“Is this the girl you were talking with just now? In—in _this_ room?” he added, striving to understand. “Yes.” “She wasn’t here, of course.” “Her body was not.” “Oh!” Tressa said in her sweet, humorous way: “You must try to accustom yourself to such things, Victor. You know that Yulun talks to me.... I wanted to talk to Sansa. The longing awakened me. So—_I made the effort_.” “And she came—I mean the part of her which is not her body.” “Yes, she came. We talked very happily while I was bathing and dressing. Then we came in here. She is such a darling!” “Where is she?” “In Yian, feeding her silk-worms and making a garden. You see, Sansa is quite wealthy now, because when the Japanese came she filled a bullock cart with great lumps of spongy gold from the Temple and filled another cart with Yu-stone, and took the Hezar of Baroulass horsemen on guard at the Lake of the Ghosts. And with this Keutch, riding a Soubz horse, and dressed like an Urieng lancer, my pretty little comrade Tchagane, who is called Sansa, marched north preceded by two kettle-drums and a toug with two tails——” Tressa’s clear laughter checked her; she clapped her hands, breathless with mirth at the picture she evoked. “Kai!” she laughed; “what adorable impudence has Sansa! Neither Tchortcha nor Khiounnou dared ask her who were her seven ancestors! No! And when her caravan came to the lovely Yliang river, my darling Sansa rode out and grasped the lance from her Tougtchi and drove the point deep into the fertile soil, crying in a clear voice: ‘A place for Tchagane and her people! Make room for the toug!’ “Then her Manggoud, who carried the spare steel tip for her lance, got out of his saddle and, gathering a handful of mulberry leaves, rubbed the shaft of the lance till it was all pale green. “‘Toug iaglachakho!’ cries my adorable Sansa! ‘Build me here my Urdu![2]—my Mocalla![3] And upon it pitch my tent of skins!” Again Tressa’s laughter checked her, and she strove to control it with the jade ring pressed to her lips. “Oh, Victor,” she added in a stifled voice, looking at him out of eyes full of mischief, “you don’t realise how funny it was—Sansa and her toug and her Urdu—Oh, Allah!—the bones of Tchinguiz must have rattled in his tomb!” Her infectious laughter evoked a responsive but perplexed smile from Cleves; but it was the smile of a bewildered man who has comprehended very little of an involved jest; and he looked around at the modern room as though to find his bearings. Suddenly Tressa leaned forward swiftly and laid one hand on his. “You don’t think all this is very funny. You don’t like it,” she said in soft concern. “It isn’t that, Tressa. But this is New York City in the year 1920. And I can’t—I absolutely can not get into touch—hook up, mentally, with such things—with the unreal Oriental life that is so familiar to you.”