the battle is won, no drink is better to assuage pain and bring on the blessedness of sleep."
Early the next morning, accompanied by a small band of his trusted troops, An Lu-shan left the Palace and rode off into the hills.
Yang Kuei-fei walked to the red gates of the Palace to bid him farewell.
"Good luck!" she cried, as he rode away, and he remembered her words long afterwards. He stored them away in his memory with a few other things, his hopes, his triumphs, and his despair.
5.
An Lu-shan returned no more to Changan, to loiter in the Palace gardens, to sup with the Emperor, to pay court to the beauty of Yang Kuei-fei. But he did not forget her. She was unforgettable. He could recapture her vision, merely by closing his eyes, so deeply was her image engraved in his thoughts—standing beside a cluster of white stemmed pines, chanting the songs that Li Po had written for her, while overhead the little clouds gathered, halted in their mad rush across the river of sky that they might hear the incense kindling notes. Other golden moments did he remember: the first time he had ever beheld her, standing at the top of a Jade Staircase, smiling gently; how far away she had seemed that night, yet not unattainable, for later they had met, and the hours they had spent together were of the beauty that is never written, like flower petals when
a storm rages. And there were frequently storms when
