Hi Ling hesitated.
"I have never told that to a living soul," he said slowly.
"Nevertheless, you must tell it to me."
"You would only smile," said Hi Ling. "You would hold my story up to ridicule, and if you did I would kill you. I should hate to do that. Never in my life has the blood of any animal been upon my hands."
"Scarcely a compliment," drawled Steppling, "to call me an animal."
He was not angry. He merely made the comment to draw on conversation.
"I meant no offense," Hi Ling assured him. "I spoke the truth, for surely, if you are neither a fish nor a fowl, you must be an animal."
"You are right," agreed Steppling. "I agree with you on every point. Therefore I think it but fitting that you tell me your story."
Again Hi Ling hesitated. But finally he acquiesced.
"Years ago," Hi Ling began, "I
lived in southern China. I was
very wealthy. My ancestors had all
contributed their share to the measure
of my holdings. By profession I was
a horticulturist. Even though forty
years have passed, the glory of my
gardens is still recounted throughout
southern China in innumerable
quaint tales of fantasy. I raised all
sorts of flowers, but I specialized in
jasmine, eglantine and wistaria blossoms,
particularly wistaria. I had a
passion for the flowers, as great as
that of any sultan for the veiled ladies
of his harem. So intent was I on
the contemplation of my flowers, that
I seldom left the garden. Sometimes
I did not even return to my house to
sleep. Instead, I reclined in a charming
grove at the back of my buildings,
where I could hear the tinkle of a tiny
rivulet, and where hundreds of gorgeous
flowers breathed into the air a
perfume that made me drowzy and
caressed me to sleep.
"To me that garden was filled with soft-sweet voices. Flowers talk, or perhaps it would be more descriptive to say, they sing; but it is given to few people of earth to hear their wondrous melodies. Of this few, I was one.
"Day by day I studied the language of flowers. I became a hermit. As time went on I never left my garden. All else was forgotten in the contemplation of gorgeous orchids, sweet-scented jasmine and seductive eglantine. I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much.
"In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchidlike in glory, but of a species quite different from any I had ever chanced upon before. It had the soft, warm color of a tea rose, with a tint of carmine faintly suggested in the petals, which were as velvet-soft as the cheek of a maiden.
"By the hour I used to sit and listen to the sweet singing of that perfect flower. The tinkle of a fairy belli would almost seem harsh by comparison. Is it any wonder, then, that I fell in love with that flower? The wonder is that the flower seemed equally enamored of me. It glowed more beauteously as I approached it. It swayed toward me. As I put down my head to breathe of the exotic fragrance, it gently caressed my lips, and the caress was softer than the kiss of the loveliest woman.
"In time I grew to call the flower 'Dawn-Girl'. No lover of romance was more enraptured by his dear one than I. That garden became for me a sacred place. Great peace stole into my heart. The miracle of love had been performed anew. Like night and day it goes on endlessly. When love dies out on earth, then will the sun grow cold.
"I was supremely happy, but my happiness was not to last. Into my life, as into the life of every man,
