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down Madame Wu’s long hair and began to comb it in firm strong strokes with the fine-toothed sandalwood comb. She saw the quiet face in the mirror and saw how large and black the eyes looked tonight.
    “Are you tired, Lady?” Ying asked.
    “Not at all,” Madame Wu replied.
    But Ying went on, “You have had a long day. And now, Lady, you are forty and beginning another kind of life, and I think you ought not to work so hard. You should give over the government of the house and shops to your eldest son, and you should let your son’s wife direct the kitchens, and even your second son’s wife could attend to the supervision of the servants. Now you should sit in the court and read and look at your flowers and remember how good your life is under this roof, and how your sons’ wives are bearing sons.”
    “Perhaps you are right,” Madame Wu replied. “I have been thinking of such things myself. Ying, I shall ask my sons’ father to take a small wife.”
    She said this so calmly that for a moment she knew it was not comprehended. Then she felt the comb stop in her hair, and she felt Ying’s hand holding her hair together tighten at the nape of her neck.
    “It is not necessary for you to speak,” Madame Wu said. The comb began to move again too quickly. “You are pulling my hair,” Madame Wu said.
    Ying threw the comb on the floor. “I will not take care of any lady but you!” she burst forth.
    “It is not asked of you,” Madame Wu replied.
    But Ying went down on her knees on the tiled floor beside Madame Wu, and she sobbed and wiped her eyes with the corner of the new sateen jacket which she had put on for the day. “Oh, my mistress!” she sobbed. “Does he compel you, my precious? Has he forgotten all your goodness and your beauty? Tell me just one thing—”
    “It is my own will,” Madame Wu said firmly. “Ying, get up from your knees. If he comes in he will think I have been beating you—”
    “You!” Ying sobbed. “You who could never put out your hand to pinch a mosquito, even when it sucks your blood!” Nevertheless she rose and took up the comb from the floor and, sniffling in her tears, again she combed Madame Wu’s hair.
    Madame Wu began to speak in her quiet, reasonable voice. “I tell you first, Ying, so that I may tell you how to behave among the servants. There is to be no loud talk among you and no blaming this one and that. When the young woman comes—”
    “Who is she?” Ying asked.
    “I do not know yet,” Madame Wu said.
    “When does she come?” Ying interrupted again.
    “I have not decided,” Madame Wu said. “But when she comes she is to be received as one honored in the house, a little lower than I am, a little higher than any sons’ wives. She will not be an actress or a singing girl or any of those persons, but a good woman. Everything is to be done in order. Above all, there is not to be a word spoken against my son’s father or against the young woman, for it is I who will invite her to come.”
    Ying could not bear this. “Lady, since we have been together so many years, is it allowed for me to ask you why?”
    “You may ask, but I will not tell you,” Madame Wu said tranquilly.
    In silence Ying finished combing the long hair and scenting it and braiding it. She wound it into a coil for Madame Wu’s bath, and then she supervised the pouring of the water in the bathroom. There stood a deep round jar of green-lined pottery, and two water carriers brought in great wooden buckets of hot and cold water through an outer door and poured it in and went away again. Ying tried the water with her hand and dropped in scent from a bottle and then, holding fresh soap and silken towels, she went into the other room.
    “Your bath is ready, Lady,” she said as she said every night.
    Madame Wu took off her last garments and walked, as slender as a young girl, quite naked across the room and into the bathroom. She took Ying’s hand and stepped into the tub, and sat