The air in the gateway under the wall grew thick with dust and once or twice the old wall shook around them. A thousand years before this day the wall had been built, and who of those whose hands had built it could have dreamed of such an enemy? Yet because they had laid the foundations so deeply and so well, the old wall stood, and by heaven’s kindness, no bomb fell directly upon it as it went curving in and out between the hills about the city. So now it did not fall upon the heads of those who took shelter under it, and they stood speechless and gasping under this rain.
Then it was over. The enemy flew away, and Sheng stepped out of the shelter to see them go. He had seen them come in a line drawn against the sky as clearly as though a painter’s brush had drawn wild geese flying. And that he might see them go he climbed quickly up on the wall. They flew home again as evenly as they had come and as full of grace. And Sheng felt such bitterness in his heart that he could not swallow it down. There had been nothing that any could do that could so much as break the perfect line of those ships in the sky. They had come and done their evil work and gone away, maintaining even their shape.
And as he watched he remembered what Mayli had told him, how the machines and the factories in the land of Mei could grind out such ships by the score every day, and yet they would not send a few hundred across the sea to beat off the new enemy. A day’s harvest of airships would have been enough! And as Sheng stood watching from the city wall he thought to himself how earthbound he was and all his men were, and he longed to be able to fly too, so that he could follow after that enemy. But no, he was earthbound. Upon his feet, plodding ahead of his men, he would have to march a thousand miles to do his share of the battle, while here, where she whom he loved must live, the enemy came on wings and did what it willed.
He leaned over the edge of the grassy inner side of the wall and shouted to Mayli that she was to come up. Now all the people were going back into the city whose homes were there, and those who were travelers went on their way, for the gate was opened. Only the leper sat down beside the gate, for he had no home. As for the priest, he went outside the gate toward his temple in the hills, for he had only come into the city that day to beg. But before he went he took out some coins from the bosom of his gray robe and dropped them into the palm of the leper. When they fell there they made a sound as though that palm were of metal, so hard and dry and white it was with leprosy.
But now Mayli was climbing up the wall and soon she was beside Sheng and he saw distress in her eyes.
“I must go home and wash myself,” she said. “I shall not feel clean until I am washed.”
He was astonished that she made such ado about this leper and told her so. “You did not touch the man, and he cannot hurt you if he is not touched,” he said. “I took care, too, that my body did not touch his, and it is only that priest who touched him, and he is holy and no hurt will come to him.”
“But a leper ought not to be allowed to come out,” she cried. “If it were in the Mei country, or the Ying, do you think a leper would be allowed to wander among the people?”
“Why, what would they do with him?” Sheng asked amazed. “Surely they would not put to death a man who cannot help what he is?”
“No, of course they would not,” she said. “But they would put him into a place where there were others like him and where none would touch those who are not lepers.”
“Yet that is unjust, too,” Sheng said gravely. “Is a man to be kept in a prison because he has an illness he cannot help?”
“Oh, you who understand nothing!” she cried impatiently. “It is for the sake of the ones who are not lepers!”
He looked at her and saw her dusty face and hair and her cheeks, which were always rosy red, now pale.
“Let us not quarrel when we have only escaped death together,” he said. “You and I, we quarrel whatever comes to us. It will be better perhaps that I go away and leave you. For I begin to see that you will always quarrel with me because I am not what you want.”
He saw her red underlip begin to tremble and she turned her head away, and then she saw the city. They had forgotten the city for a moment, but there it lay, smitten under the enemy. Four great fires blazed, and the coils of smoke rose against the fair evening sky. Suddenly she began to sob.
“What now?” he cried, frightened, for he had never seen her weep before.
“I am so angry!” she cried. “I am so angry that we are helpless. What can we do? We wait for them to come and kill us and we can do nothing but hide ourselves!”
He reached for her hand and they stood watching the fires. A roar of far-off voices rose as the gathering crowds began to throw water on the fires, but they did not move to go to help. There were people enough — all that the city had was people!
Liu Ma’s voice came scolding up to them from the street. “Are you staying there in the cold? It will soon be night. I go home to cook the rice.”
They came down at the call, and followed her, and they felt themselves tired and their hearts were cold with what they had seen and each was weary.
“I must go back to my men,” Sheng said.
“Will you come to me again before you go to Burma?” she asked.
He did not answer. For they were stopped in their way. Here where the street forked to the north a house had fallen under a bomb, and a young man, weeping aloud, was digging at the ruins with his hands.
“Was it your house?” Liu Ma bawled at him, and her old face wrinkled up with pity.
“My house, my silk shop, and all I had are buried underneath it,” the man sobbed, “my wife and my old father and my little son!”
“How are you escaped?” she asked, and now she began to dig too, and Sheng looked about him for something to dig with.
“I went outside for a moment to see which way the enemy came, and they were there over my head,” the man cried. At this moment he came upon a small piece of red flowered cloth. “It is my little son’s jacket!” he screamed.
By now Sheng had seen a carrying pole lying beside a dead farmer. This man’s baskets of rice on either end of the pole were as smooth and whole as when his hands had made them so, but a piece of metal flying through the air had caught him between the eyes, and had shaved off half his head as cleanly as a knife parts a melon. So Sheng took the pole and began to dig and Mayli when she saw the flowered cloth fell to her knees on the rubble stones and dug with her hands, too.
Soon the child was uncovered, and the young father lifted him up in his arms. But the child was dead. Not one of them spoke, and the young man lifted the child up and sobbed to the heavens over them, until none of them could keep back tears from his own eyes. Mayli wiped her eyes with her kerchief, and Liu Ma picked up her apron. But Sheng put down the pole.
“If this child is dead, be sure all the others of your house are dead,” he said, “and you alone have been saved for some will of Heaven. Come with me. I will give you a gun for revenge.”
Now the man could see easily that Sheng was a soldier and a leader of soldiers, and so he turned blindly, the tears still running down his face, and made as if to follow Sheng with the dead child lying in his two arms as though on a bed.
“Leave the child,” Sheng ordered him.
But the young man looked piteously from one face to the other. “I can leave the ones that are buried under the house,” he said, “but how can I put down my little son? The dogs will eat him.”