"In fire-lit pools the crimson Carp are swirling; The painted peacocks shining plumes are furling; Now in the torch-light by the Gate A thousand Lutes begin the Fête With one triumphant Cry! Why should Love sigh?"
The curtain slowly closed on the echoes of her lute; there came an interval of absolute silence, then an uproar of cries and of people getting to their feet, calling out: "Go on! Go on! Don't stop!" No applause except this excited clamour for more, and the racket of moving chairs.
"Good Lord!" muttered Captain Herrendene. "Did you ever see anything as beautiful as that girl?"
And: "Where did she learn such things?" demanded people excitedly of one another. "It must be the real business! How does she know?"
The noise became louder and more emphatic; calls for her reappearance redoubled and persisted until the gong again sounded, the lights went out, and the curtains twitched once more and parted.
She slid down from her cradled perch between the forelegs of the shadowy dragon and came to the edge of the footlights.
"I was going to show you one or two jades from the Desboro collection, and tell you a little about them," she began, "but my lute and I will say for you another song of ancient China, if you like. It was made by Kao-Shih about seven hundred years after the birth of Christ. He was one of the T'ang poets--and not a very cheerful one. This is his song."
And she recited for them: "There was a king of Liang."
After that she stepped back; but they would not have it, to the point of enthusiastic rudeness.
She recited for them Mêng Hao-Jan's "A Friend Expected," from "The Maker of Moons," and the quatrains of the lovely, naïve little "Spring Dream," written by Ts'en-Ts'an in the eighth century.
But they demanded still more. She laid aside her lute and intoned for them the noble lines of China's most famous writer:
"Thou that hast seen six kingdoms pass away----"
Then, warming to her audience, and herself thrilled with the spirit of the ancient splendour, she moved forward in her whispering silks, and, slightly bending, her finger lifted like one who hushes children with a magic tale, she spoke to them of Fei-yen, mistress of the Emperor; and told them how T'ai-Chên became an empress; sang for them the song of Yu Lao, the "Song of the Moon Moth":