CHAPTER XXXI.

Pao-yue allows the girl Ch'ing Wen to tear his fan so as to afford her
amusement.
A wedding proves to be the result of the descent of a unicorn.


But to proceed. When she saw on the floor the blood, she had brought up,
Hsi Jen immediately grew partly cold. What she had often heard people
mention in past days 'that the lives of young people, who expectorate
blood, are uncertain, and that although they may live long, they are,
after all, mere wrecks,' flashed through her mind. The remembrance of
this saying at once completely scattered to the winds the wish, she had
all along cherished, of striving for honour and of being able to boast
of glory; and from her eyes unwittingly ran down streams of tears.

When Pao-yue saw her crying, his heart was seized with anguish. "What's
it that preys on your mind?" he consequently asked her.

Hsi Jen strained every nerve to smile. "There's no rhyme or reason for
anything," she replied, "so what can it be?"

Pao-yue's intention was to there and then give orders to the servant to
warm some white wine and to ask them for a few 'Li-T'ung' pills
compounded with goat's blood, but Hsi Jen clasped his hand tight. "My
troubling you is of no matter," she smiled, "but were I to put ever so