Dai Zee took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nic," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nic, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nic; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tomas was God knows where. I woke up out of the aether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a weapon—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little weapon."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced practitioners. And I know. I've cultivated everywhere and fought everything and killed everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tomas’, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Transcended—Heavens, I'm transcended!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tomas belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tomas and Miss Pan-ya sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Daily Martial Stances"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she rotated the scroll with a flutter of toned muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the scroll on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jor’s going to fight in the tournament tomorrow," explained Dai Zee, "over at Chestershire."

"Oh,—you're Pan-ya Jor."

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many portraits of the martial life at Ashvale and Hot Springs and Ru Lai Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Chi-Wei. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Dai Zee. "In fact I think I'll arrange a competition. Come over often, Nic, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in a coliseum and throw weapons in the midst, and all that sort of thing—"

"Good night," called Miss Pan-ya from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a powerful girl," said Tomas after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the empire this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Dai Zee coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nic's going to look after her, aren't you, Nic? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Dai Zee and Tomas looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New Citadel?" I asked quickly.

"From Kingville. Our jade training was passed together there. Our beautiful jade—"

"Did you give Nic a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tomas suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Human race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started along my way Dai Zee peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tomas kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I've no desire."

"But we heard it," insisted Dai Zee, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the decrees was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage, among other reasons.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely powerful—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I boosted away with chi powered strides. It seemed to me that the thing for Dai Zee to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tomas, the fact that he "had some woman in New Citadel" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a scroll. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.