The Living Reed

I

THE YEAR WAS 4214 after Tangun of Korea, and 1881 after Jesus of Judea. It was spring in the capital city of Seoul, a good season for a child to be born, and a fair day. Il-han, surnamed Kim, of the clan of Andong, sat in his library waiting for the birth of his second child to be announced. It was a pleasant room, larger than most rooms, and since the house faced south, the sun climbing over the walls of the compound shone dimly through the rice-papered lattices of the sliding walls. He sat on satin-covered floor cushions beside a low desk, but the floor itself was warmed by smoke ducts from the kitchen stove, after the ancient ondul fashion. He tried diligently to keep his mind on his book, open before him on the low desk. Three hours had passed since his wife had retired to her bedroom, accompanied by her sister, the midwife and women servants. Three times one or the other of them had come to tell him that all went well, that his wife sent him greetings and begged him to take nourishment, for the birth was still far off.

“Far off?” he had demanded. “How far off?”

Each time the answer had been a shake of the head, a vague smile, a retreat, behavior typical of women, he thought somewhat scornfully, at least of Korean women, silken sweet on the surface, but rock stubborn underneath. All except his beautiful and beloved wife, his Sunia! He would have been ashamed to show to anyone, even to her, how much he loved her, and this although he had never seen her before their wedding. For once matchmakers had not lied and fortunetellers had been correct in the forecasting of signs and dates. Sunia had fulfilled every duty as a bride. She had not smiled once throughout the long day of the wedding, in spite of the ruthless teasing of relatives and friends. A bride who could not control her laughter on her wedding day, it was said, would give birth only to girls. Sunia had given birth to a son, now three years old, and if the fortuneteller was right again, today she would have another. Il-han’s home, his family, made a center of peace in these troubled times of his country. But when had times not been troubled for Korea? In four thousand years there had been scarcely a century of peace for the small valuable peninsula hanging like a golden fruit before the longing eyes of the surrounding nations, proud China demanding tribute, vast Russia hungry for the seacoast she did not have, and Japan, ambitious for empire.

He sighed, forgetting home and family, and rose to walk impatiently to and fro across the room. It was impossible to keep his mind fixed on books, although he was a scholar, not the scholar his father was, poring over ancient volumes, but a scholar for all of that. His book today was a modern one, a history of western nations. His father would not have been pleased had he known that he, Kim Il-han, the only son of the Kim family of Andong, was engaged in such learning, his father who lived in the classics of Confucius and in dreams of the golden age of the dynasty of Silla! But he, Il-han, like all young men of his generation, was impatient with old philosophies and religions. Confucianism, borrowed from China, had isolated this nation already isolated by sea and mountain, and Buddhism had led the hermit mind of his people into fantasies of heaven and hell, gods and demons, into anything, indeed, except the bitter present.

He paced the tiled floor of his library, a tall slender figure in the white robes of his people, and he listened for the cry of his newborn child while he mused. Then, burning with restlessness at the delay and suddenly feeling himself hot, he slid back the latticed wall. The clear sunshine of the spring morning poured its rays across his low table desk. The desk had been his grandfather’s, a solid piece of teak imported from Burma, made after his grandfather’s own design, and decorated with fine Korean brass.

“This desk shall be yours,” his father had told him upon the grandfather’s death. “May the thoughts and writings of a great statesman inspire you, my son!”

His grandfather had indeed been a great man, a premier of the still existing Yi dynasty, and from the Yi rulers he had absorbed the doctrine of isolationism and the emotions of pride and independence.

“Situated as we are, surrounded by three powerful nations, Russia, China and Japan,” his grandfather had memorialized the Throne half a century ago, “we can only save ourselves from their greed by withdrawal from the world. We must become a hermit nation.”

His father had often quoted these words and Il-han had listened to them with secret scorn. The absurdity of his elders! He had kept his own secrets even from his father, his share in the first revolt against the Regent, Taiwunkun. He, Il-han, had been only a boy but a useful boy, carrying messages between the rebel leaders and the young Queen. The Regent had married his son, King Kojong, to her when he was far too young for marriage, and because he was young the Regent had chosen a daughter of the noble clan of Min, older than the King, a choice he had cause to rue, for who could believe the beautiful graceful girl was strong and of such brilliant mind, and determined that she could plot to set the Regent aside? He, Il-han, had seen her at first only by candlelight, at midnight, in stolen conference with the rebel leaders, he waiting at the door for a packet thrust into his hand which he must take to the young King when he went to play chess with him the next day. Even then he had known that the Queen was the one who must rule, and that the King, his gentle and amiable playmate, could only be the buffer between the arrogant Regent and the Queen.

But Il-han had told his father nothing. What could his father do, the handsome aging poet, dreaming his life away in his country house and his garden? For his father, unwilling to wound his grandfather, who had served the Regent, by taking the part of the young Queen who loved China, had early withdrawn from the royal conflict. Queen Min, it was said, though how truly none knew, was herself partly Chinese and her most powerful friend was Tzu-hsi, the Empress Dowager now ruling in Peking. From that capital the Queen still insisted upon buying the heavy silks and satin brocades she enjoyed wearing, and though some censured her for extravagance, he, Il-han, had not the heart to blame her for anything she did. Now in the joy of awaiting the birth of his second child, he thought of the Queen’s only son, heir to the throne, who had been born of feeble mind. In the center of her being, proud and beautiful and brilliant as she was, there was emptiness, and he knew it.

His absent mind, always pondering affairs of state, was presently controlled by his attention focused at this moment to hear the cry of his child fighting to be born. He paused, listening for footsteps. Hearing none, he returned to his desk, took up a camel’s-hair pen and continued to write a memorial he had begun some days before. Were this document to be presented to the King, he would have been compelled to use the formal Chinese characters. It was written not for the Court, however, but for the secret perusal of the Queen, and he used the symbols of the phonetic Korean alphabet.

“Furthermore, Majesty,” he wrote, “I am troubled that the British have moved ships to the island of Komudo, so near to our coasts. I understand that they wish the Chinese armed forces to leave Seoul, with which I cannot agree, for Japan is demanding that she be allowed to send troops to Korea in case of emergency. What emergency can arise in our country which would need Japanese soldiers? Is this not the ancient and undying desire of Japan for westward empire? Shall we allow our country to be a stepping-stone to China and beyond China to Asia itself?”

He was interrupted by the opening of a door and lifting his head, he heard his son’s voice, a subdued wail.

“I will not go to my father!”

He rose and flung open the door. His son’s tutor stood there, and his son was clinging to the young man’s neck.

“Forgive me, sir,” the tutor said. He turned to the child. “Tell your father what you have done.”

He tried to set the boy on his feet but the boy clung to him as stubbornly as a small monkey. Il-han pulled the child away by force and set him on his feet.

“Stand,” he commanded. “Lift your head!”

The child obeyed, his dark eyes filled with tears. Yet he did not look his father full in the face, which would have been to show lack of respect.

“Now speak,” Il-han commanded.

The child made the effort, opened his mouth and strangled a sob. He could only look at his father in piteous silence.

“It is I, sir, who should speak first,” the tutor said. “You have entrusted your son to me. When he commits a fault, it is my failing. This morning he would not come to the schoolroom. He has been rebellious of late. He does not wish to memorize the Confucian ode I have set for him to learn — a very simple ode, suitable for his age. When I saw he was not in the schoolroom, I went in search of him. He was in the bamboo grove. Alas, he had destroyed several of the young shoots!”

The child looked up at his father, still speechless, his face twisted in a mask of weeping.

“Did you do so?” Il-han demanded.

The child nodded.

Il-han refused to allow himself pity, although his heart went soft at the sight of this small woeful face.

“Why did you destroy the young bamboos?” His voice was gentle in spite of himself.

The child shook his head.

Il-han turned to the tutor. “You did well to bring him to me. Now leave us. I will deal with my son.”

The young man hesitated, a look of concern on his mild face. Il-han smiled.

“No, I will not beat him.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The young man bowed and left the room. Without further talk Il-han took his son’s hand and led him into the garden, and then to the bamboo grove by its southern wall. It was plain to see what had happened. The young shoots, ivory white and sheathed in their casings of pale green, were well above ground. Of several hundreds, some tens were broken off and lying on the mossy earth. Il-han stopped, his hand still clasping the small hot hand of his son.

“This is what you did?” he inquired.

The child nodded.

“Do you still not know why?”

The child shook his head and his large dark eyes filled with fresh tears. Il-han led him to a Chinese porcelain garden seat, and lifted him to his knee. He smoothed the child’s hair from his forehead, and pride swelled into his heart. The boy was straight and slim and tall for his years. He had the clear white skin, the leaf-brown eyes, the brown hair of his people, different from the darker Japanese, a living reminder that those invaders must not be tolerated in Korea.

“I know why you did it, my son,” he said gently. “You were angry about something. You forgot what I have taught you — a superior person does not allow himself to show anger. But you were angry and you did not dare tell your tutor that you were angry and so you came here, alone, where no one could see you, and you destroyed the young bamboos, which are helpless. Is that what you did?”

Tears flowed from the boy’s eyes. He sobbed.

“Yet you knew,” the father continued with relentless gentleness, “you knew that bamboo shoots are valuable. Why are they valuable?”

“We — we — like to eat them,” the child whispered.

“Yes,” the father said gravely, “we like to eat them, and it is in the spring that they can be eaten. But more than that, they grow only once from the root. The plants these shoots might have been, waving their delicate leaves in the winds of summer, will never live. The shoots crack the earth in spring, they grow quickly and in a year they have finished their growth. You have destroyed food, you have destroyed life. Though it is only a hollow reed, it is a living reed. Now the roots must send up other shoots to take the place of those you have destroyed. Do you understand me?”

The child shook his head. Il-han sighed. “It is not enough to learn your letters or even enough to learn the odes of Confucius. You must learn the inner meanings. Come with me to the library.”

He lifted the child from his knee and led him in silence to the library again. There he took from the shelves a long narrow box covered with yellow brocaded satin. He unhinged the silver hasp and lifted from the box a scroll which he unrolled upon the table.

“This,” he said, “is a map of our country. Observe how it lies between three other countries. Here to the north is Russia, this nation to the west is China, and this to the east is Japan. Are we larger or smaller than they?”

The child stared at the map soberly. “We are very small,” he said after a moment.

“Korea is small,” his father agreed. “And we are always in danger. Therefore we must be brave, therefore we must be proud. We must keep ourselves free, we must not allow these other nations to eat us up as they wish always to do. They have attacked us again and again, but we have repulsed them. How do you think we have done this?”

The child shook his head.

“I will tell you,” Il-han said. “Time and again brave men offer themselves as our leaders. They come up from the high-born yangban as we do, or they come from the landfolk. It does not matter where they come from. When the need arises they are here, ready to lead us. They are like the bamboo shoots that must replace those you have now destroyed. They will spring from the roots that are hidden in the earth.”

The child looked up with lively eyes, he listened, stretching his mind to understand what his father was saying. Whether he did understand Il-han never knew, for at this moment he heard the cry of the newborn child. The door opened and the old midwife appeared, her face wrinkled in smiles.

“Sir,” she said. “You have a second son.”

Joy rushed into his heart.

“Take this child to his tutor,” he said.

He pushed the boy into the midwife’s arms, and heedless of his son’s calling after him he hastened away.

… In his wife’s bedchamber they were waiting for him, the maidservants, the women who had come to assist, and above all Sunia, his wife. She lay on the mattress spread on the warm floor and the women had arranged her for his arrival. They had brushed her hair and wiped the sweat of childbirth from her face and hands and had spread a rose-pink silken cover upon her bed. She smiled up at him as he stood above her and his love for her rushed up and all but choked him. Her oval face was classic in beauty, not a soft face, and perhaps more proud than gentle, but he knew well her deep inner tenderness. Her skin was cream white, and at this moment without the high color natural to her. Her eyes, leaf-brown, were drowsy with weariness and content, and her long dark hair, soft and straight, was brushed and spread over the flat pillow.

“I am come to thank you,” he said.

“I have only done my duty,” she replied.

The words were a ritual, but through her eyes she had her own way of making them intimate.

“But,” she added with a touch of her daily willfulness, “I enjoy having your sons. How can it be only a duty?”

He laughed. “Pleasure or duty, please continue,” he said.

Had they been alone, he would have knelt at her side and taken her hand between his hands to cherish and fondle. As it was, he could only bow and turn away. Yet he paused at the door to leave a command with the women.

“See that you do not keep her awake with your chatter and make sure that she has chicken broth brewed with ginseng root.”

They bowed in silence, and he returned to the library where in a few minutes, as he knew, his second son would be presented to him. He knelt beside the great desk and then rose again, still too restless to read or write. Once more he walked to and fro across the tiled floor, across the squares of sunlight from the open doors. He turned his face to the sun. It fell upon him warmly and he welcomed the warmth. His white garments shone whiter, and he enjoyed the sense of light and cleanliness in which they wrapped him. He was fastidiously clean and Sunia saw to it that every morning he put on fresh white garments, the loose trousers bound at his ankles, the long white robe crossed from left to right on his breast. His ancestors were sun worshipers, and he had inherited from them his love of light. White was the sacred color, a symbol of brightness and of life. True, it was also the color of mourning. Yet so closely were death and life intertwined here in his troubled country that he could not think of one without realizing the other. This too was his inheritance, now given to his sons.

He paused on the thought and stared down at the pool of sunlight in which he stood. It occurred to him that he had not asked his elder son why he had been angry, so angry that he had rushed into the grove and broken the tender bamboo shoots. It was important to know why a son in this house should be angry. He clapped his hands and as a servant entered the room he took his place on the floor cushions behind the desk. Casually, as though he had no other interest, he spoke to the servant.

“Invite my son’s tutor to come here and for a short time take care of the child yourself. He is forbidden to enter the bamboo grove.”

He did not explain why the child was forbidden. In a house of many servants everything is already known. The servant bowed and backed out of the room and closed the door silently. He busied himself as he waited for the tutor, pouring water on the ink block and rubbing the stick of dried ink into a paste upon the wet block before brushing Chinese letters on the sheet of thick white paper, handmade from silk waste. He moistened his brush in the liquid ink and smoothed the fine hairs dexterously to a point. Then, the reed handle between two fingers and thumb, he held the brush poised above the paper. Four lines of a poem shaped in his brain to announce the birth of his second son. Ah, but what language should he use? If his father were to see the poem it must be written in the ancient Chinese.

“No true scholar can stoop to use hangul,” he declared whenever he saw what he called “the new way of writing.”

It was true that men liked to write in Chinese to show that they had received the education of a cultivated man. Sejong the Great himself had been a man learned in Chinese, but he had been also a wise ruler. A king, he had declared, if he is to govern well, must know what his people think and want, yet how can they write to their king if the letters they use are so difficult that years must be spent merely in learning them? That communication between himself and his subjects might be possible, he had then devised, with the help of many scholars, an alphabet so simple that it had no resemblance to the complex Chinese characters.

The book of Sejong’s life lay open now on the desk for Il-han had reflected much, of late, upon this noble king. Oh, that there were a ruler today as great as Sejong had been, one who, though he was the highest, could think of the low ones, the people, those who worked upon the land to produce food for all, who built houses for others to live in, those who only serve! Il-han himself, growing up the beloved and only son in a great house of the yangban class, had never thought of these folk. It was his own tutor, the father of his son’s tutor, who had first told him of the stir among the multitudes, the speechless revolt of the silent Sejong the Great had been well named. He was great enough to know that no ruler can ignore the discontent of his subjects, for discontent swells to anger and anger to explosion. Alas, again, where was such a man now? Was the young King ever to be strong enough?

The door slid open and his son’s tutor stood there, bowing, white robes spotless.

“Sir, forgive me for delay. I was in the bath.”

He bent low again and waited.

“Enter,” Il-han commanded. “And close the doors behind you.”

He did not rise, the man being his inferior in age and position, though the years between them were only three. His father had complained that the tutor was too young, but Il-han had persisted in keeping him, saying that his old tutor was too old, and he did not wish to entrust his son to a stranger whose forbears he did not know.

The young man came in and waited again.

“You are permitted to seat yourself,” Il-han said kindly.

The young man knelt opposite to him on a cushion before the low desk and looked down modestly. He was agitated, as Il-han could see and, he supposed, prepared for reproach because of the child’s destructive anger. Therefore he spoke mildly, aware of the anxiety on the sensitive youthful face which he now examined.

“I wish to consult you about my son,” Il-han began.

“If you please, sir,” the young man replied in a low voice.

“It is not a question of blame or punishment,” Il-han went on. “It is only that I must be told about my son. He is with you day and night and you understand his nature. Tell me — why should he be angry here in his own home?”

The young man lifted his eyes to the edge of the table. “He has fits of anger, sir. I do not know what causes them. They come like sudden storms at sea. All is as usual, we are without quarrel, and then with no warning, he throws his book on the floor and pushes me away.”

“Does he hate books?”

“No, sir.” The young man lifted his eyes a few inches higher so that now they rested on Il-han’s hands, folded on his desk. “He is very young, and I require nothing of him in the way of study. I read him a story from history, then a legend, a fairy tale, something to amuse him and please him so that he may understand the pleasure to be found in books and later will seek them for himself. This morning, for example, I was reading the story of ‘The Golden Frog.’”

Il-han knew the story from his own childhood. It was the tale of King Puru who, because he had no son, prayed to God for a male child. On his way home one day, for he had ridden horseback to a place called Konyun, he was amazed to see a weeping rock. He ordered his retinue to examine the rock, and under it they found a golden frog which looked like a baby. He believed his prayers were answered and he took the frog home. It grew into a handsome boy, and he named the boy Kumwa, that is to say, Golden Frog, and this son succeeded his father and became King Kumwa.

“At this point,” the tutor was saying, “the child tore the book from my hands and dashed it on the floor. Then he ran from the room. I searched for him and when I found him in the bamboo grove he was wrenching the bamboo shoots with both his hands and all his strength and throwing them on the ground. When I asked him why he did so, he said he did not want a golden frog for a brother.”

Il-han was amazed. “Who put that in his mind?”

The young tutor lowered his eyes again. A red flush crept up from his neck and spread over his cheeks. “Sir, I am miserable. I fear it was I who did so, but unwittingly. He had heard of his brother’s approaching birth and he asked me where this brother would come from. I did not know how to reply, and I said perhaps he would be found under a rock, like the Golden Frog.”

Il-han laughed. “A clever explanation, but I can think of a better! You might, for instance, have replied that his brother came from the same place that he himself did. And when the child inquired where that was, you could have said, ‘If you do not know, how can I know?’”

The young man forgot himself and raised his eyes to Il-han’s face. “Sir, you do not understand your own son. He is never to be put off. He pries my mind open with his questions. I fear sometimes that in a few years he will be beyond me. He smells out the smallest evasion, not to mention deceit, and worries me for the truth, even though I know it is beyond him. And when in desperation I give him simple truth he struggles with it as though he were fighting an enemy he must overcome. When he comprehends finally and to his own satisfaction, he is exhausted and angry. That was what happened this morning. He insisted upon knowing where his brother came from, and how could I explain to him the process of birth? He is too young. I was driven to use wile and persuasion and so I fetched the book. But he knew it was only a device and this was the true reason for his anger.”

Il-han rose from his cushion and went to the door and opened it suddenly. No one was there and he closed it again and returned to his cushion. He leaned forward on the low desk and spoke softly. “I have called you here for another purpose, also. Your father, as you know, was my tutor. He taught me much, but most of all he taught me how to think. He grounded me in the history of my people. I wish you to do the same for my son.”

The young tutor looked troubled. “Sir, my father was a member of the society of Silhak.”

He lowered his voice and looked toward the closed door.

“Why be afraid?” Il-han inquired. “There is good in the teaching of the Silhak that learning which does not help the people is not true learning. It is not new, mind you. It is made up of many elements—”

“Western, among them, sir,” the tutor put in. He forgot himself and that he was in the presence of the heir of the most powerful family in Korea.

