Liusu knew very well that returning like this would make things even worse than they'd been before. The ties of affection and loyalty between her and this family had been severed long ago. Of course she considered looking for a job, anything to earn a bowl of rice. No matter how rough it was, it would still be better than living with a hostile family. But if she took some menial job, she would lose her social status. Even though status wasn't something you could eat, losing it would be a pity. And she had not yet given up all hope concerning Fan Liuyuan. She couldn't sell herself cheaply now, or else he'd have a perfect ex-cuse for refusing to marry her. So she just had to hang on a lit-tle while longer.

Finally, at the end of November, Fan Liuyuan sent a tele-gram from Hong Kong. Everyone in the family had eyeballed the telegram before Old. Mrs. Bai called Liusu, and put it in her hand. The message was terse: "PLS COME HK. PASSAGE BOOKED VIA THOMAS COOK." Old Mrs. Bai gave a long sigh. "Since he's sent for you, you should go!"

Was she worth so little? Tears dropped from her eyes. Crying made her lose all her self-control; she found she could not bear it anymore. Already she'd aged two years in one autumn-she couldn't afford to grow old! So for the second time she left home and went to Hong Kong. This time, she felt none of her earlier eagerness for adventure. She had lost. Of course, every-one likes to be vanquished, but only within bounds. To have been vanquished solely by Fan Liuyuan's charms, that was one thing. But mixed with that was the pressure from her family—the most painful factor in her defeat.

Fan Liuyuan was waiting for her at the dock in a light, drizzling rain. He said that her green rain slicker looked like a bottle. "A medicine bottle," he explained. She thought he was teasing her because she'd grown so frail, but then he whispered into her ear, "You're just the medicine I need." She blushed, averting her eyes.

He had reserved her old room for her. By the time they got to the hotel, it was already two in the morning. In the bath-room, getting ready for bed, she turned off the light. Then she remembered that the bedroom light switch was by the bed. Blundering around in the dark, she stepped on a shoe and al-most fell. She cursed herself for being so careless, leaving her shoes lying around. There was a laugh from the bed: "Don't be frightened! It's my shoe!"

Liusu stopped. "What are you doing here?"

"I always wanted to see the moon from your window. You can see it much better from this room than from the room next door."

So he had phoned her that night—it wasn't a dream! He did love her. What a cruel and spiteful man! He loved her, and still he treated her like this! Her heart went cold. Turning away, she walked over to the dressing table. The late-November crescent moon was a mere hook of white; its pale light made the win-dow look like a pane of ice. But moonbeams reached the sea and were reflected from the water through the window and then into the mirror, so that even though the beams were faint, they made the mirror glow. Liusu slowly stripped off her hair-net, mussing her hair; the hairpins came loose and fell clatter-ing to the floor. She pulled the hairnet on again, holding the ties in her mouth between tightly pinched lips. She frowned, crouched down, and, one by one, picked up the hairpins.

By then, Liuyuan had walked over behind her in his bare feet. He put one hand on her head, turned her face toward his, and kissed her mouth. The hairnet slipped off her head. This was the first time he had kissed her, but it didn't feel like the first time to either of them-they had both imagined it so many times. They'd had many opportunities—the right place, the right moment—he'd tbought of it; she had worried it might happen. But they were both such clever people, always planning carefully, that they'd never dared to risk it. Suddenly it was reality, and they were both dazed. Liusu's head was spin-ning. She fell back against the mirror, her back tightly pressed to its icy surface. His mouth did not leave hers. He pushed her into the mirror and they seemed to fall into it, into another shadowy world-freezing cold, searing hot, flame of the forest flowers burning them all over.

The next day, he told her he was going to England in a week. She asked him to take her with him, but he said it wasn't possible. He offered to rent a house for her in Hong Kong so she could wait for his return, which would be in about a year. If she'd rather live with her family in Shanghai, that would be fine too.

Of course she wasn't willing to go back to Shanghai. The more distance she could put between those people and herself, the better. Living on her own in Hong Kong would be lonely, but she could bear that. The problem was whether anything would change after he'd returned—and that depended entirely on him. How could a week's love hold his heart? But, on the other hand, maybe it was to her advantage: Liuyuan was not a man of stable affections, and meeting and parting so quickly as this meant he had no time to grow tired of her. One short week... always more memorable than a year. Then again, even if he did come back with a heart full of warm memories, want-ing her again, she might have changed by then! A woman near thirty can be unusually attractive, but she can also grow hag-gard in a moment. In the end, trying to hold on to a man with-out the surety of marriage is a difficult, painful, tiring business, well nigh impossible. But what did it matter, anyway? She had to admit that Liuyuan was delightful, and he really made the sparks fly, but what she wanted from him was, after all, financial security. And on that point, she knew she could rest assured.

