Meanwhile Tsai-yung has been acting all this time like a man in a stupor, his wife says. Niu-hsi is pictured as a kindly young woman watching over her husband with loving care. “What ails you?” she asks. “You have the finest delicacies served you. You eat boiled tongues of orang-outang and roasted leopard embryos. You wear robes of violet silk; your belt is a belt of jade. When you go out or when you return your horse crushes under foot all manner of flowers which people spread on your path. Your head is shaded by an umbrella with three layers of silk. Formerly you were only a poor scholar living in a thatched hut; now you fulfill the highest functions in the emperor’s palace. You swim in wealth, but this wealth is not sufficient for you; you do nothing but wrinkle your forehead and heave sighs.” Niu-hsi asks many more questions, but her husband refuses to reveal the cause of his grief. But when she leaves the room Tsai-yung relieves his feelings in a monologue which she overhears. When he has finished lamenting his separation from his parents and his wife (the latter is always mentioned after father and mother), Niu-hsi comes in to say simply that she will travel with him to his native village, if that is what he is longing for. He retorts, with the timidity found in most scholar-heroes in Chinese plays, that he is afraid to let her father hear of the matter and that he therefore forbids her to mention it. But the otherwise docile and obedient wife simply overrides his wishes and takes the matter to her father. The latter is quite willing to give his permission for the journey; only suggests that it might be better to send a faithful servant to bring Tsai-yung’s parents and wife to the capital. This plan is agreed to by all except the servant who, in a somewhat humorous scene, speaks of the evils that are sure to follow when two wives are living under one roof. But at last he agrees to go, even though he feels his mistress will never thank him for having obeyed on this occasion.