“Partly western,” Il-han agreed. “But that is good. Were it not treason to the Queen, I would say that we have been too long under the influence of the ancient Chinese. Not that we should allow ourselves to be wholly under the influence of the West, mind you! It is our fate, lying as we do between many powers, to be influenced to an extent by all and many. It is our task to accept and reject, to weld and mingle and out of our many factions to create ourselves, the One, an independent nation. But what is that One? Ah, that is the question! I cannot answer it. Yet now for the sake of my sons an answer must be found.”

He leaned against the backrest of his cushion, frowning, pondering. Suddenly he spoke with new energy.

“But you are not to repeat your father’s weakness with me. He told me of evil in other great families, but not in my own family of Kim. Yet in some ways we are the most guilty of all the great families. We early built ourselves into the royal house so that we could acquire benefits. Fifteen hundred years ago, and more, we married three daughters into the eighth monarchy, Honjong. Through three reigns, one after the other, our daughters were married into the truebone royal house. We fed upon the nation, both land and people. The best posts in government went to my ancestors and for that matter to my grandfather, and even my father until he refused to oppose the Regent and retired to live under his grass roof. How else could we live in such houses as these? Palaces! And how else could I be the heir to vast lands in this small country? At one time we even aspired to rule the Throne. You know very well that one of my ancestors so aspired and was crushed — as he deserved to be!”

He spoke with a passion restrained but profound and the young tutor was shocked at this self-humiliation. “These are affairs long past, sir,” he murmured. “They are forgotten.”

Il-han insisted upon his ruthless survey. “They are not forgotten. Millions of people have suffered and do suffer because of the name Kim. We are well named!”

He traced upon the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of his right hand the Chinese letter for Gold, which was indeed the meaning of the name Kim.

“That is what we have lived for — gold in the shape of lands and houses and high position! We have gained the power and even over the royal house. Ah, you must teach my son what your father did not teach me! Teach him the truth!”

He broke off abruptly, his handsome face furious and dark.

Before the tutor could answer, the door slid open. The midwife entered, carrying in her arms the newborn child, laid upon a red satin cushion. She was followed by Il-han’s two sisters-in-law and they by their maids.

His elder sister-in-law came forward. “Brother, behold your second son.”

Il-han rose. Again his family duty claimed him and with a nod he dismissed the tutor. He walked toward the procession and stretched out his arms. The midwife laid the cushion across them with the sleeping child, and he looked down into the small perfect face of his new son.

“Little Golden Frog,” he murmured.

The women looked at one another astonished and then they laughed and clapped their hands. It was a lucky greeting, for the Golden Frog had become a prince.

“What did he say when he saw our child?” Sunia asked.

She had already recovered some of her natural clear color, and her large dark eyes were lively. Childbirth was easy for her and with a second son she was triumphant. Three or four sons from now she could wish for a daughter. A woman needed daughters in the house.

“He smiled and called him little Golden Frog,” her elder sister said. She was a tall slender woman in early middle age married to a scholar who lived in a northern city. Since Sunia’s mother was dead, and Il-han’s also, she came to fulfill the maternal duties for Sunia, and with her came her younger sister, who would not marry but wished to become a Buddhist nun, to which Il-han, in absence of father or brother, could not agree. No woman today, he declared, should bury herself in a nunnery. The day of the Buddhists was over. Without his permission, Sunia’s sister could only wait.

Sunia received her child tenderly and hugged him to her bosom. “He thinks of clever things to say about everything. He is too clever for me. I hope this child will be like him.”

She gazed into the sleeping face and touched the firm small chin with a teasing finger. “Look at him sleep! He is hiding himself from me. I have not seen his eyes.”

“Put him to your breast,” the midwife told her. “He will not suckle yet, but he should feel the nipple ready at his lips.”

The young mother uncovered her round full breast.

“Put him first to the left where the heart is,” the midwife said.

Sunia shook her head willfully. “I put the first son to the left. This one I will put to the right.”

The child stirred when the nipple touched his lips but he did not open his eyes. She teased him then with the nipple, lifting her breast with her hand, brushing his lips lightly and laughing at him. The women gathered about her to enjoy the sight of the healthy young woman and her beautiful male child.

“Look at him, look at him,” the younger sister exclaimed. “He is opening his eyes. Look — he is pouting his lips.”

They watched, breathless. The child had indeed opened his eyes and was gazing up at his mother. Suddenly, newborn though he was, he seized the nipple between his lips and sucked.

“Ah — ah — ah—”

The women breathed great sighs. They looked at one another. Whoever heard of such a thing? To suckle so soon — even for a moment — yes, it was only for a moment. The child fell back into sleep, the clear liquid of the first milk wet upon his lips. The midwife took him then and laid him in bed beside his mother, for a child should sleep close to the mother when he is newborn, should feel the warmth of her body, so lately his home, and know the presence of her spirit with him as much now as when he was unborn. Then the sister smoothed the pillows for the mother and arranged the quilt.

“Sleep,” the midwife commanded her. “We shall be near if you call, but now you must rest.”

They withdrew to another room, closing the sliding door after them. Sunia waited until they were gone, and then she turned to her child. This was her first moment alone with him and she must examine for herself her own creation. She sat up in bed and took the child on her lap and undressed him, her hands warm and gentle in their movements, until he lay naked before her. Then with the most meticulous care she searched his entire body for a flaw, first his feet upon which some day he must walk firmly, a strong man — but how small they were and how pretty, the toes perfect and in order, the number complete, the nails pink and already long enough to be cut, but she must not cut them, for it would be a bad omen for his life-span. The insteps, left and right, were high as her own were, and the ankles shapely even now. The legs were long like his father’s and they would be straight when the baby curve was gone, for the bones were strong. The thighs were fat and the belly was round. The chest was full and the shoulders, already broad, supported the neck. The arms were long, too, and thus promised a tall man. The hands were exquisite, again the long beautiful hands of his father. Her own were small and graceful, but Il-han’s were powerful, although he had never done more with his hands than hold a brush to write. The head was ample for a good brain, nobly shaped, high from the ears to the crown, signifying intelligence. The hair was soft, dark and plentiful. All the features were perfect in shape and arrangement. He looked like his father, this son, whereas the elder was like her. There was no flaw. She had made him perfect and whole. No — wait, the little ear on the left — the lobe? She examined it carefully while the child slept. The tip of the left lobe was shortened, tucked in, imperfect!

What had caused this? She searched her memory. What had she done that could have created a child with even the smallest imperfection? The omens had been good, she had known that she would have a son, for she had dreamed one night of the sun rising over the horizon at dawn. To have dreamed of flowers would have meant a daughter. Then why the pinched lobe of this small left ear? While she was pregnant she had been careful to remember all her dreams and none had been evil. Best of all, she had even dreamed of seeing her father who died when she was a child of four, so young that she could see his face only dimly if she thought of him. Yet in her dream his face had been clear and smiling, a long kindly face, the nose neither high, which would have signified bankruptcy and death in a foreign land, nor low, which would have signified greed. She examined the baby’s nose anxiously. It was neither high nor low, though somewhat more high, perhaps, than low. Impossible to explain the pinched ear! She must show it to Il-han when he came to visit her tomorrow. If he, too, did not know its meaning then they must consult the blind fortuneteller. She dressed the child again and wrapped him in the silken coverlet and laid him beside her in the bed and was too troubled for sleep until nearly dawn.

… She did not at once reveal the defect. Let Il-han discover it for himself. He came in at noon of the next day, after the child had been washed and clothed and she herself had eaten and in her turn had been washed and perfumed and dressed in fresh white garments, her long dark hair brushed smooth and braided with pink silk cord. Il-han too had taken care to appear at his best, as she could see. She knew him well. He could be careless when he was absorbed at his desk but this morning he was shaved, his hair combed and twisted tightly in a knot on the top of his head, and his white robes were freshly clean. Her heart beat at the sight of him, as it had the first time she had seen him, a bridegroom in his wedding garments, the formal dark coat of thick silk over the white robes beneath, the high black hat, the long heavy necklace and the wide brocaded sash. Everything the matchmaker had said about him was true. Her father had hired spies before the marriage contracts were signed, since matchmakers are greedy and for the sake of their fee will tell lies to bring about a wedding. But the spies had come back and spoken truly.

“He is a handsome young man. He does not gamble or search out willing women. His only fault is that he follows the Silhak.”

Silhak? It was suspect, for included in its teachings was the stern demand for action and not learning alone. A man, even a king, the Silhak maintained, was to be measured by what he does, not by what he says. When this was explained to her, Sunia cried out that she would have such a man for her husband, for she was weary of men who did no more than boast about the glories of ancient times. Her father yielded at last and the contracts were signed and the moment she set her eyes upon Il-han’s grave and handsome face she knew that she had done well.

“Come in, come in,” she said now while he stood in the doorway gazing at her, admiring her beauty as she could see, while she thought of him. She knew very well the kindling light in his dark eyes when he saw her and the smile on his lips. Had they been of the older generation, he would not have come to her room so soon after the child’s birth, and certainly not alone, but old ways were yielding to young demands. And they were close, he and she. Among her friends she knew of no man and wife who talked together as he and she did. Or, if some did, the wives did not reveal it. Yet who knows what passes between man and woman? Deep under the surface the living stream flowed between them and the more exciting because she had been reared in innocent ignorance. No one had prepared her for the possibility that she might fall in love with her husband. Her mother had told her that she must not complain of her husband, nor should she refuse his demands. Neither must she be angry if she did not please him and he found women outside his house. His duty was fulfilled if he acknowledged her his wife and paid her respect and supplied her with shelter and food and clothing.

“Your duty is to him and only to him, whatever he does,” her mother had said briskly but vaguely, for what was that duty and that “whatever”? She had not dared to ask, and her mother had been occupied with the details of the betrothal, the receiving of the black box from his family wherein was red silk wrapped in blue cloth and blue silk wrapped in red cloth and such matters and with these the letter. Ah, the letter! She had not been allowed to be there when it was presented by a relative in the Kim family, but she knew it by heart

Since you give us your noble daughter to be our daughter-in-law, we send you a gift of cloth, in accordance with the ancient rules.

Thus the betrothal was fixed. Her home had been bright with lanterns that night and servants stood at the gates with flaming torches. She had hidden herself safely in her own room, but she went to the window and, standing in the shadows behind a screen, she had watched. And there she had stood again on her wedding day, when he came riding through the gate on a white horse. The horse was led by a man in a red cap and blue robe, and under his arm was a live duck to signify wedded happiness. The man was a small fellow, however, and the duck was large and lively and he had struggled with the creature and Il-han sitting on his horse had laughed. She laughed again now.

“Why are you laughing?” Il-han inquired. He pulled a low carved stool to her bedside and sat down.

“I am remembering you on that high white horse,” she said, laughing, “and the servants behind you with paper umbrellas and the little man carrying the big duck.”

He smiled at her. “Were you watching?”

It was one of the joys of their life that he found surprises in her, thoughts, feelings, acts, which she never finished telling him.

“Yes,” she said joyously. “Did I never tell you! I was watching and the moment when I saw you laugh — I–I — was glad.”

He reached for her hand. “Glad of what?”

“Because I knew I must love you.”

Their hands clasped. “What if the duck had flown away?” This he said to tease her, since it is a bad omen for a marriage if the wedding duck escapes.

“I would not have cared,” she said. “I had seen you and I would have followed you anywhere.”

“Now — now.” He pretended to scold her to hide the excess of his persisting tenderness, after all these years. “Is this the way to speak to a man? You are too bold — you have not been well brought up!”

“I am very well brought up, and you know that,” she retorted, pretending to pout. “All Pak women are well brought up. Do we not belong to the truebone? We have royal blood, too — as well as you Kims!”

“Truebone to truebone,” he said and put her hand to his cheek.

She smoothed the cheek, and then, allowing this to go no further, she withdrew her hand.

“All the same,” she said, “on our wedding day you bowed too carelessly at the table before the gate. Three times, I think, instead of four! You were still trying not to laugh at the duck.”

“The duck would not stay on the table, as you very well know,” he reminded her, “and I saw myself coming to meet my princess with a duck flapping after me. As it was, your father looked shocked when he led you out of the house!”

“You had not seen me until that moment and yet you thought of ducks!” Her words were mock reproach but her dark eyes rested on his face with such a look that he bit his lip.

“Shall I ever forget—” he murmured.

He rose impetuously and lifted her in his right arm and buried his face in her hair. For a moment they embraced and then she pushed him gently away.

“We are not behaving well, father of my son — This is not our wedding night.”

“A month yet before we are free to—” he muttered the words restlessly, and broke off.

She fluttered her eyelashes at him and looked down at the satin bed quilt and pretended to pull a thread.

“You have not told me what you think of our second son.”

He drew a deep breath. “Wait,” he besought her. “Let me cool my heart for a moment.” He got up and walked about the room, paused before a painting of the sacred mountain of Omei in faraway China. Then he returned to his seat

“This second son,” he said, “is not respectful to his father. He slept the whole time he was in my presence. Otherwise, I think well of him, although he is not so beautiful as the first one. He looks like me. Though I will not grant that the Paks, in general, are more handsome than the Kims, you being the exception to all women.”

She shook her head. “I did my best to make him perfect but—”

“But what?”

“He is not quite perfect.”

“No?”

“This—” She touched the lobe of her own perfect left ear. “It is pinched. It is not like the other one.”

He heard this and clapped his hands. A woman servant entered.

“Bring me my second son,” he commanded.

“What can this mean?” he inquired then of his wife.

She shook her head again and tears came welling into her eyes.

“Ah now,” he cried and impetuously reached for her folded hands and held them in his. “It is not your fault, my bird.”

“It is the evil of some spirit on him before he was shaped,” she sighed. “A touch on the lobe of the ear — I must ask the soothsayer what it means.”

“Where were our samsin spirits?” he asked, half scornfully.

It was an old quarrel between them, never ended, a small battle in which neither yielded and neither won. The samsin were the three spirits whose duty it is to guard the conception and growth and development of children in the house. He did not believe in samsin, and she did not believe, she said when he teased her, and yet she had prepared the symbols.

“The threads, the papers, the streamers of cloth, they were hanging yonder on the wall the night that we—”

He put her hands down gently and walked to the wall at the far end of the room. Yes, they were still there, the material evident presence of the samsin, looking now somewhat dusty and torn. How could these poor relics have influence on the birth of a child? Gazing at them with contempt, he felt the old disbelief well into his mind and heart. Folk tales, the fumbling efforts of peasant peoples and ignorant priests to explain the miracles of life, even his sister-in-law wanting to be a Buddhist nun! He longed to know and understand in new ways, to find other paths than in the books of the dead. His father, sitting day after day in his study, poring over the ancestral history of the Kim family, proud of the dead and censorious toward the living — this was the curse of Korea, this slow dying while men were still alive, begetting sons for the future, but dreaming of the past. He put out his hand and tore down the dusty symbols.

“Il-han!”

He heard his wife’s cry and he turned to her. “How many years I have been longing to tear down those rags! And now I have done it!”

“But, Il-han,” she breathed, “what will happen to us?”

“Something new and something good,” he said.

At this moment the servant entered with his second son. He took the child from her and dismissed her with a nod and he carried the child to the bed and laid him beside the mother.

“Show me,” he commanded.

She turned the sleeping child tenderly and pushed back the soft straight black hair that fell against his left ear.

“There,” she said, “see what happened to him, even before his birth.”

He leaned to see closely. The deformity was slight. For a girl, who must wear jewels in her ears, it might have been a defect more grave. Nevertheless it was a defect, and he did not like to think that a son of his could be less than perfect. Yet what could be done now? The shape was made, the flesh confirmed by life. No use to see a doctor — herbs could not change this permanence. And the thing was so small, the lobe of the ear tucked in as though a thread had drawn it up, and could be released again. A quick sharp knife could do it, if one had the skill.

He touched the child’s soft ear, and then covered it with the dark hair. “I have heard that the western physicians know how to correct by the knife,” he said.

She gathered the child in her arms. “Never! A western doctor? You do not love your son!”

“I do love him,” he said gravely. “I love him enough to wish he were perfect.”

Tears brimmed her eyes. “You blame me!”

“I blame no one, but I wish he were perfect,” he replied.

“And I,” she cried, the tears streaming down her cheeks, “I will not allow a foreign doctor to touch him! As he was born, let him remain. I love him. He is my son, if you will not have him for yours.”

“Be quiet, Sunia,” he commanded. “Do you accuse me of being less a parent than you? It is simply that if the child can be made perfect, he should be perfect.”

She cried out at him again. “You think only of yourself! You are ashamed of your child! Oh, you must always have everything — so — so perfect!”

He was amazed. Never had he seen her in such anger as this. She could pout and be petulant but her tempers ended in laughter. There was no laughter in her now. Her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes black fire, blazing at him.

“Sunia!”

His voice was sharp but she would not allow him to speak. She held the child clutched to her breast and went on talking and sobbing at the same time.

“Are you truebone? I think not! Whoever heard of a tangban who because his son has a small, small, small blemish, at the edge of his ear lobe — no, you are soban — soban — soban!”

He reached for her and seizing her head in the curve of his right elbow he held his hand over her mouth. She struggled against him, the child in her arms, but he held her. Suddenly he felt her sharp teeth bite into his palm.

“Ah-h!”

He uttered a cry and pulled back his hand. The palm was bleeding. He stared at it, and then at her and the blood dripped on the satin quilt.

She was aghast. “What have I done?” she whispered, and putting down the child she took the end of her wide sleeve and wrapped it around his hand and held it.

“Forgive me,” she pleaded, and fondled his hand in her breast, her eyes wet with tears.

He smiled, enjoying the power of forgiving her. “It is true,” he said calmly, “quite true that Korean women are stubborn and independent. I should have married a gentle woman of China, or a submissive woman of Japan—”

“Ah, don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t — don’t reproach me—”

“Then what am I?” he demanded.

“You are truebone, tangban of the yangban class,” she said heartbroken.

“What else?”

“A scholar who has passed the imperial examinations.”

“What else — what else?”

“My lord.”

“True — and what else?”

He took his hand from her breast and with it lifted her face to his.

“My love,” she said at last.

“Ah ha,” he said softly. “Now I know all that I am — yangban, tangban and your lord and your love. It is enough for any man.”

He laid his cheek against hers for a long moment, and then released her, but she clung to him.

“Your hand is still bleeding?”

He showed her his hand, palm up. The bleeding had stopped but the marks of her teeth were there, four small red dents. She cried out in remorse, and seizing his hand again in both hers, she pressed her lips against the marks.

At this moment the child, who had slept through all this, began suddenly to cry. She dropped the hand she held and took the child into her arms and put him to her breast and he suckled immediately and strongly.

She lifted her eyes to Il-han. He had stepped back from the bed and now stood looking at them.

“See him,” she said proudly. “He is already hungry.”

“I see him,” Il-han replied. He was silent for an instant, his eyes on the child at the full smooth breast. “If I can foretell,” he said, “I would foretell that this son of ours will never be hungry. He will always find his way to the source of satisfaction.”

With this he left the room and returned to his library, looking neither to left nor right at the servants who paused in whatever they were doing to stand, heads downcast in respect, as he passed. Once in his library however he felt no mood for books. Unwittingly Sunia had touched upon an uneasy point in his own thinking. These times into which he had brought his sons to life were repeating in strange ways the age in which his own grandfather had lived. Now why should Sunia at this moment hark back to the age when civilian nobles had held power and the military nobles were subdued to them? Yangban they both were in the dual aristocracy of the ancient Koryo era, and in theory the two divisions of the nobility, civilian and military, tangban and soban, were equal, although in practice the civilian tangban, to which his family had always belonged, were in ascendancy, since the soban could not rise beyond the third level in government service. Yet whenever the ruling house became corrupt the soban, the military, took power by force to end corruption. Thus it had been with the decadent king, Uijong, the eighteenth ruler in the age of Koryo. That king, aided and applauded by his civilian associates, had devoted his life to pleasure and foolish living, and on a certain night, while he was surrounded by women and drunken companions, the soban military leaders seized power and only after fierce struggle had the civilian tangban regained the throne. Now the times had circled again to the ancient struggle between civilian and soldier.

