Certainly he never thought of one to love like this maid, severe and earnest and clothed always in her dark straight robes of blue or grey, and wearing leather shoes, and bent always on her books and cause. Nor did he love her now.
But she loved him. At which hour he found this out he scarcely knew. Yet he knew, too. One day they met at a distance to walk upon a quiet street along a canal’s edge, and it was evening and the time of twilight, and they were about to turn homeward, when suddenly he felt her looking at him and he caught her look and it was changed, a deep clinging burning look it was, and then her voice, her lovely voice that never seemed a part of her, came forth and said, “Yuan, there is one thing I’d rather see than anything.”
And when he faltered out to know what it was, his heart beating very thickly of a sudden, although he had not thought of loving her, she said on, “I want to see you in our cause. Yuan, you are my very brother — I want to call you comrade, too. We need you — we need your good mind, your strength. You are twice what Meng can ever be.”
Suddenly Yuan thought he saw why she had come to friendship with him, and he thought angrily that she and Meng had planned it, and his rising feeling checked itself.
But then her voice said again, very soft and deep-sounding in the twilight, her voice said, “Yuan, there is another reason.”
And now Yuan dared not ask her what it was. But a faintness in him rose and choked him nearly, and he felt his body tremble, and he turned and said, half whispering, “I must get home — I promised Ai-lan—”
And so with no other word they both turned and walked homeward. But when they parted they did that they never had done; scarcely meaning it, and certainly not planning so to do. They clasped their hands together, and with that touch some change came into Yuan, and he knew they were no more friends, not now friends any more, though still he did not know what they were.
But all that evening when he was with Ai-lan, when he spoke to this maid, danced with that one, he looked at them as he never had and puzzled over how maids in the world can be so differing, and that night when he went to bed he lay a long time pondering on this, the first time he had even thought of any maid. For now he thought long of this one maid and he thought about her eyes, how he had once thought them cold like dull onyx in the paleness of her face. But now he had seen them brighten into warm beauty of their own when be spoke to her. Then he remembered how her voice was always sweet, and how its richness seemed unsuited to her quietness and seeming coldness. And yet it was her own voice. So pondering he wished that he had had courage to ask her what that other reason was. He would have liked to hear her voice tell him such a reason as he guessed.
But still he did not love her. He knew he did not love her.
And last he came to the memory of that touch of her hand to his, the heart of her hand pressed against his hand’s heart; so, palm to palm, they had stood an instant in the darkness of the unlit street, so fixed a ricksha swerved to pass them, and they did not see it until the man cursed them, and still they did not care. It had been too dark for him to see her eyes, and she had said nothing, nor had he. There was only that close touch to think on. And when he thought of it the torch was lit. Something flamed inside him, though what it was puzzled him no little, for still he knew he did not love her.
Now if it had been Sheng who touched this maid’s hand he would have, if he liked, smiled and forgotten it, for he had touched many maids’ hands warmly for a moment, or if he liked he would have touched it again and yet again, as often as he would if he found the maid loved him, or at least until he wearied of it and he would have written a tale or two or made a verse and then forgot her the more easily. And Meng would not have dreamed long of it either, for in this cause of his were maids enough, and they made it a purpose, youths and maids, to be bold and free together, and to call each other comrade, and Meng heard much talk and made some talk, too, about men and women being equal always and free to love each other as they would.
Still, with all this freedom, there was not overmuch true freedom, for these maids and youths, as Meng did, burned with another cause than lust, and the cause burned them clean. And Meng was cleanest of them all, for he had grown so filled with loathing of lust, having seen his own father’s heats and his elder brother’s wandering eyes, that he scorned all vain pastime spent with women, because to him it seemed they wasted mind and body that should be spent for cause. As yet Meng had never touched a maid. He could speak as well as any on free love and rights of love without a rule of marriage, but he did none of it.
But Yuan had no burning cleansing cause. He had not the safety of Sheng’s idle, pleasant ways with maidens either, and so when this one maid touched Yuan’s hand as none had ever touched it he could not forget it. Here was a thing to wonder at, too, that this hand of hers, when he remembered it, was hot and moist in the palm. He had not thought her hand could be hot. Thinking of her pale face, of her cool pale lips that moved so little when she spoke, he would have said, if he had thought of it before, that her hands would be dry and cool and the fingers loose to hold. But this was not true. Her hand had held to his hand, close and hot and clinging. Hand and voice and eyes — those spoke of her hot heart. And when Yuan began to think what her heart might be, the heart of this strange maid who was so bold and calm, yet shy as he could know her shy through his own shyness, then he tossed upon his bed and longed to touch her hand again and yet again.
Nevertheless, when at last he fell asleep and woke in the cool morning of the spring, he knew he did not love her. He could think in the cool morning and remember how hot her hand was, and say to himself that even so he did not love her. And on that day in the school in great shyness he avoided every glance at her, and he did not linger anywhere and at the earliest hour after noon he went out to his land and worked there feverishly, and to himself he thought, “This feel of earth upon my hands is better than the touch of any maid’s hand.” And he remembered how he had lain and thought in his bed the night before and he was ashamed and glad his father did not know.
Before long the farmer came by and he praised the clever way Yuan felled the weeds about his turnips and he laughed and said, “Do you remember that first day you hoed? If it had been today, you would have felled each turnip with the weeds!” And he laughed mightily, and then he said to comfort Yuan, “But you will make a farmer yet. It is told in the muscle of your arm and in the bigness of your back. Those other students — such a puny lot of pale weeds I never saw — their spectacles and dangling little arms and their gold teeth and their sticks of legs stuck into foreign trousers — if I had such bodies as they have I swear I’d wrap me in robes somehow and hide myself.” And the farmer laughed again and shouted, “Come and smoke awhile and rest yourself before my door!”
And so Yuan did, and he listened, smiling, to the farmer’s loud constant voice and to all the farmer’s scorn of city men and especially did the farmer hate the young men and the revolutionists, and he cried down every mild good word Yuan said for them and he shouted, “And what good can they do me, then? I have my bit of land, my home, my cow. I want no more land than I have, and I have enough to eat. If the rulers would not tax me so hard, I would be glad, but men like me have always been so taxed. Why should they come and talk to me of doing good to me or mine? Whoever heard of good coming out of strangers? Who will do good for any man except those of his own blood? No, I know they have something they want for themselves — my cow, perhaps, or else my bit of land.”