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bedroom embroidering a gold dragon upon a black girdle which she wished to present to her son. There was no need for her to do such work but she could not read and she liked to embroider. She heard Yehonala’s voice and since she was growing weary of her needle, which she soon did, she put it down and called.
    “Yehonala, come here! Who says I am sleeping is a liar!”
    Yehonala made a coaxing smile for the serving woman who frowned. “No one says you sleep, Venerable,” she called, in reply. “It is I who heard it wrong.”
    With this courteous lie she tripped through the rooms holding her melon until she reached the bedchamber of the Dowager Mother, where the old lady sat in her undergarments because of the heat, and to her she presented the melon with both hands.
    “Ah,” the Dowager Mother cried, “and I sat here thinking of sweet melons and wishing for one, and you come at the very moment!”
    “Let me bid a eunuch hang it in one of the northern wells to cool it,” Yehonala said.
    But the Dowager Mother would not allow this. “No, no,” she argued, “if this melon falls into the hands of a eunuch he will eat it secretly and then when I send for it, he will bring me a green one or he will say the rats have gnawed it or it has fallen into the well and he cannot get it up. I know those eunuchs! I will eat it here and now and have it safely in my belly.”
    She turned her head and shouted to any serving woman who was near. “Fetch me a large knife!”
    Three or four women ran for knives and in a moment they were back and Yehonala took a knife and sliced the melon delicately and neatly and the Dowager Mother seized a piece of it and began to eat it as greedily as a child, the sweet water dripping from her chin.
    “A towel,” Yehonala said to a serving woman and when it was put in her hand she tied it about the old lady’s neck to keep her silken undervest from soiling.
    “Save half of it,” the Dowager Mother commanded, when she had eaten as much as she could. “When my son comes to present himself this evening as he always does before I sleep, I will give it to him. But it is to stay here beside me or one of those eunuchs will snatch it.”
    “Let me—” Yehonala said.
    And she would not allow a serving woman to touch the melon. She called for a dish and placed the melon into it, and then she called for a porcelain bowl and this she placed over the melon, and the dish was set into a basin of cold water. All this trouble she took that the Dowager Mother might mention it to the Emperor when he came and so her name would fall somewhere into the Emperor’s hearing.
    While she worked in such ways, Li Lien-ying worked in his, also. He bribed the menservants in the Emperor’s private courts to watch their lord and when the monarch appeared restless, his eyes moving this way and that after a woman, the eunuch bade them speak the name of Yehonala.
    Thus in one way and another it was done, and the very day after the presentation of the melon Yehonala found in the pages of her book when she opened it in the library a sheet of paper folded small. Upon it were written two lines in rude handwriting. They said:
“The Dragon awakes again,
The day of the Phoenix has come.”
    She knew who had written the words. Yet how did Li Lien-ying know? She would not ask him. What he did to fulfill her purposes must be secret even from herself, and quietly she read her books while the old tutor eunuch slept and woke and slept again until hours passed. But this was the day when she received her usual painting lesson in midafternoon and she was glad, for her mind darted here and there and she could not keep her thoughts upon the calm words of a dead sage. Upon painting she must keep her mind fixed, for her teacher was a woman, not yet old, and very exacting. She was Lady Miao, a widow, a Chinese, whose husband had died in youth. Since it was not usual for Chinese ladies to appear in the Manchu Court, this lady was allowed to