How had such confusion come about? Suddenly and to his own surprise he was angry with himself that he had not studied more faithfully the history of the past. Perhaps now, when he was a grown man and father of sons, he might begin to believe what his father had so often told him.

“My son, the past must be known before the present can be understood and the future faced with calm.”

He had listened without hearing, weary of the past, sick of the adoration bestowed upon ancestors. Even now when his father met with his old friends they discussed nothing but the past.

“Do you remember — do you remember—” every sentence began with the worn phrase. “Do you remember the golden age of the Koryo? Do you remember how we fought off that Japanese devil, Hideyoshi, who invaded our shores—”

“Ah yes, but consider the Yi dynasty—”

Well, it was not too late to mend his ignorance. He would go to his father and listen to him now, and hear.

… “Sir, surely you will not walk?”

The servant, holding his black silk outer garment, put the question with mild anxiety.

“I will walk,” Il-han said.

The man tied the wide bands of a black silk outer coat at his master’s right shoulder.

“Shall I not follow you, sir?”

“It is not necessary,” Il-han replied. “The day is fine, and I will tell my father of my second son’s birth.”

The man persisted. “Sir, it has already been announced by the red cards. We sent them yesterday.”

“Be silent,” Il-han commanded.

He spoke with unusual impatience and the servant, feeling his master’s mood, bowed and followed behind him to the door. There he bowed again, and waiting for a few minutes, he followed at a distance without making himself known, while Il-han walked briskly through the cool spring air, warmed now by the sunshine.

The stone-paved main street was busy with white-robed men and women, the women moving freely among the men. Once in his youth he had visited Peking. His father had been appointed emissary that year to present tribute to the Chinese Emperor and he, a lad of fifteen, had begged to go with him. Roaming the broad and dusty streets of Peking, he had been surprised to see no women except a few beggars and marketwomen.

“Have the Chinese no women?” he had asked his father, one day.

“They have, of course,” his father replied. “But their women are kept in the house where they belong. In our country”—he had paused here to laugh and shake his head ruefully—“the women are too much for us. Do you remember the old story of the henpecked husband?”

They had been seated at their meal in an inn, he and his father, he remembered, and his father told him the story of that magistrate in Korea of ancient times who suffered because his wife was master in the house. The magistrate called together all the men of his district and explained his predicament Then he asked those men who also were pan-kwan, or henpecked, to move to the right side of the hall. All moved except one man, and he moved to the left. The others were surprised to see even one man at the left and the magistrate praised the man, declaring that he was the symbol of what men should be.

“Tell us,” the magistrate commanded him, “how it is you have achieved such independence.”

The man was a small timid fellow and, surprised, he could only stammer a few words, explaining that he did not know what all this was about and he was obeying his wife, who bade him always to avoid crowds.

His father finished this tale and he looked at Il-han with roguish eyes. “I,” he declared, “have of course always been at your mother’s command. When worse comes to worst, I remind myself that women still cannot do without men, since it is we who hold the secret of creating children for them.”

He had blushed at such frankness and his father had laughed at him. He smiled now, remembering, and a tall country wife, carrying a jar of bean oil on her head, shouted at him.

“Look where you walk, lord of creation!”

He stepped aside hastily to let her pass, and caught a sidewise glance of her dark eyes flashing at him with warning and laughter, and he admired her profile. A handsome people, these his people! He had seen Japanese merchants as well as Chinese. The Japanese men were less tall than his countrymen, and the Chinese men were less fair of skin, their hair blacker and more wiry stiff. A noble people, these his people, and what ill fortune that they were contained within this narrow strip of mountainous land coveted by others! If they could but be left alone in peace, he and his people, to dream their dreams, make their music, write their poems, paint their picture scrolls! Impossible, now that the surrounding hungry nations were licking their chops, impossible now that the civilian tangban had grown decadent and the rebellious soban again were threatening from beneath!

He paused at the south gate, whose name was the Gate of High Ceremony, and inquired of the guard to say at what hour the sun would set, for then the gate would be locked and no one, except on official business, could come in or go out

The guard, a tall man with a cast in his right eye, squinted at the western sky and made a guess.

“Where do you go, master?” he asked.

“I go to see my father,” Il-han replied.

The guard recognized him for a Kim, as who did not, and he lowered his spear and spoke with respect. “You will have time to drink two bowls of tea with your honored one.”

“My thanks,” Il-han said.

When he had passed through the vast gate he paused, as he always did, to look back. This gate was one of eight gates to the city, any of which the people might use for coming and going except for the north gate, which was kept locked, for it was the way of escape for the King if there were war, and the southwest gate, which was for criminals on their way to execution outside the city wall. The southwest gate was known also as the Water Mouth Gate because the river flowed through there. It was also the gate used for the dead on their way to burial. All dead must pass through the gate, except dead kings, who could pass through other gates. The gate was built of wood and painted with colors of red and blue and green and gold. It sat high on the great stone wall and there were two stories, the first one wider than the second, and in the wooden wall of the second story were holes through which arrows could be shot. The roof was tile and the corners were lifted as are the palace roofs and gates of Peking — the better, Il-han had been told as a child, to catch the devils who slide down roofs in play and then falling to the ground are mischievous and enter houses to annoy good folk and bring trouble to them.

Once when he was thirteen years old he had climbed the tower and he found, cut deep into the wood, the letters of an ancient name. It was the name of a boy prince, the second son of the ancient dynasty of Yi who, like all boys, desired to leave his name carved forever on some smooth surface. He remembered that he would like to have carved his own name under that of the prince, but some reluctance had held him back and when he looked up he faced a soldier guard, and he had run away from those hostile soban eyes. He turned away from the memory, and faced the mountains, and soberly he walked the dusty cobbled road while behind him, afar off, his servant followed in secret. The city sat in a valley two or three miles across, the valley encircled by mountains. Here in this city was the center of his country, the heart of his nation, enclosed by the craggy and pinnacled heights of bare rock. Yonder, highest of all, was the Triple Peak, and upon its triad crests the snow still clung in long white streaks. South Mountain, North Mountain, and the city wall wound in and out among the folds of these mountains, beginning at the west gate, which was called the Gate of Amiability — fitting enough, this name, for the Chinese, powerful yet amiable, came from the west — and curving to the east, to the Gate of Elevated Humanity, how wryly named, for out of the east had come from Japan, three hundred years ago, that villain Hideyoshi, that peasant, squat and brutish.

He walked slowly to enjoy the countryside now in the fullness of spring. Along the grassy footpaths between the fields, women and children were digging wild fresh greens for which they hungered after the long winter when vegetables were only dried and pickled. Beyond the fields the gray-flanked mountains were red with clustering azaleas. Even on the mountains there were people searching for fresh foods, the roots of bell flowers to be scraped and pounded and boiled, and then eaten with soy sauce and sesame seed, the delicate lace of wild white clematis and wild spirea, white dandelions, sour dock leaves, wild chrysanthemum tops, all savory with rice or for soups. How well he remembered his mother and her household tricks! Sunia was a clever housekeeper, but his mother had been the old-fashioned woman, unwilling to buy so much as a square of fresh bean curd. He had hung about her as a child, for where she was became the center of activity, and he dabbled his childish hands in the soybeans put to soak overnight in cold water and he helped her turn the mill to crush them in the morning and to strain it and boil it and then curdle it with wet salt to be drained and cut into soft white blocks of bean curd. He had described the process to Sunia, but Sunia had cried out willfully that it was enough to make kimchee at home nowadays and he must let her buy their bean curd.

“Nevertheless,” he protested, “homemade is the best. And my mother’s soy sauce—”

Ah, that soy sauce! The crisp spring air made him hungry to think of it. His mother boiled the soybeans until they were mush, and then pounded them in the old mortar made of a hollowed tree trunk, the pestle a pole with a solid wooden ball at each end so that either end could be used. Then she rolled the beans into balls and netted them into straw ropes and hung them on the kitchen ceiling. On a spring day such as this she fetched them down again and cut them into pieces and soaked them in water spiced with hot red peppers. He would never taste such homemade foods again. His mother had died in the first year of his marriage, and she had not seen her first grandson. It was her dying cry.

“I shall not see my grandson!”

She had tried to stay alive, but death overcame her. Thinking of her, he walked on soberly, forgetting the bright day and the fair countryside, and the afternoon was well along by the time he passed over a bridge that spanned a small river near his father’s house. Along the banks the land women knelt on the earth and pounded the white garments on flat stones, their paddles sounding in crisp rhythm through the pellucid air. The country scene, dear and familiar, the atmosphere of peace, brought an ache to his heart. How long, how long could life remain unchanged?

His father put down his brush pen as Il-han entered. His son had been announced, but the elder did not lift his head until he saw the shadow across the low table upon which he wrote. Il-han then made the proper obeisance, which his father acknowledged by inclining his head and pointing to a cushion on the floor. Upon this cushion Il-han seated himself, a servant taking his outer coat from him.

The elder lifted his frosty white eyebrows at his son. “How is it that you are here?” he inquired. “Are you not supposed to be in attendance at court?”

“Father,” Il-han said, “I have myself come to tell you that your second grandson is healthy and already suckling.”

“Good news, good news!” the old man cried. The wrinkles in his withered face turned upward in smiles and a small gray beard trembled on his chin.

“Yes,” Il-han went on. “He was born before noon yesterday, as you know, and he is well shaped and strong, slightly smaller than the elder boy, but perfectly shaped. That is to say …”

He paused, remembering the child’s ear.

His father waited. “Well?” he inquired at last.

“His left ear is not perfect,” Il-han said. “A small defect but—”

“No Kim has ever had a defect,” the old man said positively. “It must be the Pak blood from your wife’s family.”

Il-han wished to change the subject. He had married somewhat against his father’s wish, who privately preferred the Yi family to the Pak, but no Yi daughter was of the proper age at the time. His father put up his hand to silence him, and went on.

“For example,” he said, pulling at his scanty beard, “I have never heard of a Yi with a defect. High intelligence combined with great physical beauty — these are the attributes of Yi, even to this present day. Nor were they scholars only. This floor, for example”—he struck the floor at his side with his knuckles—“this ondul floor, designed not merely to walk upon, or to sit upon, but warm—”

Il-han listened patiently to what he had heard many times before. His father spoke of the inventions of the Yi dynasty; for example, the ondul floor, now to be found in any house, was laid a foot above the level of the adjoining room which was always the kitchen. From the kitchen fireplace five flues ran through the wall to this ondul room. The flues were made of low walls of rock and sealing clay, across which were laid slabs of rock. These rocks were laid over again with clay and then covered with a layer of sand and lime and over which more cement was spread. Over this again was laid a layer of paper, the last layer very strong and lasting, the paper, called jangpan, being made from mulberry wood. A polish made of ground soya beans and liquid cow dung was spread over the jangpan and dried, and the floor was then a light yellow color, of high polish, smooth and easy to clean.

When his father had finished admiring the ondul floor, he would then speak of Admiral Yi’s turtle ships with which he had driven off Hideyoshi. Il-han knew it would come and so it did, and then the loving learned discourse on his country’s history. Il-han recognized the elder’s mood. A great actor lost to the theatre! The familiar glaze would come over his father’s eyes as he spoke of the past, and he would sit in a pose, motionless for a long moment. Then he would straighten himself, his thin face assuming the mask of nobility and hauteur, and he would lift his right arm as though he bore a weapon, and thus he would speak on. As he dwelt on the past even the voice was changed. A young man’s voice came from the sinewy throat. So it continued through half the afternoon, until at last they were back to Admiral Yi and how he saved Korea from Japan.

“We were not conquered,” his father concluded. “Kim or Yi, we shall never be conquered.”

He struck the polished surface of the low table with his clenched fists.

“Then you are on the side of the soban?” Il-han inquired with mischievous intent.

The old man laughed. “You are too sly, you young men! No — no — I am a scholar and a tangban and therefore a man of peace. I learned at my mother’s knee—” Here his father closed his eyes and recited slowly an ancient poem:

“The wind has no hands but it shakes all the trees.

The moon has no feet but it travels across the sky.”

“Then we need not fear the soban now?” Il-han asked.

His father pursed his lips. “I did not say that! The soban are not scholars, but not every man can be a scholar. We need both. It takes something in here to understand the books and the arts. The soban do not have it.”

He tapped his high forehead and fell silent and in the silence, after so much talk, he closed his eyes to signify he had had enough of his son. Seeing his father’s head sink upon his breast, Il-han rose and went quietly away.

And none too soon, he discovered when he left the house, for as he approached the city gates in the twilight an hour later, he saw a cluster of men there, brawling and shouting. He went steadily forward and as he neared the gate he saw twenty or thirty soban beating upon the gate with staves and spears.

They did not notice when he came up to them, so engrossed were they in their determination to break down the gate, a vain hope, for the gate was heavy and bound with iron and barred inside with a length of iron thicker than a man’s arm.

He shouted at them, “Brothers, what are you doing?”

They stopped then and turned to stare at him. A leader stepped out from among them. “That demon of a guard saw us coming and barred the gate against us, although the sun has not set.”

They were pushing about him now, and Il-han felt their hot angry eyes upon him like flames.

“Tangban,” he heard voices mutter. “Tangban — tangban—”

“You are right. The gate is shut too early,” he said calmly. “I shall report the matter to the palace.”

Silence fell upon them for an instant. Then the leader spoke in a voice yet more rough.

“We need no tangban help! We smash the gate down!”

They crowded against the gate again and jostled Il-han into their midst and he smelled for the first time in his life the sweat and the stink of male animal flesh. A shiver of fear, insensate and cold, ran through his veins. At this moment his servant pressed through the crowd, and Il-han knew that the man had disobeyed him and had followed him all the way, and he could only be glad.

“Master,” the servant said, “I know the guard at the gate. I will knock at the wicket and he will let me through when he knows you are here.”

So saying, he went to a small wicket gate at the side and made a special sound upon it with a stone that he picked up from the road. The gate opened a small space and the servant went in. A moment later the great gate itself opened suddenly and the soldiers fell in through it in a heap. While they were gathering themselves from the dust, Il-han passed by without their notice and went his way to his home, the servant following again in silence.

Spring moved gently toward summer, Sunia rose from the bed of childbirth and took her place again in the household. All went well. Her breasts were filled with milk and the child thrived. Her elder son, now that his mother was restored to him, was in better mood and with him clinging to her hand one fine morning, she sauntered into the garden of mulberry trees. The leaves were full and green, yet tender, and it was to discover their ripeness for the silkworms that she had left the house. Silkworms were only her pleasure, for the work of silk-making was done outside the city on the family lands and by the land people. Yet ever since she was a child and in the care of her old nurse, she had loved the art of making silk, from the moment when the web of tiny eggs, no bigger than the dots of a pointed brush on a paper card, were hatched in the warm silkworm house to the last moment when the silk lay in rich folds over her arms. Thus, though the weaving was done in the country, she kept a small loom of her own in a service house here in the compound, and with her women she performed the ceremony each year of making silk. It was more than a pleasure. It was also a duty. Even the Queen at this season must cultivate silkworms and do her share of spinning, while the King must till a rice paddy.

On this morning, bright and calm, she walked under the mulberry trees with her son, and she felt of the leaves and tested them on her tongue for their taste. They were not yet strong or bitter, but no time must be wasted.

“We must set the silkworm eggs today, my princeling,” she told her son, and with him she went to the service house where the eggs had been kept on ice during the winter and through early spring so that they would not hatch before the mulberry leaves were ready. Now she bade her women prepare the large baskets for the eggs, and they made themselves busy, the little boy running between the women here and there and everywhere at once in his excitement.

“I want the worms to come out now,” he cried impatiently.

Sunia laughed. “They are only eggs! We must let them feel the warmth and then the worm will begin to grow and when the shells are too small for them, they will come out.”

After a few days of such warmth, the child asking a hundred times a day, they did come out, thousands of small creatures, each no more than the eighth of an inch in length, and no thicker than a silken thread, and the women brushed them off gently upon the finely cut leaves of the mulberry trees which now covered the bottom of the baskets. For three days and three nights the women fed the small creatures every three hours, and in the night again and again Sunia arose from her wide bed, while Il-han lay sleeping, and walked softly across the moonlit courtyards to see how her silkworms did. When the three days were passed, the silkworms stopped eating and prepared for their first rest. Now they spun out of themselves silk threads, as fine as hairs, and they fastened themselves upon the mulberry leaves, except for their heads which they held erect. Slowly they changed their color.

“See,” Sunia said to her elder son, “the silkworms are putting on their sleeping robes.”

Heads up, the silkworms slept for a day or two, while Sunia waited with her son.

“What do they do next, these silkworms?” the child asked.

He had refused to study or to stay with his tutor during these days, for he could think of nothing except the silkworms and what they did. They had become creatures of magic to him, fey and enchanting, as indeed they were to Sunia herself, for she could scarcely stay by her infant long enough to suckle him, and she hurried the child to finish without dawdling so that she could thrust him into a servingwoman’s arms and return to the service house.

“Now,” she replied to her son, “the silkworms must push off their old skins, for these skins have grown too small and they are making new ones while they sleep.”

“Shall I push off my skin one day?” the child asked in alarm.

Sunia laughed. “No, for your skin is made to stretch.”

At this moment she heard Il-han’s step, for though silkworms are women’s business and he pretended no interest in them, yet he came a few times to see how they did and to observe the life process of which they are the symbol. He spoke now to answer his son’s question.

“You will grow too big for your skin, too,” he told his son, “and skin after skin you will cast aside, but you will not know it. Without knowing, you will change into someone tall and strong and you will grow hairs on your face and your body. Then you will be a man, inside and out.”

The child listened, and his mouth trembled and turned down ready to weep.

“Why must I grow hair on my face and on my body?” he asked in a small voice.

“You scare him,” Sunia cried and she gathered the child into her arms. “Don’t cry, my little — you will like being a man some day. It is beautiful to be a man and strong and young and ready to make children of your own.”

The child stopped his tears at the wonder of this new thought. “Who will be the mother?” he inquired.

“We will find her for you,” Sunia said, and over the child’s head she met Il-han’s eyes upon her with the look that she loved.

Four times the silkworms ate until their skins grew too small and four times they slept and shed those skins, eating at last so heartily of the mulberry leaves that the trees were stripped and the worms themselves so large that the champing of their jaws could be heard even in the courtyard outside as they chewed upon the leaves. Meanwhile no man or woman was allowed to smoke a pipe of tobacco near the silkworm house, for such smoke kills the worms.

All this time Sunia hovered over her silkworms. “Oh, you special creatures,” she murmured, in endearment.

At last they became a silvery white, a clear pure color, and this meant that they were ready to spin their cocoons and change to moths. The women prepared twirls of straw rice for the spinning and the spinners began their work, weaving their heads this way and that as they fastened a few threads of the silk to certain points of guidance, and this was the task of shaping the cocoons. They wove their heads this way and that inside the cocoon shape until it was a nest of silk, firm and soft, and each cocoon was made of a filament many thousands of feet in length and each worm became a chrysalid. Now was the time to choose the best and biggest of cocoons to make next year’s seed, and these cocoons were not used for silk but, as chrysalids became moths, they were allowed to cut their way through and lay eggs upon paper cards, each moth laying four hundred eggs before she died. But the other cocoons were dropped into boiling water before the chrysalids were moths, and the cocoons were kept in water, boiling hot, so that the gum which held the filaments together could be melted and the filaments reeled off and spun into thread.

Yet Sunia did not allow these broken cocoons to be wasted either. She bade the women boil them, too, and remove the empty chrysalid skins. When this was done, the women pulled the cocoons into small flat mats of silk. These were dried and used to quilt the linings of winter garments and make them soft and warm. In such ways Sunia tended her household and faithfully she kept the old customs and the family lived as though peace were sure and life eternal, and Il-han watched her as she moved about his house, the wife he loved and mother to them all. He had no heart to tell her of the world outside her house until he must.

… Thus the spring passed in one glorious day after another. The rain fell in good season. The ancient land grew fresh and green and gay with flowers and the people prepared for Tano, the spring festival which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. True, Il-han was put to much discomfort during the festival, for Sunia was a zealous housekeeper and this festival was the time, by custom, for housecleaning and mending and renewing after winter. The paper on lattice walls must be torn off and fresh paper pasted on, and even the paper covers of the ondul floors must be changed.

