It occurred to Lychnis to ask whether Yuan was married. It came to her that he might have a wife or two wives. There was an exasperating titter. “Yuan!” Two or three shaped their mouths to his name, producing an effect as if they were astonished, or scandalized, or contemptuous—she could not tell what. Then the beauty spoke—in English, surprisingly: “Yuan not a man—neither is Wang Li.” “You mean?” But she would do no more than smile, and Lychnis leaned back on her apple-green cushion, angrily wondering how to find out what she meant. Was it meant that Yuan was a spirit, or ghost? A Yuan that was a ghost might be more agreeable in the capacity of husband. She suddenly felt, among these matter-of-fact and human young women, and there came with it a dismaying sense of unreality, that she must have been dreaming about some porcelain image in a museum or a figure on a scroll. “Are you sad that Yuan is not a man?” asked the beauty, with quite European cattishness. “How well you speak English!” Lychnis graciously replied, desirous of friendly relations. At this also there was a titter, and the demure child explained with readiness and a remarkable virtuosity in the method of allusion that her lovely cousin had learnt this and more from Quentin. Lychnis closed her eyes, not caring to learn whether the slender young lady had also learnt at the same knee. Quentin, in his hateful irresponsibility, she savagely reflected, knew no restraints. But how would it be to spend the rest of her life among these twittering golden mice? The sad one, the intelligent one, perhaps she would not lightly permit herself what seemed to Lychnis to require the profound assent of reason and imagination. Yuan might take her away, of course. She suffered a wave of anger that he did not come. 39 Yuan was away in the mountains, and as day after day passed without him Lychnis sank deeper into doubt and misery. Then at last he came back, sought her out, spent all his time with her, and they began to weave their lives into one strand. They spent days and nights in the Flying Dragon, often at great distances from the valley; or sometimes they sought strange experiences among the neighbouring forests and crags; and the summer wore on to its full splendour. Afterwards she gave Ambrose some account of these various experiences, and he chose three or four to illustrate the progress of her relations with Yuan.