ago. As a matter of act, we are three friends reading
for our M.A. degrees, neither more nor less. And I will trouble you,
my elder brother," she added, turning to Tu, "to explain to me what the
poet means by the expression 'tuneful Tung' in the line:

'The greedy flames devour the tuneful Tung.'"

A learned disquisition by Tu on the celebrated musician who recognised
the sonorous qualities of a piece of Tung timber burning in the kitchen
fire effectually diverted the conversation from the inconvenient
direction it had taken, and shortly afterward Jasmine took her leave.

Haunted by the thought of what had passed, she wandered on to the
veranda of her archery pavilion, and while gazing half unconsciously
heavenward her eyes were attracted by a hawk which flew past and
alighted on a tree beyond the boundary-wall, and in front of the study