“You must allow me my library,” Il-han said every year and against the complaints of her women, Sunia obeyed him because she loved him and could refuse him nothing.

“We will watch for a day when he is summoned to court,” she told her women, “and then we will steal into his library and work like magicians and clean everything before he comes back.”

This was her usual ruse, and meanwhile Il-han enclosed himself among his books while around him the household was in a happy confusion. When the rooms were cleaned and the courtyards swept, the women washed their clothes and then themselves and the children. This was the season, too, when they gave special heed to their hair after the winter, and into the basins they poured the juice of changpo grass, which cleanses and leaves a fragrance exceedingly pleasant and rare, and as they dried the long thick locks they thrust leaves of the grass into their hair and on both sides of their ears. Women less learned than Sunia believed that the changpo grass kept away the diseases which the heat of summer brings, but she declared herself against such superstitions because Il-han would not allow them, although in her heart she did not know what she believed.

The time of the Tano festival was a time of joy and freedom, a festival of spring celebrated for thousands of years and long before the beginning of written history, and Sunia, though a wife and mother, had kept the girl alive in herself. Thus during the festival she joined in the sport of swinging, which belonged to the day. Il-han, knowing that she loved the sport, ordered the servingmen to hang ropes as usual to make a swing from the branch of a great date tree in the eastern courtyard. There he watched Sunia and her women swinging and she went higher than any of the women, until his heart stopped to see her high in the air, her red skirts flying and her hair, freshly washed, loosening from its braids. What if one day the rope broke and he saw her lying broken on the ground? But the rope had never broken and he tried to believe it never would.

When the festival was over, nevertheless, he ordered the swing taken down and in the night he clasped her close again and again, with renewed passion until she could not bear it, dearly as she loved him, and she cried out at last against his arms so tightly holding her that she felt imprisoned, though by love.

“Let me breathe!” she cried.

He loosed her, but only a little, and she lay in his arms.

“Why are you so silent now?” she asked at last. “Did I offend you?”

“No,” he said. “How could you offend me? I am oppressed by happiness — our happiness.”

“Oppressed?” She echoed the word, uncomprehending.

“How can it last?” he replied.

“It will last,” she said joyously, “it will last until we die.”

Why did she speak of death? It was on his tongue to cry out against the thought that they could die, but he kept silent. Death was what he feared, not the sweet and quiet end of a long life, but sudden death outside their door, death waiting and violent. Yet the difference between Il-han and Sunia was only the bottomless difference between man and woman over which no bridge is ever built nor ever can be. Il-han’s life was centered outside his house, and what went on within the compound walls was the periphery. Joyous or troublesome alike, the household life was diversion from his mainstream. He trusted Sunia with all that went on inside the walls, and when she complained that he did not listen to what she told him at the end of a day, he smiled.

“I know that you do all things well,” he said.

She would not accept this smooth reply.

“What have you to think of, if not of us?” she demanded.

“Is night the suitable time in which to inquire of so large a matter?” he countered, and he made love to her so that he could divert her and be diverted.

Somehow the summer slipped past, the days hot, the nights cool, and Il-han was so perturbed and puzzled by the tangled affairs of the times that he did not count the days or the months.

One morning, waking late and alone in their bedroom, he smelled the sharp autumn fragrance of cabbage freshly cut. Could it be already time again to make kimchee for the winter? He rose and looked out of the window. Yes, there in the courtyard were piles of celery cabbages, brought in from the farm, doubtless, the day before. Two servingwomen were washing the cabbages in tubs of salted water and two more were brushing long white radishes clean of earth while still two others were chopping both cabbages and radishes into fine pieces. At a table set outdoors on this fine clear morning Sunia, wrapped in a blue apron, was mixing the spices. Hot red peppers, ground fresh ginger, onions, garlic, and ground cooked beef she was mixing together, exactly to his taste and according to the Kim family recipe. He knew, for in the first year of their marriage she had made Pak kimchee, so bland a mixture that he had rebelled against it. He had laid down his chopsticks when he tasted it for the first time.

“You must invite my mother to teach you how to make kimchee,” he told Sunia.

Her eyes had sparkled with sudden anger. “I will not eat Kim kimchee! It burns the skin from my tongue.”

“Keep this Pak stuff for yourself,” he had retorted. “I will ask my mother to give me enough kimchee for myself.”

She had shown no signs of yielding but the next year, he had noticed, she made the kimchee according to Kim recipe. Now, by habit, each year he inspected the kimchee and tasted the first morsel. He smiled and yawned to wake himself and then began to wash himself and to prepare for the day. When he was ready, he sauntered into the courtyard and it was here that Sunia continued again her gentle accusations that he was always busy and apart from family life. The women had fallen silent when he appeared and they did not look up or seem to listen while their master and mistress talked, after he had tasted the kimchee and approved it.

“For an example, this morning,” Sunia said, her eyes upon the thin sharp knife with which she chopped the spices, “where do you go now? Day after day you leave after the morning meal and then we see you no more until twilight. Yet you never tell me where you have been or where you will go again tomorrow.”

“I will tell you everything when I come home tonight,” he said. “Only give me my breakfast now and let me go.”

Something in the abruptness of his voice made her obedient. She summoned a woman to finish her task and washed her hands and followed him into the house. In usual silence Il-han ate his morning meal of soup and rice and salted foods, and Sunia kept the children away from him, the elder son given to his tutor, and the younger, now beginning to creep, to a wet nurse. She suckled her children until they were six months old and past the first dangers of life and then she gave them to a wet nurse, a healthy countrywoman, to suckle until they were three years old and able to eat all foods.

This morning she served Il-han alone and when he had eaten she ate her own breakfast quietly, glancing at him now and then.

“You are losing flesh,” she said at last. “Is there some private unhappiness in you?”

“No unhappiness concerning you,” he said.

He wiped his mouth on a soft paper napkin and rose from the floor cushion and she ran to fetch his outer coat and thus, with a warm exchange of looks, his kind, hers anxious, they parted. He dared not tell her what lay upon his heart and mind. His memorial which he had begun in the spring and then put aside as better left unsaid was now finished and in the Queen’s hands, for as he had watched the tide of affairs sweep on he could keep silent no longer. He was now summoned by the Queen to come alone to her palace. At the same time the King had sent a summons to his father. Until now father and son had gone together in obedience to royal command. Did this separation signify a new difference between King and Queen? He did not know and he could only obey.

He left his house, therefore, dressed in his usual street garments, his robes whiter than snow, his tall black hat of stiff horsehair gauze tied under his chin. On so fine a morning it was his pleasure to walk, and he did so with the measured speed befitting a gentleman and a scholar. Many recognized him and gave him respectful greeting, and because of his height and appearance the people parted to give him room, not stopping to show servility or fear. Indeed they had no fear. Accustomed as they were to dangers and distress, since the gods had given them a land which surrounding countries envied and longed to possess, the people were calm but firm in purpose and they were not afraid. They gave their greetings and went about their business while Il-han went on his.

His father was wont to meet him at the palace. When he entered the gate, however, the guard, peering through to see who stood there, opened the gate hastily and closed it at once.

“Is my father here?” Il-han inquired.

“Sir, he is already with the King and has been since dawn,” the guard replied, “but I have orders from the Queen that you are to go alone to her palace in the Secret Garden for audience. Meanwhile your father says I am to tell you that if his audience with the King ends first, he will await you here. If yours ends first, you are to wait.”

Il-han hesitated. It puzzled him that the Queen should send for him privately in such fashion, and what would he say to his father, or even later to the King? Nothing is hidden in palace or hovel and all would know that his father was already in audience with the King while he was only now waiting upon the Queen, an inexplicable division. Yet what could he do but continue to obey the royal command? He followed the guard through the palace grounds without further speech.

It was the season of chrysanthemums, and everywhere the noble flowers lifted their brilliant heads. In the Secret Garden the path was lined with potted chrysanthemums in waves and clouds of color, and thus escorted he came to the steep stone steps which led to the high terrace before the palace. At the carved and painted doorway of this palace he waited until the gate guard announced his presence to a palace guard, who announced it in turn to a palace steward. Then the doors opened and he was ushered into the large waiting room he knew well from other times when he, but always with his father, had been summoned by the Queen. Low tables of fine wooden chests bound in brass and cushioned floor seats gave the room comfort. Upon the wall opposite the door were scrolls painted by ancient artists, and the corners of the room were banked with rare and beautiful chrysanthemums in porcelain pots.

“Sir, be seated,” the steward said. “The Queen is finishing her breakfast and her women are waiting to put on her outer robes. She will receive you in the great hall as usual.”

Il-han sat down on a floor seat and gave thanks for the tea which the steward poured from a pottery teapot into a fine silver bowl. The tea was an infusion of the best Chinese tea, the tender new leaves of spring unscented by jasmine or alien flowers, and he drank it with pleasure and slowly. In a few minutes the steward entered.

“The Queen,” he said in solemn voice.

Il-han rose and followed the man into the next hall, a vast room bare of furniture except for the throne set upon dais at the west wall, the hall itself facing south. No one was there, but he knew the custom and he stood in respectful waiting, his head bowed, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.

He had not long to wait. In less time than he could have counted to a hundred, the curtains at the north wall were put aside and the Queen entered. He saw the edge of her crimson robes moving about her feet as she walked to her throne, and lifting his eyes no further until she gave permission, he bowed low three times in silence.

It was for the Queen to speak first and she did so, and continued thus after suitable greeting.

“I have received your memorial,” she said, “and doubtless you think it strange that I have sent for you apart from your father. But you are so dutiful a son that if the two of you come together, as you have always in the past, whether I am with the King or alone, your father speaks and you keep silent or you defer to what he says, and do not speak your own thoughts.”

Her voice was fresh and clear and young. He did not reply, perceiving that she would speak on, and thus she continued.

“I have read many times your memorial. Why did you send it privately?”

At this word “privately” he felt hot blood rise up from his breast to his neck and even to his ears, and he cursed the trick his blood could play on him to turn his ears scarlet.

The Queen’s quick eyes, all observing, now noticed his confusion. “Do you hear what I ask, you with the two red ears?”

She laughed and it was the first time he had ever heard that gay laughter. He dared not smile or reply and he felt his ears hotter than ever. In his confusion he let his eyes move toward her and saw the tips of her silver shoes beneath the crimson satin of her full skirts. Small silver shoes, so strangely like those of Turkish women. Where had they come from in the beginning? But who knew the wellsprings of his people? In that long struggle, covering how many centuries could not be known, the tribes of Central Asia who were his ancestors had mingled with others, and now these little silver shoes of a Korean queen were a lost symbol of woman’s grace.

“And dare you dream in my presence?” the Queen now inquired. Her voice was playful but she put an edge into the words.

He lifted his head, startled, and then blushed anew because inadvertently he had seen her face.

“You need not turn so red,” the Queen said. “I am old enough to be looked at without fear by a young man.”

“Forgive me, Majesty,” Il-han said. He fixed his eyes on her rounded firm chin and the royal lips went on speaking softly but with definition in shape and sound.

“Will you answer my question?”

“Majesty,” he replied, and because he was angry with himself for his confusion in her presence, and especially for his wayward thoughts concerning her shoes, he made his voice low and stern. “I sent the memorial to you because I know your loyalty to China.”

He needed not to say what they both knew too well, that he came to her because the King was torn between his father and her. This was to say the King was torn between the Regent’s desire to balance one nation against another and so gain precarious independence for Korea, and the Queen’s resolute faith in China. Therefore he continued to skirt direct speech.

“You have reason, Majesty, for your faith. Through centuries China has avoided anything that can alienate our people. But now when we must prevent Japan from landing soldiers on our soil can the Empress save us when it may be she cannot even save her own people? Remember the opium wars which China always lost to England, who is friendly to Japan, Majesty, and who will always take Japan’s part. And remember that France has cut a huge slice from the Chinese melon and claimed it for her own — Indo-China, Majesty! And China cannot prevent it or take it back again.”

Now the silver shoe on the imperial right foot began to tap impatiently.

“France! What is it? We have only seen French priests, bearing in one hand a cross, in the other a sword! I have heard that they are winebibbers, but they make their wine of grapes, not rice.”

“I still regret, Majesty, that our people massacred the French Christians,” Il-han said, “and even more, that in our anger we attacked the American merchant ship, the General Sherman. And the worst folly was that we killed the American crew.”

The Queen waved this off with her right hand. “What right had an American merchant ship in the inner waters of the Taedong River, near so great a city as Pyongyang? Are there Korean ships in the rivers of — of — of — what are some of the American rivers?”

“Majesty, I do not know,” Il-han replied.

“You see,” the Queen cried in triumph. “We do not so much as know the names of their rivers, much less sail our ships on foreign waters! I see no difference in these wild western peoples, and as for the Americans, who knows what they are? A mongrel people, I am told, made up of the cast-offs, the renegades, the rebels, the younger sons, the landless and the homeless of other western nations!”

He could wait no longer. “Majesty, they are our only hope, nevertheless. America alone has no dreams of empire. With her vast territories it may be she has no need to dream and so can be our friend.”

“You hurry me,” the Queen complained, “and I am not to be hurried.”

“Forgive me, Majesty,” Il-han said.

His eyes caught sight now of her hands, elegant and restless upon her silken lap, and involuntarily he lifted his eyes and saw her face, this time all in a glance, the dark eyes large and glorious in the light of her intelligence, the black brows straight and clear, the brilliant white of her smooth skin, the red of lip and rose of cheek. He looked quickly at the floor. If she noticed, she did not say so, and she went on musingly and as though to convince herself.

“These western nations — have they anywhere done justly to other peoples? Their pretense is trade and religion but their true purpose is to annex our land. No, I will have none of these western nations!”

Il-han continued in steady patience. “I will remind you, Majesty, that when the diplomatic mission from Japan returned only recently from the western countries they reported to their Emperor that these great new western nations would not look with favor on a military coup in Korea by General Saigo. We were saved by the western nations, Majesty!”

He had gone too far. The Queen rose, took three steps forward, drew a closed fan from her sleeve and struck twice, once on his right cheek and once on his left, as he knelt before her.

“Dare to speak!” she cried. “Was it not six years ago — only six, it is to remind you — that the Empress Tzu-hsi, my friend, forced Japan to make treaty with us and recognize us as equal with Japan? It is China, not the western nations, who saved us!”

Il-han could bear it no longer. He forgot that she was the Queen and no simple woman. He lifted his head and glared at her and he lifted his voice and shouted at her until his voice roared into the beams of the palace roof.

“That Treaty of Amity? Treaty of Amity — a joke! When the ambassador came with four hundred armed men to convince us! Japan was given special privileges here on our soil, and how can we depend now on China, when Japan has invaded Formosa, and even the Ryukyu Islands?”

The Queen shrieked in return. “Will you not understand? Small as we are, and weak in numbers, we can be attacked — attacked, absorbed — there are a hundred ways, if China is not our suzerain! We can only live in freedom and independence if we are in friendship with a powerful nation, and pray heaven it will never be Russia or Japan — no, nor America! — and therefore it must be China!”

At this Il-han was speechless and in his anger he did what no man had ever done before. He left the truebone royal presence without permission and turning his back on the Queen, he strode out of the palace, his head high and heart beating fit to burst.

… His father was waiting for him in the entrance hall at the gate of the palace. They walked out together, and he waited for his father to speak. How could he say, “The Queen wished to speak to me alone”? But his father was complacent. He walked with measured steps, his toes turned outward as an old scholar walks, a smile on his face.

Seeing that his father was not disposed to speech, Il-han kept silent, too. The day was fine and the people on the streets were enjoying the mildness of the autumn. Each such day was precious, for there could not be many now before the snows of winter fell. Over the low walls of the courtyards between the houses, or in front of gateways, the persimmon trees were bright with their golden fruit, and piles of persimmons were heaped on the ground, ready for market. Children ate until they were stuffed, their cheeks sticky with the sweet juice, and for once no one reproved them. It was impossible, moreover, to speak of important matters in these crowds of people.

“I will come to your house now and visit my grandsons,” his father said.

It was not usual for father and son to live separately, but Il-han lived in the Kim house in the city, that he might be near the palace, and his father preferred to live outside the city in the ancestral country home of the Kim clan. Here he could indulge his love for meeting his friends and making poems, subject only to the occasional summons from the royal family.

“I have only one grievance against your father,” his dying mother had once told Il-han. “He has never visited other women nor does he gamble, but he cannot live without his friends.”

It was true that these friends, themselves idle gentlemen and poetasters, gathered every day in his father’s house to remember together the glories of ancient Korea, to recount the events of her heroes, to recall how even the civilizing influence of Buddhism reached Japan only through Korea, to repeat that sundry monuments of art and culture now in Japan had been stolen from Korea — was not the beautiful long-faced image of the Kwan Yin in Nara sculptured in Korea, although what Japanese would acknowledge it! And from such raptures came poems, many poems, none of them, Il-han thought bitterly, of the slightest significance for these dangerous busy times.

Yet when he had complained in private to Sunia, she refused to agree with him.

“Not so,” she declared. “We must be reminded of these past glories, so that we know how worthy of love our country is and how noble our people are.”

He walked in silence with his father now along the stone-paved street until they entered the gate of Il-han’s home and there his father led the way to the main room while Il-han bade a servant bring the children to see their grandfather. “And invite their mother, also,” he called after the servant.

His father sat himself down on a floor cushion and a maidservant bustled in with tea and small cakes, and Il-han sat in the lower place, as a son should. In a few minutes Sunia entered with the children, the elder clinging to her hand and the younger in the arms of his nurse. She made the proper obeisance and watched while the elder son made his and the grandfather looked on with pride and dignity.

“Is it not time,” he said, “to set up a proper name for my elder grandson?”

“Will you choose a name, Most Honored?” Sunia said.

She sank gracefully to a floor cushion, well aware that in an ordinary household she would not have appeared so easily before her husband’s father, although it was true that here women were proud and never knelt before their husbands as women in Japan did, or had their feet bound small as Chinese women did, or their waists boxed in, as it was said that western women did. No, here husband and wife were equal in their places, nor were mothers browbeaten by their grown sons. In the royal palace, were the King to die and leave the heir too young to rule, the Queen Dowager ruled until the heir attained majority. Il-han, too, had accustomed Sunia to freedom, partly because he gave her respect as well as love and partly because he had heard that western women came and went as they wished. True, his mother, now dead, had talked much of the good and ancient times when women were neither seen nor heard, and she said often that she longed for the old custom of curfew when only at a certain hour could women walk freely through the streets. So severe was the custom in those days that if a man stole a secret look at the woman his head was cut off.

“And would you be willing to have my head cut off if I stole a look at Sunia?” Il-han had once inquired.

“I would have taught you better,” his doughty mother had retorted.

Sunia kept her own modest ways, however, and now in the presence of her husband and his father she held her head down and did not look up to either face. Meanwhile the grandfather considered the name he would choose.

“My elder grandson,” he said, at last, “is no usual child. He has a high spirit and a quick mind. These are signs of youth, but in him they are more. They are the qualities of his nature. Moreover, he was born in the spring. Therefore I will choose for him the name of Yul-chun, or Spring-of-the-Year.”

Il-han and Sunia exchanged a look, each making sure of the other’s approval, and then Il-han expressed what both felt.

“The name is suitable, Father, and we thank you.”

All would have gone well except that at this moment the newly named child saw a small mouse under a low table beside which his grandfather sat. Winter was near and the crickets, the spiders and mice crept into the house, seeking escape from the coming cold. Crickets and spiders were harmless but mice were dangerous, for people believed that if girl children played with mice they would never be able to cook rice properly. The women servants therefore always chased mice away, and the little boy, seeing the mouse as courageous as a lion under the table beside his grandfather, gave a loud scream and pointed at the creature with his tiny forefinger. What could they think except that he was pointing at his grandfather with a look of terror on his face?

The grandfather was dismayed, and Il-han was ashamed.

“Remove the child,” he said sternly.