They took a house on Babington. Road, up on a mountain slope. When the rooms had been painted, they hired a Canton-ese maid called Ah Li. They only managed to set up the basic furnishings before Liuyuan had to leave. Liusu could take her time with the rest. There wasn't any food in the house, so on the winter evening when she saw him off at the pier, they grabbed some sandwiches in the ship's dining hall. Feeling de-jected, Liusu had a few drinks and stood in the roar of the sea wind; by the time she got home, she was rather drunk.

When she came in, Ah Li was in the kitchen heating water so she could wash her child's feet. Liusu went through the whole house, turning on all the lights. The green paint on the sitting room door and window was still wet. She touched it with her index finger, then pressed her sticky finger against the wall, leaving a green mark each time. Why not? Was it against the law? This was her house! Laughing, she put a fresh green handprint on the dandelion white of the plaster wall.

The next day, Liusu, Ah Li, and Ah Li's child shared the last biscuits from a tin. Liusu was weak and exhausted, each crack of a screaming bomb slapping her hard in the face. The lum-bering sound of an army truck came from the street. It stopped at their door. The doorbell rang, and Liusu answered it. It was Liuyuan. She grabbed his hand and clutched his arm, like Ah Li clutching her child; then she fell forward, hitting her head on the porch wall.

Liuyuan lifted her face with his other hand. "Frightened? Don't worry," he urged her. "Go get your things together. We're going to Repulse Bay. Hurry!"

Liusu ran back in and started rushing around. "Is it safe in Repulse Bay?"

"They say a navy can't land there. Anyway, the hotel has huge stocks of food. There'll be something to eat."

"Your ship ..."

"The ship never left. They took the first-class passengers to the Repulse Bay Hotel. I tried to come yesterday, but I couldn't get a car, and the buses were jammed. Today, I finally managed to get this truck."

Liusu couldn't think clearly enough to pack her things, so she just grabbed a little bag and stuffed it full. Liuyuan gave Ah Li two months' salary and told her to watch the house. Then the two of them got into the truck, lying facedown and side by side in the truck bed, with a canopy of khaki oilcloth overhead. The ride was so bumpy that their knees and elbows were scraped raw.

Liuyuan sighed. "This bombing blasted off the ends of an awful lot of stories!"

Liusu was filled with sorrow. Then, after a moment, she said, "If you were killed, my story would be over. But if I were killed, you'd still have a lot of story left!"

"Were you planning on being my faithful widow?"

They were both a little unnerved, and for no reason at all they began to laugh. Once they started they could not stop. But when they were finished laughing, they shuddered from head to toe.

The truck drove through a rain of bullets back to Repulse Bay. Army troops were stationed on the ground floor, so they stayed in their old room on the second floor. After they had set-tled in, they found out that the stores of food were all reserved for the troops. Besides canned milk, beef, mutton, and fruit, there were sacks and sacks of bread, both whole wheat and white. But the guests were only allotted two soda crackers, or two lumps of sugar, per meal. Everyone was famished.

For a couple of days all was quiet at Repulse Bay, then sud-denly the action heated up. There was nowhere on the second floor to take cover, so they had to leave. Everyone went down-stairs to the dining hall. The glass doors were opened wide, with sandbags piled up in front: the British troops were firing artillery from behind the sandbags. When tbe gunboats in the bay figured out where the shooting was coming from, they re-turned fire. Shells flew over the palm tree and the fountain in both directions. Liuyuan and Liusu, along with everyone else, squeezed back against the wall.

It was a dark scene, like an ancient Persian carpet covered with woven figures of many people-old lords, princesses, schol-ars, beauties. Draped over a bamboo pole, the carpet was being beaten, dust flying in the wind. Blow after blow, it was beaten till the people had nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. The shells Pew this way, and the people ran over there; the shells flew that way, and the people all ran back. In the end, the whole hall was riddled with holes. One wall had collapsed, and they had nowhere to hide. They sat on the ground, awaiting their fate.

By this time, Liusu wished that Liuyuan wasn't there: when one person seems to have two bodies, danger is only doubled. If she wasn't hit, he still might be, and if he died, or was badly wounded, it would be worse than anything she could imagine. If she got wounded, she'd have to die, so as not to be a burden to him. Even if she did die, it wouldn't be as clean and simple as dying alone. She knew Liuyuan felt the same way. Now all she had was him; all he had was her.

The fighting ended. The men and women who'd been trapped in the Repulse Bay Hotel slowly walked toward the city. They walked past yellow cliffs, then red cliffs, more red cliffs, then yellow cliffs again, almost wondering if they'd got-ten lost, and were going in circles. But no, here was a pit they hadn't seen before, blasted out of the road and full of rubble.