The child, however, tore himself free of his mother and ran to the table to peer under it. At this the mouse crept out, to the horror of the nurse who held the younger child. She in turn screamed and hurried from the room with the child, and even Sunia rose and stepped back. Seeing the fray, Il-han himself rose and caught the shivering creature in his cupped hands, and going to the door that led into the garden he loosed it there. Though he was no Buddhist, yet so deeply had Buddhist learning permeated his mind and heart that he could not kill any living creature. Even a fly he brushed away from his face rather than kill it and he blew upon a teasing mosquito to move it away.

When all this noise was over he threw a commanding look at Sunia and she caught its meaning and left the room with the elder child in her arms. The two men were then alone and after a moment of quiet, Il-han’s father made an observation.

“It is a strange truth,” he said, “that where women and children are, there is always commotion. Nothing useful can be done until they are removed.”

When this was said, he then went on to important matters.

“The King,” he said, “is determined not to carry on the policies of the Regent now in retirement. Yet he remembers that the Regent is his father, and he does not wish to proceed too rapidly to make treaties with western peoples. Now he is in confusion because the military premier of China wishes us to make a treaty with that new foreign power the United States in North America. Have we not seen the evils of such treaties? Because we made even that one treaty with Japan, six years ago, her greedy soldiers invaded the island of Formosa and attacked the Ryukyu Islands. Why then should we make another treaty with any nation? I advised the King that his father, the Regent, is right. We must separate ourselves from the world. We must continue to be a hermit nation, else we shall lose not only our independence but our national life. Our glorious history will sink into the sea of forgetfulness and we shall be no more.”

His father’s voice fell into its usual cadences, as though he were reciting poetry, and Il-han could not bear it. He had been summoned by the Queen, but it was his father who was summoned by the King. True, the Queen was strong, yet she was a woman and if she gave an order which was in conflict with the command of the King, his will must be obeyed before hers. In this matter Il-han’s father was stronger than he. For the sake of the nation he must speak against his father now.

“Sir, the Regent is wrong, and so are you. I dare to say this with full respect to both. Li Hung-chang has purpose in what he does. The Americans are no threat to us. They are a new nation, far away, and I hear they have a vast country. They have no need of our small terrain. They come only for trade—”

Here his father broke in with some anger.

“It is you who are wrong. You do not read the times right. How did the English begin their possession of India except by trade? Oh, they were very innocent, they only wanted trade, and this trade they said would benefit the people of India. Innocent — innocent — but what was the end? India became a subject people and there is no end to their subjection. The English have grown rich and strong upon this trade while the people of India have grown poor and weak. No — no — you young men never study history! Yet only the past can illumine the present and foretell the future.”

Il-han was not surprised at his father’s outburst, which repeated what the Queen had said. There was some truth in what they said, but it was specious truth.

“The two countries we must fear,” he replied, “are Russia and Japan. In both countries the rulers are rapacious and the people ignorant of what their rulers plan. Moreover they are not peaceful nations, and Japan is the more ambitious because she is small. Small men are to be feared if they are ambitious for they are dissatisfied with themselves. Japan is a small man with a big head. We must fortify ourselves against this small man by seeking friends who are large and not greedy. Even China cannot protect us now. We must seek a western friend. Li Hung-chang knows this, and to keep us within China’s sovereignty, he too seeks help. Therefore he advises a treaty with Americans, and—”

His father would listen to no more. He rose up from his floor cushion, he adjusted his tall hat, he folded his fan and thrust it into the collar of his white robe. Without a word of farewell he stalked out of the house, his head held high and his underlip thrust out beyond his nose. Il-han watched him go and did not follow, recognizing with some rueful mirth that he had left the Queen in like manner an hour ago. Then he sighed and shook his head. If father and son could not agree, if Queen and subject came to quarrel, where could peace be expected in the nation?

As usual when he could not answer his own questions, Il-han retired to his books, and reading he came upon a poem of the late Yi dynasty written in the Sigo style.

Stay, O wind, and do not blow.

The leaves of the weeping tree by the arbor are fallen.

Months and years, stay in your course.

The fair brow and the fresh face grow old in vain.

Think of man; he cannot stay forever young.

There’s the thought that makes me sad.

Would life be long enough for what must be done for his people? He was suddenly conscious that the bright autumn day had changed to night. The wind was rising and he heard the sound of rain upon the roof.

“I am sorry,” Sunia said.

It was night. The house was quiet, the children asleep, the gates locked. Il-han took off his outer robes and she folded them and laid them upon the shelves in the wall closet.

“Sorry?” he repeated.

“This morning — the mouse — the child—”

“Ha — I had forgotten.”

He went on disrobing, down to his soft white silk undergarments. She held a night garment for him and he slipped his arms into it.

“What are you thinking of these days and nights?” she inquired gently. “You do not see any of us even when you look at us. I think this is why our elder son is too often naughty. He worships you as a god, and you forget to speak to him. How long has it been since you have spoken even to me more than to tell me you were hungry or thirsty or that something must be done?”

She was right and he knew it. Yet how to explain to her his feelings of heavy foreboding? How to explain them to himself? He smiled at her over his shoulder and walking away he slid back the paper lattices and stood looking out into the night. The garden lay before him gilded by the autumn moon, now nearly full. The gardener had lit the lamps in the stone lantern to warn away thieves, but the moon outshone them. Over the stone wall he looked at the crests of the high mountains outside the city. Their bare and rocky flanks shone softly with reflected moonlight. His heart filled anew with love for his country, his beautiful country, encircled by the sea on three sides, walled on the north by Pakdusan, Mount of Eternal Snow, and strengthened by the spine of mountains running its length from north to south. What treasures of gold and silver and minerals those mountains hid! For generations people had washed gold from the river Han, alone, in inexhaustible supply. He had read of caves in the western countries dug by men’s hands deep into mountains, and how they found gold and silver and lead and precious minerals hidden there by nature. The riches of his country were unexplored, secret, waiting.

Between the mountains lay valleys as rich in fruitful earth and rushing streams, fields tilled with ancient tools, men and women and children doing the work of beasts. Seasons came and went, spring planting followed by autumn harvest and it was treasure, too. This he knew, but he had not traveled far into the countryside beyond his father’s house. He was the son of a scholar and he had never worked with his hands, for though the Kim clan held vast lands he had been half ashamed to think of those lands. How had the Kim clan become rich in houses and land except by royal favor and corruption and usury? Even his father — even his father—

He turned abruptly away from the window. Sunia stood there waiting, her lovely face half questioning, half sad, her white robes flowing away from her slender body like floating mist.

“Sunia …” he began and stopped.

“Yes?” she whispered.

He knew what she expected. Her warm smile, her voice, tender and shy, her dark eyes longing and soft, her whole being waiting for his invitation to love. He could not give it.

“I am troubled,” he said. “I have the cares of our nation on my mind tonight.”

She withdrew with instant grace.

“I think only of you,” she said, and left him alone.

… He woke early the next morning. The sun filtered through the rice paper lattices and, seeing the morning was fair, he put on a robe and went out into the garden. The air was cool but the earth was warm and a heavy dew lay on the mossy paths and the rocks and the shrubs. Clumps of autumn chrysanthemums glowed among the pines near a small brook sparkling as it fell over a ledge. He walked the length of a path and sat down on a Chinese garden seat of blue porcelain and there contemplated the low and flowing lines of the roofs of his home. The buildings had stood there for centuries, the foundations of mountain rock, the walls of gray brick, the roofs of earth-dried tile. Yet its stability was only seeming. Peasant unrest, the division between young and old, and even war could destroy his possession. The house could become a prison if a foreign tyrant ruled the land. What powers lay in his people to save them from such attack? They must defend themselves. China, their ancient friend, was now too weak to save her own people, and Russia and Japan were only contending enemies.

How strong were his people?

There was no answer to the question except to discover its answer for himself. It was at this hour in the morning, while under the curving roofs of his home his household lay tranquil in sleep, that a new resolve took sudden shape in his mind. He would go on a pilgrimage, not for penance or for any of the reasons for which men usually made pilgrimage. He would not seek out a temple or search for a god. No, his search would be for himself, for his own answer to his own question. North and south, east and west, he would travel in search of the soul of his people. He must know them for only then would he know what to expect of them, what to demand of them, and what they would be able or even willing to do for their country if it were attacked.

With resolution came peace. He had been a man lost in a jungle of doubt and fear but now he saw a path opening before him to lead him out of the jungle. If he did not see its end at least he saw its beginning, and he was free to pursue it and follow it wherever it led — free except for the two women he loved, his wife Sunia and his queen, Queen Min. They must be willing to let him go. Which woman should he approach first? There were arguments for one and for the other. If he began with the Queen’s approval, he could say to Sunia that it was royal command. Yet he knew Sunia’s willful and stubborn nature, and he knew her love.

“All very well for the Queen,” she would cry. “All very well for her to send you wandering alone through the mountains and the valleys in these troubled times! She has other men to heed her bidding. Of men she has a plenty, but I have only you. To me you are everything and without you I am lost and with me our children. What if you never come back? What if—”

He broke off this imagining. He would tell Sunia first. He could persuade the Queen more easily than he could persuade his wife. He must choose the time, a moment when Sunia was gay and tender and pleased about some family matter. He pondered a while and then remembered she had wanted a new icehouse. The old icehouse in the rear of the compound was falling into ruins, and last summer the stores of winter ice had melted too early so that when the heat of the late eighth moon month fell upon them, there was no ice. This he would do for her housekeeping, he decided. For herself, he would buy jade from China, a ruddy piece such as she had longed for and did not have for it was hard to come by and the jade dealers brought it only now and again. She had white jade hairpins and she had green jade bracelets and earrings, but red jade she had not, and she wanted a lump of it to use as a large button to clasp a gold jacket that she loved. He smiled at himself that he could stoop to such wiles, but he loved Sunia for her few smallnesses, since she was of noble nature. It even pleased him to find a weakness here and there in her.

That night, therefore, when he was about to tell her of the new icehouse, she forestalled him luckily by saying that the elder child had lost himself that day and the servants had searched and called his name everywhere for half the morning. They heard a faint voice at last and it came from the old icehouse. The child had crept into the half-open door and pulled it shut after him and the jar of its closing had tumbled broken stone into a heap against the door and locked him in.

“Oh, my heart beat fast enough to kill me,” Sunia gasped as she told the story. “We might never have found him and then some day in the winter when we cut the fresh ice blocks to put into the house, there he would have been — dead! Il-han, you must build a new icehouse. What if we had lost the child?”

“Quiet yourself,” he said, soothing her. “In the first place, where was the child’s tutor?”

“I forgot to tell you that he went home for three days. He is to be betrothed.”

“Then where was the servant whose business it is to follow the child wherever he goes?”

She broke in. “But you know this is kimchee time, and we need every hand to help! I had sent to the country yesterday for the last cabbages and turnips and—”

“Enough,” he said. “I accept all excuses—”

“Not excuses.”

“—as valid,” he went on firmly, “and I will build a new icehouse immediately. But I must tell you, Sunia, that I must leave home for a space and while I am gone—”

“Oh, why?” she wailed.

“Let me finish,” he said. “While I am away from home, how can my heart rest if I know there is not always someone watching our elder son? True, the old icehouse shall be torn away at once, but this child, being what he is, will only plunge himself into new peril.”

“Then why do you go?” she demanded.

“I would not go,” he said, “unless I knew it to be my duty.” And as was his habit when he did not wish to speak further at a given moment, he rose and left her.

From Sunia he went to the room where his elder son slept. The child lay on the floor bed, his arms upflung, his face beautiful in peace. This stormy boy, this being of his creation, who could so twist and tear at his father’s heart, lay there now in such calm innocence that Il-han could have wept. Yet this same child could turn into a devil of anger and mischief and destruction and there were times when Il-han wondered if he were possessed. Once, because a kitten would not come to him, the child had strangled it. Once he had bitten his baby brother’s tiny hand so that blood came. Once he had taken a stone and broken a turtle’s new shell. When he thought of these times Il-han shivered. Yet there were other times. Into the bitten hand the elder brother had pressed a favorite toy of his own. Once he had wept for a brood of birdlings when the wind blew down their nest and they were too young to take food from his hand. And there were the times, how many times, when the child had curled himself into his father’s arms, hungry for love. Did he dare leave this child? Yes, for what he did was for the child, too. The country must be safe for his sons more than for himself.

That night he was so silent and so grave that Sunia did not dare to speak to him. She was afraid because of what he had told her and before they slept she crept close to him and he was won by her gentleness and dread and he took her to his heart.

When he announced himself next day at the gate of the Secret Garden, where the Queen’s palace stood, he waited in the anteroom until the guard came back after a while to tell him that the Queen took her leisure today in the bower of the garden. There he was led when she declared herself ready to receive him and he found her in the small room under the triangular roofs of the bower. She stood by a carved table heaped with flowers and autumn leaves and to suit the season she wore a full skirt and short jacket of russet and wine-red satin.

She was in a good mood, he could see, for she did not demand ceremony and was not herself ceremonious.

“Enter,” she said. “You see me in disarray. I am amusing myself. I hope you have not come with troubles. You are always so grave that I cannot tell what goes on inside that skull of yours. It is full of secrets, I daresay.”

She spoke with willfulness and smiles, and it occurred to him again that beyond being royal she was also a beautiful woman. He wondered at himself that he could continue to have such thoughts about his Queen and he put them hastily away.

“Majesty,” he said, “I have come not to disturb your pleasure but with a request.”

“Speak on,” she commanded. She took a pin from the knot of her hair and caught into it a golden chrysanthemum and then put the pin into her dark hair again and the flower glowed there like a jewel against the pale cream of her nape. He looked away.

“I ask that I be excused from attendance upon your Majesty for the space of months — a few months. I cannot declare the number of months, for my purpose is to travel everywhere over our country to observe the people, high and low, and measure their strength, their skills, their temper. Then when I return to give report to you, I shall know well what to say. Only thus can I know how strong our people are for defending our land.”

He made his request in a low, even voice, measuring his tones with reverence for her royal presence although she deigned to appear before him as a woman. He was horror-struck to see the change in her. She took swift steps to him and seized his right arm in both hands and clung to him.

“No,” she whispered. “No — no—”

He tried to step back, but she would not let him. He felt the blood drain from his head and he was suddenly giddy. What was the meaning of such behavior? His consternation showed in his face, and her eyelids fell under his shocked gaze. She released him and stepped back and clothed herself again in dignity.

“I have reason to believe—” she began in a low voice and looked about her. No, no one was near. At his entrance she had commanded her women to retire to the end of the garden, within sight but not within sound, but they were to turn their backs to her. He stood like stone, waiting, his eyes fixed now on the mossy path where she stood.

She began to arrange her flowers again. “I hear rumors that the Regent is plotting to return to the throne,” she said over her shoulder.

Shame and relief, these were what he felt. How dared he dream that his truebone Queen could behave only as a woman? Was it her fault that she was graceful and beautiful? And relief, because he knew now that not even a Queen could tempt him away from Sunia, since his first impulse had been to step back, to leave the dangerous presence. His heart was insulated by love for his wife, and he was glad that it was so. He spoke with restored calm.

“Majesty, I have heard of no such plot.”

“There is much you have not heard of,” she retorted.

Her back was toward him now, but he saw her white hand tremble among the flowers. He went on.

“Nor has my father heard the rumor, for if he had, I am certain he would have spoken to me.”

“Your father is a friend of the Regent,” she said.

“My father is a man of honor, Majesty, and a patriot.”

“Even the King does not believe me,” she said in a low voice, “so why should I think you would?”

“Where do you hear these rumors, Majesty?” he asked.

“A young woman, who waits on me in the night, is married to a guardsman at the palace of the Regent, and he hears the rumors and tells her.”

“Servants’ talk,” Il-han declared.

“Nevertheless, I wish you would not go.”

He did not reply at once. She looked at him over her shoulder and seeing his face rebellious, she spoke once more.

“No, I lay no such command upon you. Go, enjoy yourself.”

“Majesty—”

She would hear nothing more.

“Go, go,” she said impatiently, and he left her there among the flowers, his heart troubled but resolute.

There are many ways for a man to see his country. Had it been his father, Il-han knew that the preparations would have been vast. Boxes of garments and rolls of bedding, food and drink, a small stove for cold, fans for heat and huge umbrellas of oiled paper for rain, servants and a train of horses and for himself a cart padded with deeply quilted cotton, all these would have been necessary. And when he arrived at a town, the chief family would assemble to welcome him and arrange for his entertainment and comfort and he would meet the scholars and the poets and artists and they would drink tea and sip wine and write their endless verses and his father would have come back knowing no more than when he went, for he carried his world with him and for him there was no other. Il-han was of another sort. His tutor with whom he had grown up from childhood to manhood had taught him to hunger after knowledge and to know he must make himself like other men if he wished to learn from them.

To Sunia’s amazement, then, he insisted upon assuming the garments of a man neither rich nor poor and taking with him no more than one man, his faithful servant, could carry on his horse. The two of them set forth on horseback on a fine cool day in early autumn, five days after his audience with the Queen. In spite of knowing how large was the task he had set himself, Il-han was lighthearted. To go upon a holiday he could not, for it would have seemed like a boy at play, and he would not have left his family duties for play. Now, however, he went with purpose, and if he were also diverted such diversion could be enjoyed in good conscience.

The last farewells were said. He stayed alone with Sunia for a few minutes, the wall screens closed between them and all others. He took her in his arms and held her warm soft cheek against his.

“How can you leave me?” she sighed.

“How can you let me go?” he retorted.

She gave him a playful push. “Is everything my fault?”

They clung together again, as though they could never part.

“I wonder at us both,” she said at last.

Then since they must part she drew away from him and they went into the other room where the children waited, the older with his tutor and the younger with his nurse. Again Il-han wondered why the love of country was deeper in him than any other. His elder son began to cry when he saw his father ready to leave, and he caught the child to him and reminded the tutor of his duty.

“I hold you responsible,” he said sternly. “The child is never to be out of your sight.”

“I am responsible,” the young man replied.

With the elder son clinging to his waist, Il-han next took the younger one from the arms of the nurse. This child was tranquil by nature and placid, with content and good health. His face was round, his cheeks were pink, and his dark eyes bright. He smiled at his father and looked about at the assembled servants and at his mother.

“He never cries, this one!” his nurse said. “Whatever is, he finds it good.”

“I am glad to have one like him,” Il-han replied and gave the child to her again.

To her, too, he gave warning. “I hold you responsible,” he said.

“I am responsible,” the nurse replied.

Farewells were finished, and since Il-han had visited his father the day before, there was no need to disturb him again, and he left his house and went through the gate to the street beyond, the neighbors bidding him as he went to guard his health, to drink no cold water and to beware of bandits in the mountains. He left them all behind at last and giving rein to horse, he departed from the city by the northwest gate. To the north he would go first, then eastward and south, striking through the center of the great peninsula which was his country. Once more he would move slowly up the western coast northward again until he reached the island of Kanghwa, which lies at the mouth of the river Han.

This island was dear to Il-han, though he had never seen it, for here began the history of his people. On a mountaintop upon Kanghwa the people believed that their first king, Tangun, had come down from Heaven three thousand years before the era called Christian. For four thousand years after this sacred birth, the people lived in peace under many kings until, seven hundred and more years ago, the fierce men of Mongolia poured their hordes across the Yalu River and swarmed over the land. Then the King and his people retreated to Kanghwa, since they could not hold back the invaders. The King commanded that a wall be built on the landward side of the island, and the people said that Tangun, now returned to Heaven, sent down his three sons to help them build the wall, which thereafter was known as the Wall of the Three Sons.

Such was legend, and Il-han had heard it in his childhood, for his grandfather spoke often of Kanghwa, not only for the sake of history but because here the Kim clan had its beginning.

“Kanghwa is the stronghold of our independence and the birthplace of our clan,” his grandfather had told him. “There in every battle a Kim fought to defend our country. When the Mongols had returned to their own country, their hands dripping treasure they stole from us, we had some hundreds of years of peace until certain lawless tribes from beyond China attacked again. Once more Kanghwa was our bastion. Alas, now the Wall was broken down by the enemy but we would not yield. We built the Wall again, a Kim in command under the King, and again we repelled the enemy. When they were gone, we came out to acclaim our land. Yes, my grandson, in Kanghwa is the secret of our undefeated spirit.”

Indeed it had been so, for even in Il-han’s memory Frenchmen had made effort to reach the capital city, Seoul, and might have succeeded except when they tried to come up the river Han, the only entrance to the city, the Wall of the Three Sons held them back and they too were repelled and the capital was saved.

Mountains and valleys, sea and farmlands and island, he would travel everywhere and see his country and his people as they were.

… With what words shall a man tell of love for his country? Before he was conceived in his mother’s womb, Il-han was conceived in the earth of his native land. His ancestors had created him through their life. The air they breathed, the waters they drank, the fruits they ate, belonged to the earth and from their dust he was born. When he bade farewell to his Queen and to his wife and children, Il-han laid aside for the time being all other loves except this one pervading love, the love of his country, and he opened his heart and his mind, day by day, to the people he now met, the scenes he saw, the life he lived. With no other companion than his servant, he traveled by day and slept by night wherever he happened to be when darkness fell.

Northward he went in the beginning and in a score of days he was in the Kumgang-san or Diamond Mountains, the name given to them not because jewels were there, but because the Buddhist monasteries built in high places were such that they shed enlightenment more illustrious than any sun. He had never traveled into these mountains and had only heard of their tortuous shapes, carved by high winds and torrential rains. They were barren cliffs, and in the dark and narrow valleys between, white torrents of water leaped in waterfalls to join the great rivers that emptied into the surrounding seas.

He had read the record of the mountains, made some two hundred and fifty years before he was born, by a great geographer, Yi Chung-hwan. These mountains, he read, formed three strong ranges: the Taeback Range, which ran across the country from north to south like the spine of some vast animal; in the northeastern corner three smaller ranges were parallel; and in the southwest was a third range, running north. Rain and melting snows washed the soil down from the mountains and each winter it piled, rich and fertile, into the valleys. How fertile, Il-han saw every day as he rode northward on his horse, for the fields were already golden with the rice harvest, and persimmons, yellow and red, were ripening on the trees. Against the gray cliffs of the mountains tall narrow trees of poplar rose like candles of yellow flame, few in number in the scanty soil, but each tree standing single and emphatic.

In the midst of this stern beauty the people walked like prophets and like poets, tall men in their white robes and high black hats, and women as tall in bright full skirts and short jackets, carrying baskets on their heads or jars of oil. Children were everywhere, the gay children of countryfolk. By night he saw them close, for he stopped each evening after sunset at the first village to which he came and asked for shelter at some grass-roofed house. Without fail he was made welcome to what the family had — a pot of soup, wheat with dried bean curd, a bowl of rice, a crust of wheaten bread, a dish of mixed herring and shrimps pickled together, kimchee for relish, and a cup of hot tea at the end of the meal. He made talk with the men while the women sat in the shadows and the children pressed about to stare and listen.

The talk was simple enough. “Have you enough to eat?” he asked first and the answer was usually, yes, enough, but sometimes not enough before the harvest.

“Have you other complaints?” he asked next.

They were wary at this until he assured them that he did not come secretly for taxes or for government. Yet their complaints were simple. Each farmer only wanted more land than he had, and each grieved because his sons had no chance to go to school.

“How can school help you with the land?” he asked.

An old grandfather leaned out of the shadows to make answer. “Learning clears the mind,” he said, “and books open the spirit of man to heaven and to earth.”

“Do you know how to read?” Il-han asked.

The old man touched his wrinkled eyelids. “These two eyes can see only the surface of what life is.”

When darkness fell and the candle guttered, they slept and Il-han shared the mat upon the floor. Few houses had more than one large room and perhaps a small one or two, and the larger room was where life was lived. At night the family lay on mattresses placed on the floor, parents in the center and the youngest child against the mother, and the eldest son lay nearest the door. A miserable life it might have been and yet was not, he concluded, for he heard no child cry in the night without comfort. Even he, accustomed to a great house and many rooms and his own privacies, felt here in the humble houses of the countryfolk a safety, a creature closeness, which made the night less dark. When morning came, nevertheless, he was glad to be on his way.

As he went northward, the air changed. The valleys grew more narrow, the fields smaller and the harvests were scanty. He heard of bandits in the foothills, and twice the men of a village went with him to the next village and he knew he was safe because their kinfolk were among the bandits. The answers to his questions now were rough and quick. No, they were not content with what they had. They starved too nearly, and the truebone King and Queen forgot them. As for the Regent, he was no better than a tyrant and they would not have him back. What did they want? They wanted food and justice and land.

“How will you get more land?” he inquired one night at an inn built for pilgrims to the monasteries. “These mountains rise like walls around you. Can fields be carved from rock?”

To this they had no answer until one ready fellow shouted that then they must be robbers.

“We rob the rich to feed the poor,” he sang, “and is this a sin? Under Heaven I say it is virtue!”

It was true that rich pilgrims were often robbed, and for that reason Il-han was glad that he traveled as a common man with only his horse and one servant following. Yet even these men were not evil for evil’s sake, or so he reasoned.

Riding through the clear pure air of mid-autumn, he reflected that in a country so mountainous as this, where tillable land was only a fifth part of the whole, the treasure was land. Who owned land held power, and this he understood even more clearly as he listened to the landfolk.

“Master,” his servant said one morning, “today we must go on foot. We climb mountains.”

They had spent the night at a small village built on a rock at the foot of the mountains. It was a family village and the folk subsisted on what the monks in the monasteries paid them for food they carried in from more distant villages. Since the monks ate no fish nor fowl nor flesh of any kind, not even a hen’s eggs, their meat was beans, wheat, millet and rice.

Il-han looked far up the cliffs ahead. The narrow country road became a ledge of rock upon which no horse could walk.

“Leave the horses here then,” he directed. “Tell the head villager that when we return we will pay him for good care of our beasts.”

The servant obeyed, and when the sun rose Il-han found himself on his way up the clifflike face of the mountain. Had he been fearful of heights, he would have turned back before the day was half gone, for the ledge, at times not more than eight inches wide, would have been more than he could bear. He kept his eyes on his feet, however, pausing now and again to stand and look about him. The sight was awesome. Above him the mountains pierced the sky, their heads hidden in silvery mists. Far below, bright waters leaped through narrow gorges and the echoes roared about him. Speech was impossible, for no human voice could be heard here. If water did not roar, winds whined among the cliffs.

All day they walked, stopping at noon to eat their packets of cold beans and bread. It was dusk before they came to the first monastery, where shelter could be found. All that was poet in Il-han’s nature took possession of him as he made the approach. The monastery faced west, and he saw it first in the light of the golden afterglow. Out of the shadows of twilight among the cliffs, he saw a stretch of green against the dark rocks, and among the gnarled pines he saw a curving stair of rock. Then, like a jewel, the ancient temple was revealed, the roofs of gray tile, the pillars vermilion red, the walls white. He climbed the steps and waited before great carved doors in the center of the stone-paved veranda. The doors opened as though he had called and a monk stood there, a tall gray-robed figure.

The monk spoke the Buddhist greeting, “Na mu ah mi to fu.”

Il-han replied with the Buddhist prayer which his mother had taught him years ago, when he was a small boy and she took him to the temple with her.

“Po che choong saing.”

“Enter,” the monk said. “You are one of us.”

He entered the vast hall and into the silence, and confronted a great gold Buddha sitting cross-legged upon a golden lotus, the hand upraised, the fingers in position. The golden face, benign and calm, looked down upon him and he felt peace descend upon him.

… For a month Il-han lived in the monastery among the priests. He slept at night in a narrow cell, and daily at sunrise he went into the Chamber of Spirits where the abbot, in hempen robes dyed saffron, sat upon a black cushion on the floor and read the Buddhist scriptures.

This monastery, the abbot told him, was rich in treasures of the spirit, and had been since the beginning of the kingdom of Koryo, when the monk Chegwan had taught the King himself that the unity of the Three Kingdoms revealed the unities of Buddhism, of which there were also three, doctrines, disciples and priests. The power of Buddhism had increased through such unity, spreading into distant China from India to the surrounding countries, and thence to Korea, and from Korea to Japan. Under this influence the Buddhist scriptures had been translated into the Korean language. The great Buddhist Tagak, son of King Munjon, and the twenty-eighth patriarch in direct descent from Sakymuni Buddha, himself went to China in the Sung dynasty and collected these precious books.

“We were preparing for the future,” the abbot told Il-han. “It was foretold even then that the Mongols from the north would invade our land. It is out of the north that the destroyers always descend upon civilized man. Did not China build the Great Wall against the north? The Mongols came from the north, but under our influence the nation stood as one people against the barbarous tribes.”

“To yield at last to Genghis Khan,” Il-han reminded him, “and the books burned—”

“Not to yield, only to submit,” the abbot said sharply. “True, our king fled to the island of Kanghwa. But we, believing that Buddha would save us, cast new wooden types and working, hundreds of us, for sixteen years, we gathered together again the sacred books, printing three hundred thousand and more pages of them. They are here, the most vast collection of Buddhist books in the whole world. And our country has remained intact, united under Buddha.

“Chegwan, who founded the School of Meditation, sat for nine years with his face to the wall so that he could not be distracted in meditation. The truly valuable things he taught are attained only by that inner purification and enlightenment which come through quiet pondering and meditating. For the source of all doctrine is in one’s own heart and therefore we who are Buddhist monks retire to the mountains.”

“Can you believe in this?” Il-han exclaimed. “What refuge is there here when armies swarm into our valleys and over our mountains?”

“In the age of Silla,” the abbot said, neither lifting nor dropping his mild voice, “an ancestor of your own, a prince, Hsin-lo, surnamed Kim, became a monk. He traveled to China and as he went up the river Yangtse he paused at the Mountain of Nine Flowers and received from the local magistrate as much silver as his prayer mat could cover. He then sat in meditation for seventy-five years, a white dog always at his side, and as he sat a radiance surrounded him and people realized his divinity. In the seventy-sixth year, the seventh month, the thirtieth day, he received the great illumination and was accepted by death. After death, his body did not decay, and tongues of fire flickered over his grave. Why? Because he had descended into Hell in love and pity for those doomed.”

“Of what use is this now?” Il-han cried. “All this meditation has not saved us. And is it enough to descend into Hell, as my ancestor did? Better if he had stayed in the Hell we now have in our country. We, too, may be the doomed, and remember that under the Koryo rule the Buddhist monks and priests and abbots themselves grew accustomed to power and so to luxury and corruption.”

The abbot was silent. The accusation was true. As rulers grew effete, even the religious days of ceremony had become occasions for feasting and carousing. Confucian scholars, fresh with the energy of a new philosophy, had denounced the Buddhists for their decadence and before this young and righteous energy the kingdom had fallen to the dynasty of Yi. Thereafter, Confucianism became the religion and the custom of the state and the nation, and the monks had retreated forever to these temples in the mountains of the north.

Il-han shared his day with the monks, and when it was finished he walked at twilight in the shallow gardens planted upon the ledges of rock surrounding the monastery. About him, whereever he went and whatever he did, the sharp dark mountains loomed toward the sky. The hollows were filled with darkness even at high noon and the shadows were black.

One evening at dusk he heard a special chanting of priests, a melancholy music, the human cry to Heaven of despair and hope, and he drew near and looked into the Hall of Chanting. The priests sat cross-legged on floor cushions, their eyes closed, their fingers busy with their rosaries of sandalwood and ivory, the dim lights of candles flickering upon their unconscious faces. Not one was young — not one! These were the old, the beaten, men in retreat from life, and the peace in which they lived was the peace of approaching death … Death! Yes, this was a tomb for men’s minds and men’s bodies.

He turned away and summoned his servant.

“We leave tomorrow at dawn,” he told the man.

“Master, thanks be to God!” the man said. “I feared you would never leave this doleful place.”

And yet, when he entered his cell to pass his last night he saw that the candle on the table was lighted, and someone waited for him, cross-legged on the floor. It was the young monk who had arranged the abbot’s robes in the morning. He rose when Il-han entered.

“Sir,” he said, “is it true that you leave us in the morning?”

“Before dawn,” Il-han replied.

“Take me with you, sir, I beg you take me with you!”

The young monk’s eyes glittered in the candlelight, his face yearning with demand. Il-han was dismayed and surprised.

“How can I?” he asked. “You have taken your vows.”

“In my ignorance,” the young monk groaned. “I was only a peasant’s son, and when I was seventeen I ran away and was found by Christians and put into their school. But my soul was not satisfied, and I sought the Lord Buddha here. Alas, my soul is still thirsty for truth. I have read many books, East and West. From pilgrims I have had books of western philosophers, Kant, Spinoza, Hegel, but I find no peace. Where is truth?”

“If you cannot find it here,” Il-han told him, “you will not find it elsewhere.”

And steadfastly refusing the young monk’s pleading, he sent him away and drew the bar across the door.

When he went to the abbot the next morning to bid him farewell and to thank him for his hospitality, Il-han felt, nevertheless, a pang of separation. Much, very much of his country’s past was embalmed in this place and in other temples like these in other mountains. Mountains had become hiding places for the remnants of a lost glory. What doom lay ahead? What force could hold his people together, now that the love of Buddha was forgotten?

“Pray for us,” he told the abbot, “you who still pray.”

“I pray,” the abbot replied, and he stood up to bless Il-han. The man was tall, but the priest was taller, and he folded his hands on Il-han’s bowed head.

“Buddha save you, my son! Buddha guide your footsteps! Buddha grant you peace! Ah mi to fu—”

With this blessing, Il-han left the mountain and went southward to the sea.

The eastern coast of Korea is smooth but the western seas eat away at earth and rock and this for eons, so that shores are cut in deep and narrow bays and coves and the tides are high and perennial. Along such shores Il-han traveled as roads would allow, following the rough and sandy footpaths of seafolk as they walked from their huts to their nets. These men of the sea were different from farmer or monk. They were hard, their voices were rough, their skin was encrusted with salt, their eyes were narrowed by sun and storm. They were fearless, setting forth in small sailboats upon high seas and at the mercy of the tides. When they came home all their talk was of the sea and the fish, the soft fish and the shellfish. While the men went to sea their wives and children dug ginseng roots in the hills behind the fishing villages, a good crop, for the best ginseng root was to be found near the eastern town of Naeson. Yet it was rare and it was the more precious for its tonic qualities in soup and tea. A root of ginseng in a broth of salted fish was medicine enough for any ill, and old folk drank it to loosen the coughs that racked their lungs. For vegetables the seafolk used the young shoots of wild herbs steamed and then dipped into vinegar and soy sauce. They seldom ate meat, and indeed in the many days that Il-han traveled among the fishing villages, he ate no meat. True, one day he saw some dried beef hanging before a house, but when he inquired how it came there, the owner said the cow had died of a disease.

“Master,” his servant exclaimed in horror, “let us eat only fish in these parts.”

For liquor the seafolk drank a homemade brew, muddy to look at and of vile odor. For fuel, as Il-han saw as he rode through this shore country, men and women, too, gathered pine needles and fallen branches, straw and grass and dried seaweed, and this signified, he thought, how little the seafolk cared for land. The houses, too, were smaller here and more filthy than elsewhere, and the people more ignorant. One night in a small village inn where he had stopped he was awakened by voices shouting “Thieves — thieves!” and the villagers burst into his room, believing him to be a thief because he was a stranger, until his servant, berating them loudly, sent them away again.

“Yet we are more lucky than the land toilers,” a fisherman told him one night when he sat by a fire in a hut.

“How are you more lucky?” Il-han asked.

The man spat into the fire and considered his next words. He had two fingers bitten off by a shark, a small shark, he said, with a short laugh, else his whole hand and even his arm would have been off.

“We are more lucky,” the man went on, “because the yangban nobles cannot seize the sea as they seize the land. The sea is still free. It belongs to us because it belongs to Heaven and not to our overlords.”

The words were pregnant. In the fishing villages Il-han found the same anger he had found among the peasants, subdued by the same despair. To be poor, it seemed, was inevitable. None could escape. But here by the sea, poverty with freedom was tolerable, while a peasant without land was a slave to the landowner.

He slept ill that night. The smell of the seafolk was the smell of fish. The fragrance of the temple had been incense and sun-warmed pine, but here even the sea winds could not clean the air of the smell of fish drying, fish molding in the mists, fish salted for the winter, fish rotting on the sand. Even the tea these sea families brewed tasted of fish, and so melancholy was their life, between bare mountain and rolling sea, that he could not linger.

After he had passed Pusan, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, he rested at an inn at Hyang-san, and when the long tables were laid for the evening meal for the guests, he found the same poor fare but he ate as best he could, in order that he might not be suspected of being a rich man or a government official in disguise.

When he came to the river Naktong, whose source is somewhere in the region of Andong, he found it could not be forded, and he crossed it by boat These boats were of a shape he had never seen before, narrow in width but sixty feet in length, and this, he was told by the boatman, was because the river is sometimes wide and sometimes narrow. Fishermen cast nets into this river and caught koi fish and carp, and these fish had a different flavor from those caught in the sea.

Once on a fair day he met a procession of worshipers of Buddha, and was reminded of the temples. In the midst of the procession was a gold image of the Buddha. Three singing girls in palanquins rode ahead, but a bystander said they were going to the temple for amusement and not for worship, since the Lord Buddha, the man said, had died long ago. “You are right,” Il-han replied, “for he lives no more in men’s hearts.”

There remained now his last stopping place and this was the island of Kanghwa. Thither he now went, staying no more than a night at any inn until he reached his destination. In a fishing boat he crossed the channel where river meets sea, and thus he set foot upon that illustrious island. He had determined to travel it alone and so far as possible in silence.

“Follow me at a distance,” he told his servant. “Ask me no questions. When night comes, we will sleep where we find ourselves. As for food, buy such as we can eat as we travel, by foot or on horseback.”

So it was, and Il-han went first to the mountaintop where, it was said, Tangun, the first King, had come down from Heaven. The road was steep and the grass was slippery with frost as winter approached, but Il-han was tireless, his body slim and his muscles hard with much walking. When he reached the crest of the mountain he formed a cairn of stones, and he stood beside it and gazed upward into the pure blue above him. His mind could not believe but his heart did, and he stood in meditation, receiving he knew not what except that he felt calmer and more strong for being there. Before he left he searched among the stones and found a curious pointed rock and he set it on top of the cairn as his own monument. Then he came down from the mountain.

He paused again to see the Wall of the Three Sons. Seven hundred years it had stood, built and rebuilt, but now it was history. The new invaders, whoever they might be, would come with new weapons against which walls could not prevail and the channel, though a mile wide, could no longer serve as moat to a fortress. Kanghwa was now only a reminder of a people’s courage in the past, a source of strength for the spirit in a people’s future.

He had thought that he would visit for a few days the ancient Monastery of Chung Dong, but now he found he could not. What use was there now in such retreats? He longed for home and was impatient to return to work and duty.

He went his way swiftly then, content to do so as he perceived each day now fully the quality of his people. They were brave, they were strong, enduring hardship not only with courage but with a noble gaiety. Expecting nothing either of gods or rulers, they were grateful for small good fortune. Their strength was in themselves and in one another. They could be cruel and they were kind. They fought nature in storm and cold and under bleak skies, but they fought side by side and together. He loved them.

The first snow fell as he turned his horse homeward to the capital. His first task was to wait upon the Queen and tell her what a people she ruled and how worth all sacrifice they were and how they must not be yielded up to invaders from foreign lands. At all cost the country must be independent and free. What cost? That must be determined.

Halfway to the capital, he received the evil news. It was a windless cold morning and he was waked by the sun streaming into the small window of his room at an inn. It fell upon his face as he lay on the floor mattress of his bed and he stirred and opened his eyes. He had slept well, for the ondul floor was warm and he did not hasten to rise. A maidservant, waiting outside his door, heard him nevertheless and she came in with a pot of hot tea. She knelt by his bedside and poured tea into a bowl and set it on the low table by his pillow. She was a woman of middle age, her hands gnarled and cracked with winter cold and, like her kind, she was a creature rich with gossip.

“Bad news, bad news, sir,” she said cheerfully.

“What news?” he inquired, still drowsy.

“Runners passed by at midnight from the capital,” she prattled.

“The Regent has seized the throne back again. The King has yielded but the Queen will not. She has escaped into hiding but the Regent has ordered the army to search for her and put her to death.”

He sat up as though fire burned him through the floor.

“Out of my room!” he shouted.

The woman, alarmed, scrambled to her feet and was running away but he caught her by the end of her skirt.

“Call my servant — bid him saddle the horses. We wait for nothing — no food—”

He gave her a push and she ran to obey.

While he hurried into his garments and fastened his boots about his ankles, his manservant thrust a tousled head into the door.

“Master, what is your haste?”

“No questions,” he commanded. “Time enough to talk on the way. Get the horses to the gate. Settle with the innkeeper. Listen for what you hear the guests muttering.”

“Master, who is up at this hour?” his man replied.

“All the better,” Il-han retorted.

Sooner than he could have believed possible they were on their way. The morning was glorious and his heart ached. In so fair a country, why could there never be peace? Why was there continual turmoil within when they were pressed always from without? What discontent, what quarreling and dissension within this narrow lovely land, this sea-girdled strip of earth, rising out of the ocean into lofty mountains and now disaster! The Regent had ruled too long and why must he return to seize by force what was no longer his?

He rode his horse as hard as he dared while the sun moved toward the zenith. The sky was sapphire blue, and on the land the peasants did their winter work, mending roads and ditches and thatched roofs. His path led toward the central mountains, gray against the brilliant sky, their heads crowned with hoar frost and snow. Through them was a winding pass and to that place he pressed without thought of food until at high noon he chanced to see his servant’s pinched wan face. The man was older than himself, grown when he was still a child.

“There is an inn beyond the pass,” he told the man. “We will stop for rest and I may hear more news, since runners go through that pass from the capital to the coast.”

They stopped at the inn, and while the man took care of the horses Il-han sat at a table in the common room and listened to the guests. They were rude men, carriers and runners, and their talk was cynical and free. None knew where the Queen was. Perhaps she hid herself, perhaps she was dead. But the Regent would not spare her, that was certain, since it was she who had sent him out of power because she loved China.

Here he broke into the talk.

“Will not the King discover where she is?” he asked, pretending to be idly curious.

A clamor of voices hastened to reply. “The King? The King has given over the power to the old Regent. Is the Regent not his father? And will the Regent save the Queen when it was she who plotted against him and restored the throne to the King?”

He was amazed that these ignorant coarse men knew the details of the palace intrigue. Indeed they were not ignorant, although none knew how to write his name or could read a letter even of hangul writing. But they knew history from their ancestors, father teaching son, and they heard gossip from palace servants and guardsmen. Thus Il-han, listening, heard that scanty rice crops had made the people restless and since rice was short, the army rations had been cut and the soldiers were rebellious, too, and ready to listen to the Regent’s secret messengers, and so he had been able to seize the throne.

Such lower folk as these carriers and porters and carters took relish in recounting the troubles of the great, and Il-han sat in silence, listening, pretending to eat and drink and yet not able to swallow food or tea when he heard what had taken place. A wind-burned carter, his voice hoarse with frost, talked loudest of all.

“The Queen was sleeping,” he bellowed, a lean filthy fellow, his coat in rags.

“In her own palace or with the King?” another asked.

“In her palace!” the carter snickered. “He comes to her, you fool, like a beggar — crawls in on his knees, they say, crying and whining.”

“Not so,” another roared. “It is the Queen who goes whining and crawling to the King.”

This Il-han could not bear. “Go on with the news, man,” he shouted to the carter, and was glad once more that the clothing he wore was not that of a rich man but common, such as a traveling merchant wears. Had they known he was a Kim of Andong—

The man went on.

“She was sleeping, the Queen and her women, and a guardsman ran in to warn her the gate was seized.”

“What of the King?” Il-han inquired.

“The King? He? Waiting at the gate, they said, bowing and knocking his forehead in the dust to welcome his father, the Regent.”

“Tell me about the Queen,” a young man clamored. “Was she naked? It is said she sleeps naked.”

“If it is said so, then she was naked,” the carter roared, “and when a Queen is naked she is no different from any other woman.”

Again Il-han could not hear this monstrous talk. The Queen, his Queen, that stately beauty, stripped bare by these foul traitors here in the inn, for were not such men traitors when they took pleasure in her distress?

“She must be dead,” he said gravely. “How else could she escape in such a circumstance?”

“Ah ha,” the carter rejoined. “You do not know our Queen.” He lowered his voice and went on with delight, “A maidservant stood there, wringing her hands together and moaning and making such woman noises. The Queen slapped her cheeks and bade her be silent.

“‘Take off your clothes,’ she told the maid. ‘Dress me in your clothes,’ she said. Yes”—here the carter paused to nod and grin—“so she did. She put on the maid’s garments. When the rebels burst into the palace and into that very room where she had slept, the maid stood there naked, and the Queen was gone.”

“Did they think the maid was Queen?” a young man asked. His eyes were glittering and his mouth hung loose, thinking of the scene.

“She was putting on the Queen’s robes when they seized her, and she said she was the Queen. ‘Take your hands from me,’ she cried, as the Queen might, and they let her dress and then carried her away.”

Il-han took his bowl and drank it empty of tea. Then he said, as though he did not care, “I wish I had been there when they found themselves wrong. A maid instead of Queen! She made fools of them.”

But the carter, fresh from the capital, knew everything. “They took her to the Regent himself and when he saw what they had brought him instead of the Queen he cursed and swore and had them put in prison. The maid he had strangled.”

Il-han rose from his floor cushion. “I must get on my way,” he told them. “I have business.”

What he did not tell even his man servant as they rode on was the fear in his own heart. The Regent knew, he must have known, that the Kim clan had served the Queen. Since she had sat on the throne beside the King, the Kim had been favored above all others, and among the Kim, he himself was the most favored by the Queen. Would not the Regent now take revenge? And when he, Kim Il-han, was not found in his house, would he not put to death his wife and children and his old father? Revenge is the tyrant’s right.

“We will not stop at inns,” he told the servant. “Bargain for fresh horses. We ride until we reach the capital.”

The city was quiet when he entered the great south gate. Upon the streets the people came and went as though it was their purpose to reveal no change. None looked at him openly as he passed and if he was recognized, none spoke. His robes were worn with travel and his beard unshaven but these could only be excuses. Here he must be known. Did none dare to speak to him?

He rode without stop through the streets, less crowded than they should be, he imagined, and yet the markets were open, the fish markets and the butcheries, the pastry shops and vegetable stalls. Persimmons were still piled in the streets and the children darted in and out among the legs of vendors and passersby. One small boy fell before his horse and lay screaming in the dust, but he did not stop when he saw the child run away unhurt. Straight on he rode until he came to his own gate. There he dismounted and threw the reins to his servant and entered. The outer gate was open, but when he tried the gate of the house it was barred and he saw the gateman peering at him through the window in the wicket. Even then the gate did not open, and looking in from where he stood outside, Il-han saw the man running toward the house to tell the news of his arrival, no doubt. He waited impatiently and then the man was back again, opening the gate only enough to let him in before he put the bar through the iron bolts again.

“You are home, master, thank Buddha,” the man exclaimed.

“Is my family here?” Il-han asked.

“Yes — and your honored father with us,” the man replied.

Il-han strode then into the house. The outer room was warmed but empty, and he stood listening. The house was silent. Not even a child’s voice cried. He was about to pursue his way when the doors slid back and Sunia stood there, unbelieving. One instant she stood, and then cried aloud.

“Oh—”

She was in his arms, her arms about him, and her head on his breast. They stood close for a long moment. Then she drew back and looked up at him.

“You know?”

He nodded. The walls had ears in times like these. She stood tiptoe then and put her lips close to his ear.

“She is here.”

She stood back to see if he understood.

He lifted his eyebrows. “She?”

“The Queen!”

For a moment he was speechless indeed. The Queen? How dared she take refuge here in his house and risk the lives of his children? Where were her guardsmen?

“No one knows she is here,” Sunia was whispering again. “She tells them she is a lady from the court. She says she saw the Queen killed and she cannot eat. She lies in her bed all day, weeping as if for the Queen. No one goes near her. She has the curtains drawn. At night I take her food.”

“How long will this be believed!” Il-han muttered.

No more could be said for by now the household had the news of his return. The young tutor came in with his elder son grown tall in these many months, and the nurse brought in the younger child, who now could walk, his two feet far apart in caution. Il-han could only hide his fears and make pretense at welcome and smiles and praise. The servants came to bow before him and to exclaim their joy at his safe return, and he was compelled to be the calm master upon whom all could rely. And not one spoke of secret fears or made report of what had taken place in the palace while he was gone.

He spoke to each and to each gave some token of his thanks for faithfulness. To the servants he gave gifts of money and to his two sons he gave small jade animals that he had found in his travels and to the tutor he gave an ancient book of poetry which the abbot had given him in the mountain monastery.

“Now I must bathe,” he said, “and be shaven and put on fresh garments. It is good to come home and may I never leave my house again.”

So saying, he went into his own rooms and bathed, and his barber came and shaved him and washed and combed his long black hair and bound it up again into its usual coil upon his head. After this, Sunia came to him and sat by him while he ate, and his sons were brought to him again before they were put to bed. So the evening passed until night fell and the house was still and all through the hours he thought only of the Queen hidden in an inner chamber, the curtains drawn about her bed. She must be taken to a safer shelter. Though his servants were loyal, he believed, yet some gossip might escape one of the women washing the family garments at the river’s edge. It would be enough for such a woman only to say, “We have a strange lady in our master’s house. She lies in bed all day and draws the curtains and she will not eat.”

“Now,” he told Sunia when the house was still. “Now take me to her.”

The Queen, dressed in a common woman’s garment, sat on her floor cushion by a small table, in her hands a piece of red satin which she was embroidering. The light of two candles shone upon her quietly moving hands and she did not look up when the door slid back, until he stepped inside.

“Majesty!”

The word rose to his lips and he spoke it softly. No word must reveal who she was. He stood looking at her in silence and she looked at him and then her hands fell upon the table, the red satin a gleaming heap between them.

“I am making your second son a pair of shoes,” she said.

He did not reply. He came close and knelt before her on the other side of the cushion, and Sunia followed and knelt beside him. He spoke so softly that his lips moved almost without voice.

“We must leave this house tonight. You are not safe and I cannot protect you. I may not be able to protect even my family. Dress yourself warmly and put out the candles as though you were going to sleep. I will come here to fetch you and we will take horse and ride to some distant place. I have a friend in Chung-jo—”

She did not reply. For minutes she sat with her great dark eyes fixed upon him. Then she folded the square of red satin and thrust the needle through.

“I shall be ready,” she said, and added not one word.

He and Sunia rose then and went away to their own rooms.

What was there to say in such a time, even between him and Sunia? She prepared a bundle of warm clothing and put in some dried foods, in case they dared not stop at inns or in case snow fell and held them back in some lonely spot.

She asked only one question while he changed his house robes to warmer ones. “Should you not take your servant with you?”

He hesitated. “He is a faithful creature but he has been away from his family all these moons. There are certain dangers, too, if we are discovered.”

She interrupted. “I cannot think of your being alone. If you were killed in ambush, who would come back to tell me?”

Her face was quivering with suppressed weeping and his heart yielded while his will rose to make her strong. He took her hands and held them in his.

“I need your courage,” he told her. “All that I have is not enough for what lies ahead. Your tears undo me. It is my duty to serve the Queen, because in her is the only hope of our country. Do you think that otherwise I could leave you — or defend her? She must be kept alive, she must return, she must wile the King away again from his father. Fortunately, I hear that he loves her and leans on her. Fortunately he does not love his father. He longs to rebel against him and hates himself because he is too weak to rebel. Or so I hear. A few months, Sunia, and if I plan well, the Queen will be back and the throne secure for a while, at least.”

“Why must it be you?” she murmured, distracted.

“Because she trusts me,” he said.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “You had better wear your fur-lined coat, and I will fetch it,” she said.

In the small cold hours of the night he went to the door of the room where the Queen waited. He had bade his servant to be ready with three horses outside the gate, for this much he had yielded to Sunia, but he commanded him to ask no questions, whatever he guessed. Now while Sunia slid back the doors, he stood outside the Queen’s room until Sunia came out, her hand clasping the Queen’s hand. None spoke. The Queen was wrapped in fur-lined robes and a silk scarf was wound around her head and fell over her face like a veil. He walked ahead and she followed with Sunia while around them the house slept. Outside the gate, in the fortunate dark of the moon, the horses waited. Even the gateman slept, for the servant had opened the gate secretly, and now he stood holding the bridles of the three horses.

Il-han helped the Queen to mount. Then he turned to Sunia. “Go into the house, core of my heart,” he said. “Go and sleep warmly and dream that I am home again, as surely I shall be. As far as man may promise, I promise you.”

They clung together for an instant in the darkness and then she turned resolutely to obey him. He waited until he heard her draw the iron bar against the gate. Then he mounted his horse and they rode through the night, the hooves of the horses soundless against the cobblestones because the man servant had wrapped the horses’ feet in rags. When they reached the city gate, the guard held his lantern high to see who wished to flee the city. The Queen put aside her scarf, he saw her face, and speechless he turned and drew back the iron bar.

That night and for the next few days Il-han did not take the usual stone-paved highway to the city of Chung-jo. Instead he guided his horse through country roads and mountain paths, stopping not at inns when darkness fell but with some peasant family in a village. Never before had the Queen met face to face with these many whom she ruled, and Il-han found that he had not one woman to protect and hide but many women in one. Thus she was amazed to discover that a farmer’s house had but one room, the other one or two being no better than closets, and suddenly she was all Queen.

“What,” she exclaimed to Il-han the first night, “am I to lie among all these stinking folk?”

“Remember you are a commoner now, on your way to visit distant relatives, and I am your brother.”

She yielded at once. “I have always wanted a brother,” she said sweetly.

Lucky that he had warned her not to speak in the presence of any strangers, for her sweet voice and pure accents would have betrayed her anywhere as no common traveler.

“Be shy,” he had told her, “remember that women should not speak unless spoken to by father, brother or husband. No one will suspect you if you do not speak.”

Now that she was somewhat safe, the old mischief and gaiety glinted irrepressible in her eyes and smiles. He looked away. Steady and cool he must be with this powerful willful woman, and yet he knew that if he had not the safety of his love for Sunia she might have put him into torment. Were she no more than Queen, she would have been temptation, but she was also the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she used her beauty as only a Queen dares to use such a weapon, knowing that if a man makes trespass she can have his head cut off, or poison put in his food. He believed that she would not stoop to such evils, but he knew, too, that a man can never trust a Queen. He held her then in unfailing respect, not drawing nearer than a subject may, and this though she tempted him on purpose, as a woman will, though it was a game he would not play.

“And remember,” he told her one night when she complained that she could not eat the coarse food of the country folk, “remember that these are your people and this food is what they eat until they die and they never see better than a bit of pork once or twice a year. And if the room they live in crowds you, and the smells are too foul for you to breathe, then remember that these are still your people and they have no palace in which to live.”

“Nor have I,” she said mournfully.

“You have,” he said firmly. “If you hold to your courage, you shall be in your palace again within the year.”

In these ways he kept her to her best, and was heartened because she grew less willful and more steadfast as the days passed. She learned to watch the people and see how they did, instead of turning away from them, and in so doing she became more the queen and less the woman.

They reached Chung-jo on a cold winter’s night. Il-han went to his friend’s house, and knocked on the gate with the handle of his whip. His friend opened the door himself, for he was poet and a poor man, and had no servant.

“It is Il-han,” he told his friend.

“Il-han! Come in, come in quickly—”

His friend’s voice was joyful, for they had once gone to school together and it had been years since they had met.

Il-han gave his horse’s bridle to the servant and stepped into the gate and spoke to his friend’s ear.

“I have a royal refugee with me. She must be safely hidden. I know the woman in your house will receive and hide her somehow.”

The poet could not believe what he heard. Gossip from the capital had proclaimed the Queen’s death. Yet, some said, no one had found her body, nor had the rivers cast up a body that could be hers, and though the wells had been searched, they had not yielded her. True, there was a woman dead who wore royal robes, but it was found that she was not the Queen.

“You are not saying—” his friend gasped.

“Yes, I am saying!” Il-han told him. “Let me bring her in now. She is half frozen, as we all are. She needs rest and food.”

He waited for his friend to protest that he could not accept such danger as the concealment of a queen. But this poet was a true one. He revered learning and so he had stayed poor and having little to lose, he was brave.

“I will tell my wife,” he said. “Meanwhile the door is open. Lead her into my house.”

So saying, he went ahead and Il-han helped the Queen dismount and he led her into the house.

“I have chosen this hiding place for you because my friend is a good man,” he told her. “And it is well that he is poor. He will not have many people coming and going. You will be safe. But I ask that you make yourself one of the persons in this house. You are not royal here. Imagine that you belong to this poor good family.”

The Queen was humbled by now, through her many days of hard travel. For the first time she saw how her people lived and who they were. Never again would she be so wasteful of money and jewels and fine silks. She had the heart and mind of a noblewoman, truebone and clear, and she was changed.

“I will remember,” she told Il-han.

He had not imagined how difficult, nevertheless, it would be to leave her there as the poet’s wife came bowing and half dazed to receive them. Her husband had bidden her not to mention the name of the Queen and not to say Majesty and she obeyed but she was overwhelmed.

“If you will come with me,” she murmured.

The Queen bowed her head and then turned to implore Il-han. “You will stay a day or two?”

“Not even an hour or two,” Il-han replied. “I must return at once and begin my plans for your return.”

“We have said nothing of those plans,” she urged.

“Because I will not tell you something that will be a burden on you. You are to live here quietly, helping this family as a friend might. Share the duties of this housewife — they have no servants. Listen to her talk, but do not talk much for yourself. Use this time for learning what it is to be a poor man with no treasure except a love of learning and of beauty. These people, too, are your subjects.”

“Is this farewell?” she asked and he saw fright in her wide eyes.

“We meet again soon,” he said.

He stood and watched as the poet’s wife led her away. Suddenly she turned and came swiftly to him again. He looked at her, questioning, but saying nothing, she reached into her bosom and then pressed something into his right hand.

He looked and saw what it was. “I cannot take it,” he exclaimed beneath his breath.

It was her private seal, a piece of Chinese jade upon which was carved her royal name.

“You must,” she told him, her voice very low. “You may need to use my name in some high place to save your life — or mine.”

He stood amazed while she ran back to the waiting woman, and he marveled that she put such trust in him. His heart was moved and he knew himself forever her loyal subject, yes, and more.

He stayed then for a brief space with his friend while the servant fed and rested the horses.

“Why should you hasten away?” the poet urged.

“It is better if there are no horses at your gate when the dawn comes,” Il-han said, “and better if I and my servant are not here in your house. A woman can be hidden more easily than a man. Ah yes — before I forget — let your wife lend her some plain clothing when she needs it. She wears all that she has. And if someone asks who she is, say that she is a distant relative, newly widowed, who has come to stay with you because she has no other home.”

“I am still bemused,” the poet said. “It will take time for me to get back to myself.”

“I shall be here again before many moons,” Il-han told him.

The poet held him by the arm. “Wait — my wife wants to know what she eats.”

“She eats anything,” Il-han said firmly, and went away.

The Queen was left much alone in the lowly house of the poet. She understood that this was not enmity but reverence for her royal person. The poet’s wife was always near but speechless with awe unless the Queen encouraged her. The poet kept apart in a separate small hut where he sat upon a straw mat before a low table and read his few books and brushed his poems. Each morning he presented himself to her, bowed to ask of her welfare, and then withdrew.

The Queen mused often on her fate. She remembered that her mother had foretold her wanderings, for she had been born at sunrise one morning, and at the same moment a cock crowed. According to the four pillars of her destiny, the hour, the day, the month, the year in which she was born, she had lived thus far according to prophecy, a woman of willfulness she did not deny, but also of strength. When she thought of her own strength, she thought of the King. She had believed him to be weak, but there were times now when she was not sure. Perhaps he had hidden his true self from her. He was the son of a strong mother and through his childhood he had cultivated habits of secret resistance against his father, loving him and hating him, deciding what he would do but telling no one what it was until the act was complete. The return of the Regent — had it been perhaps with the consent of the King? If it were only the Regent’s love of power, could not the King have prevented the usurpation, since he had eyes and ears everywhere throughout the capital? And if he had allowed his father, the Regent, to return, was it because he hated her, his Queen, and rebelled against her as he had rebelled against his mother before her, and so because she favored the Chinese as suzerains, he had chosen his father who was against such suzerainty? When did the King become the man? And when did the royal family tangle become enmeshed with the troubles of the nation, and beyond that, with the declining strength of China and the dangerous strength of Japan made new by Meiji emperors?

She grew restless with such musings as the days passed. There could be no hope of messages from Kim Il-han. He had warned her that communication was impossible. “When it is safe for you to return,” he had said as he left her, “your palanquin will be at the gate. Step into it without asking a question. It is I who send it.”

Yet there was no palanquin. She was first impatient and then angry. Once she went to the gate, as she should not, and saw a brook tumbling out of the mountains, and beside it a wandering cobbled country road. The poet’s house was outside the village, a cluster of grass-roofed houses belonging, she supposed, to landfolk and their families, except that out of villages came poets. Such men, four or five, gathered at the poet’s house often, and then the poet’s wife asked her to stay within the small side room.

“I would beg my husband not to allow his friends to come while you are with us,” she told the Queen, “but they are used to coming, and were he to stop them now they would put questions.”

The Queen heard this with interest. She who was accustomed to command! The poet’s wife saw her unbelieving look, and went on in haste to explain.

“You do not know what poets are! They are so willful that they dare anything. They are children in spirit but in wit and wisdom they are already old men when they are born. What I have to endure! I tell you, it is not easy to be married to a poet.”

“All the more reason,” the Queen said, “for me to hear these poets. Leave the door open a crack—”

At this very moment while she stood in the garden she saw the poets coming from the village. They wore their long white robes, those robes which their wives washed fresh for them every day, doubtless, as the poet’s wife did in this house, and they wore their high black horsehair hats tied under their chins, the tapering crowns making the men seem taller than they were. They walked one behind the other, the smallest and the oldest first, so that she could see each head above the other. She waited as long as she dared so that she could see their faces, and then made haste into the small room, leaving the door open a crack.

Lucky the room was without a window, for she could sit in darkness and peer through the crack at the five men who crowded into the one room, each upon a floor cushion, the low table in the middle. Greetings were given and taken, the easy greetings of old friends, and she saw that they were contented men, though poor. Since she had been reared in the learning of ancient China, she remembered what Confucius had said: “Though I eat coarse rice and drink only water, though my bent arm is my pillow, happiness may yet be mine, for ill-gained wealth and empty honors are only floating clouds.”

Yet these poets, she soon perceived, were men of mirth as well as wisdom. They were not dismayed when the poet’s wife brought them only pots of weak green tea without cakes. Sipping the tea, they encouraged one another to begin the day’s enjoyment by reciting the poems each had written since the last time they met, and with proper courtesy each waited on the others until the eldest took lead. Closing his eyes and placing his hands on his knees, he recited in a clear voice, surprisingly loud for so small and old a man, a poem about a beautiful woman who could change herself into a fox at night. When her husband, who was also a poet, went hopefully to bed with her, he woke to find the marks of tiny claws on his hands and cheeks, and the pillow beside him was empty.

It was the youngest poet whose poem was of sorrow and death in the shadows of a pine grove. The more she listened the more the Queen perceived that the old men dreamed of youth and beauty and the young men dreamed of melancholy and doom. Most confounding to her was the fact that none of them spoke even once of the terrors of the present age, the enemies pressing from without the nation and the quarrels and the wars within. These men, both young and old, learned though they were, seemed not to know that they lived in peril of the times or that the past could not save them, or that their future could be lost unless they bestirred themselves to save their people. When she perceived this, it was all she could do to keep from throwing open the door and revealing herself as their Queen. To what end? So that she could cry at them to wake their minds!

“How dare you,” she longed to cry at them, “how dare you live in these mists of dreams and poetry while I, your Queen, am in danger of my life? Wake up, you men! Old and young, you are all children. Must I be your mother forever?”

She forbade herself such indulgence. She must be silent for the sake of more than these, and silent she was, biting her thumbnail and forcing herself to be quiet. She must wait and still wait until some night the poet’s wife would rouse her and whisper to her, “The palanquin is at the door.”

Kim Il-han was not idle although he was prudent and did not venture from his house so that he might protect his family if the Regent ordered violence. To his father he sent word that he was not well, that his illness was not defined by the physicians and he felt it his duty not to come near his father until he was sure he was harmless. Daily messages passed between the two houses, nevertheless, his father’s and his own, his servant coming and going, and his father, too, was prudent, and he said he had slight disorder of the stomach and must stay inside his own gates. The old man knew, of course, that his son’s illness was not of the body. These were dangerous times for the Kim clan.

Step by step, Il-han planned the restoration of the Queen. His tool in this planning was his son’s tutor. He called the young man to his private room one evening when the household lay asleep, and without daring to explain his whole purpose, he sent the young man to summon a handful of other statesmen whom he could trust. These gathered, not all at once, but one by one, this one today and another one tomorrow, weaving a web between their houses, and the messenger was always the tutor.

“You must trust me,” Il-han told him. “I am working to save us all.”

“Will you restore the Queen?” the tutor asked. “The times are changed,” he added.

Il-han looked at him sharply. The face he saw was lean and young, the mouth too gentle, but the eyes were clear and demanding.

“Nothing is forever,” Il-han said at last. “If she returns, she too must change.”

“I trust you, sir,” the young man rejoined, “so long as you know there must be change,” and taking up the letters that Il-han had given him, he went to obey.

The first step was plain. The Regent must be removed. He must be taken bodily out of the country and sent to a place across the seas from whence he could not return, because he would be in the hands of his enemies. Who were his enemies? The Chinese were his enemies and the chief of these was the Empress Tzu-hsi. Il-han would not plot to take the life of the Regent, nor would he allow others to do so, for to use such cruelty would inflame his people against the Queen. Once the Regent was gone, the next step would be to send the palanquin to the poet’s house and restore the Queen to her palace.

From his quiet house, while the children played in the gardens and Sunia tended her flowers and directed her women, Il-han spun his web wide. He had the genius to direct without seeming to command. Thus among his fellow statesmen as he had opportunity, or made it, he put his thoughts into a question here, or he made a reflection there, a suggestion that others, following his words eagerly, took up and put into action. His friends were peaceful men, and to them, also, he knew he could not propose violent deeds. Instead he proposed a new friendship with the Chinese.

“Our neighbors in the Middle Kingdom,” he said one day in conference in his own house, “are ever ready to help us. Let us now use their enmity against Japan, and make it our weapon.”

It was a day in late spring when he so spoke. Outside the open doors a hum of bees gathering among the yellow flowers of a persimmon tree told him that a hive had split. These were the wanderers seeking a new life for themselves with their queen, a symbol, perhaps, of what he sought too for his own kind. He clapped his hands for a servant and when the man came he gave a command.

“Tell the gardener that bees are hiving. Let him catch that mass of bees hanging there from the branch of the persimmon tree and persuade them into a new hive so that we may have the honey.”

The man obeyed and Il-han rose and drew the door shut so that the bees would not be disturbed. Then he sat down again on his floor cushion.

“A good omen,” he said to his guests. “There is honey to be had if we snare the bees.”

They laughed moderately in politeness and waited, a circle of gentlemen in white robes, their faces bland beneath the black hair coiled on their crowns. Il-han continued.

“Let us invite China to strengthen her armies in our city. With this new army we will silence the Japanese, now growing too strong under the Regent’s favor.”

“How will the Chinese restore order among us?” The man who asked this question was a scholar, one known to favor new ways and western learning.

“They need do one thing only,” Il-han said.

“And that one thing?”

“Remove the person of the Regent. Take him to China. Imprison him — not in jail, but in a house. And keep him there, perhaps forever — until he dies.”

He allowed his calm gaze to move from one astounded face to the next.

The boldness, the simplicity of this plan confounded those who heard it. They were silent, pondering what he had said, and he watched their faces. Doubt gave way to dawning hope and then approval. The older men thought only of the Regent removed and the house of Min returned and peace restored. The younger men thought of internal strife ended and room and time for new plans and ways.

“If you approve,” Il-han said, “then nod your heads.”

One after the other heads nodded. Il-han took up his cup and drank down the tea, and they all did the same.

“How will you do what you propose?” one asked when all had set their bowls down again.

“A messenger will be enough,” Il-han replied.

“What messenger dares to go on such a mission?” another asked.

“I know a man,” Il-han said.

Il-han spoke that same night to the young tutor, when all his guests were gone. “You are to leave at once for Tientsin. Here is my letter. I have signed it with the Queen’s seal. Yes, I have the seal! She gave it to me when we parted. Put it in the hands of our emissary in Tientsin. He is a Kim, as you well know — my cousin thrice removed. Let him read it and then ask how long it will be before the Chinese army can reach us. Tell him not too large an army — we are to be helped, not occupied! Four thousand men will be enough, or a few hundreds more to allow for death and illness.”

He opened the secret drawer in his desk and took out a small bag of rough dark linen. “Here is silver, enough to take you there and bring you back. Where will you hide the letter?”

“In the coil of my hair,” the young man said.

Il-han laughed. “Good! Then you must take care that no enemy beheads you.”

They parted and the next day when the tutor was missed, Il-han said only that he had sent the young man to the north to buy ginseng root to export to China. Since ginseng was valuable and the dealers in China were never satisfied, and its export was part of the business of the house of Kim, he was believed. Indeed, this ginseng root was a treasure for all physicians, for according to an ancient Chinese prescription, ginseng fortifies the nobler parts of man or woman, fixes the animal spirits, cures the palpitations caused by sudden frights, dispels malignant vapors, and strengthens the judgment. When taken over the years, it makes the body light and active and prolongs life.

“I am married to you,” Sunia said, “but you are not married to me.” The hour was past midnight. The house was silent. They were lying in their bed, in the quiet of the sleeping house. He had come into this room at the day’s end, determined to give himself wholly to his wife for the next hours. He had done what he could for his country and his Queen, and now he could but wait. He knew Sunia’s patience and tonight he needed her with all the richness and the simplicity of her being.

Without words, then, he had taken her into his arms and for a while they had lain in quiet. Then the deep tide began to rise from his innermost center, and with ardor he had fulfilled himself and her. She had first yielded and had then responded with such delicacy of understanding and such instinctive passion that he breathed a deep sigh of profound happiness. Was there ever such a wife, such a woman? She asked no question, she spoke no word.

Then, in the midst of his completion, she made this monstrous accusation. She was married to him, but he was not married to her!

He considered for a moment. In what manner should he reply? Should he be angry? Or witty? Or laugh? He chose to answer as though he did not believe her serious.

“Shall we make an argument?” he inquired, his voice indolent with content.

She sat up in bed and began to braid her long dark hair.

“There is no argument,” she told him. “I am speaking truth.”

“Then anything I say must be untruth,” he countered, “so what shall I say?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was small and far away and she was very busy with her hair. He waited until she had finished to the end of her braid and then he took her by the braid and pulled her back gently to his shoulder.

“Can it be,” he inquired, “can it really be that you are jealous of a queen?”

She hid her face against his bare flesh.

“Can you imagine,” he went on most tenderly, “can you for one foolish moment dream that I could ever take a queen into my arms and hold her as I hold you, and adore her body as I adore yours?”

She began to laugh. “No, but …”

The laughter died away and she still hid her face against his bare shoulder.

“If you will not tell me,” he said at last, “will you blame me if I say I do not know what you are talking about?”

She sat up suddenly and turned her naked back to him, a most lovely back as he observed, the spine straight, the waist soft and small, the nape delicate, the skin fair and smooth.

“There is more to a woman than body,” she said.

“Tell me what more,” he said, half teasing.

She looked at him over her shoulder.

“If you make fun of me, I shall not speak a word.”

“I am not making fun — I am only waiting.”

She was silent, stealing a look at him now and again over her shoulder to see if he were laughing at her. He made his face grave and he did not put out his hand to touch her.

“You never loved me — so—” Here she paused for the word she wanted to use.

“How?” he asked.

“So — so — so strongly as you did tonight. You were feeling something new. Why?”

“Nothing new,” he said, “only more. Remember that for many days I have had not one moment to think of you — or the children.”

“Something new,” she insisted.

He sat up. “The wonders of a woman’s mind,” he exclaimed. “The tortuous, twisting corridors in which she loses herself — and the man! Speak out, Sunia! Tell me what you are thinking. What have I done? Are you trying to tell me that I am dreaming of a geisha or one of the maids?”

“No,” she said, her voice a whisper. She got to her feet and went to the wall screen and opened it. Outside the rain was falling and she felt the mist against her face.

He went after her and closed the screen. “Are you mad?” he demanded. “Do you want to die?”

“Perhaps I do,” she said.

She sat down again on the floor cushion beside the low table and lifted the teapot from its quilted cover. She poured the hot tea in the bowl and took the bowl in both hands to warm them while she sipped.

“Be sensible,” he urged. “I have neither time nor heart for complexities between us. Have I failed you as a husband? Then I must ask forgiveness. But first I must know for what I am to be forgiven.”

“It is not a question of forgiveness,” she said, looking into her tea bowl. “And perhaps you yourself do not know what is happening to you.”

“What is happening to me, wise woman?” he inquired.

She lifted her brooding eyes to meet his eyes. “You are being possessed,” she said. “The Queen is possessing you by her helplessness — by her high position — by her beauty and her power — and her loneliness. A lonely woman is always tempting to a man, but a queen! When she comes into any room it is the Queen who enters. You are flattered, of course. But you are overwhelmed by such honor. You, singled out, set apart, by the Queen? How can one who is only a — a—woman — compete with a queen? She possesses your mind — yes — she does — don’t speak!”

For he had leaped to his feet, but she pushed him off. “Stay away from me, Il-han! It is true. For a man like you, with your mind — oh, there are more ways of enchanting a man like you than by the body, I know it very well. And I am not clever like you, or — or witty or brilliant or even very intelligent beside you — and though you will never possess her, yet I am your possession, and you will think me a poor creature. You do so think, already! Whenever you see her, after every audience, you come home as a man returns from a glorious dream. And now, when it is you who have her in hiding, it is only you who know where she is — why, I daresay you are dreaming dreams!”

Her voice rose with anger and then broke into sadness.

He was confounded. He sank back upon the bed and clasped his hands behind his head. How could he reply to so monstrous an insult? And yet she could so penetrate by instinct that he wondered if indeed she had perceived some truth that he had not. He did think constantly of the Queen. Her person was sacredly dear to him, not as a man, he nevertheless believed, but as a symbol of the nation and the people to whom he was dedicated. Yet he was a man. And it was true that some enchantment always came into his mind when he was with the Queen. He could look at any beautiful geisha and feel no desire to look again. But when a woman, such as the Queen, spoke with grace and intelligence, when she had a mind, then her body was illumined and he looked.

He sighed and closed his eyes. He had no time for self-investigation. And did it matter? He had a duty to restore the Queen to the throne and he would do it. And when she was on the throne she was Queen, and only Queen.

“Will you listen to me?” he said to Sunia. “Will you hear me tell you what must be done and what my duty is? There must be unity among our people, else the great hungry nations who surround us can lick us up as a toad licks up a mouthful of ants by the flicker of its tongue. Will you hear me, Sunia? As my wife?”

She put down the tea bowl. “I will hear you.”

“I must keep my head clear,” he said. “I must listen to all factions, but I must choose, step by step, my own path. I believe, Sunia, that finally we must make friends with the West. We must find new allies. Yet for the moment China must come to our help against Japan so that we may restore the Queen — and the King — to the throne.”

She was shrewd enough, this wife of his! “Why do you falter when you speak of the King?” she inquired now. “Put the Queen first, and then you stammer. What of the King?”

“Come here to me,” he said.

“Lie down,” he said when she stood beside him. “Rest your head on the pillow by mine.”

She obeyed, wondering. When her head was beside his, he turned and spoke into her ear.

“I believe the King is not loyal to the Queen. It is he who helped the Regent to return to the palace.”

“The Regent is his father,” she reminded him.

“The Queen is the Queen,” he retorted, “and she is his wife.”

They lay silent then, for enough had been said so that she understood, at least in part, that it was possible for him to be possessed not by a woman, not even by a queen, but by the love of his country.

In silence they lay close, without passion, but closer than passion could bring them they lay close.

In the poet’s house the Queen lived through the long days and the longer nights. Summer changed to autumn and winter lingered. Never before had she had the chance and the time to ponder her life as a woman. Now as the hours of the day stretched endlessly long, she watched the poet and his wife as they lived through their simple round. The woman’s whole life was in the man, the wife a part of the husband, and this the Queen saw.

“Are you never weary of tending this one man?” she inquired one day when she was alone with the wife, for the poet had walked to the village to buy paper and fresh ink and a new brush.

The wife was grinding wheat meal between two stones, and she stopped and wiped the sweat from her face with the hem of her skirt.

“Who would tend him if I did not,” she asked, “and what else have I to do?”

“True,” the Queen said. “But do you never find yourself weary? Do you not dream sometimes of another life?”

“What other life?” the wife replied. “This is my duty, and he is my life.”

The Queen persisted. “Then what do you dream of?”

The wife considered. “I dream of having enough money to buy an ox. I could drive the ox in the field instead of pulling the plow myself. And I would get him a fine white robe such as he deserves to have as a poet, instead of the patched rag he wears now. Yes, I might even buy two white robes, and certainly he needs a new hat. I mend the one he wears with hairs I pull out of the tail of the horse our neighbor has, but it would be well for him to have a new hat. This one belonged to his father who died. He has never had a hat of his own, and his head is smaller than his father’s and the hat rests on his ears. But what can I do?”

“Ah, what indeed,” the Queen replied with sympathy.

In the long night that followed inevitably upon the day, she thought about the King for the first time as her husband. Would she be happy to tend him day and night? No, she would not. Nor would he wish her to tend him. He sent for her and she went when he commanded. That is, she went sometimes, but there were also times when she excused herself because the time was not her time. Then he could be angry, and insist that her woman bring him proof. If there were no proof she sent a cloth dipped in the blood of a fowl. Yet, though she did not love him, she did not hate him, and indifferently she went to him. She was a warm woman, and lucky that she was, for the King was ardent, and without love the two of them could mate well enough. But she was slow to be pregnant, especially since now she knew that her son, the heir, would always have the mind of a child. Had she loved the father she might have cherished the child nevertheless. As it was, she sent the boy to a distant part of the palace where servants cared for him. She saw him sometimes playing in some garden, and she spoke to him kindly enough but she left him soon and knew that in truth she was childless and alone.

She lay on her poor bed now in this poor house, and she would not weep. She admonished herself: Remember your vow; you promised your own heart that you would not weep any more, for any cause.

The long night ended and it was the last to be so long. For on the next day, rumor crept through the nation even to the village and then to the poet. The Chinese Empress had sent an army to rescue the Queen. The poet closed the wall doors and put out the lamp on the table. In the darkness he whispered the powerful news to her listening ear.

“The Imperial Chinese armies have marched into the capital! Forty-five hundred men armed not only with good swords, but with foreign weapons! They have overwhelmed the palace guards. They have seized the Regent himself and he is to be taken to China and held there in prison. Only the King is left.”

She heard this in the early morning. The poet’s wife had wakened her and led her into the other room where the poet stood waiting. She could not suppress her trembling. “How true can this be?” she inquired.

“True enough,” he said, “so that I advise your being ready to return.”

Six days the Queen waited and five restless nights. On the seventh day the poet’s wife came silently into the room where she sat embroidering.

“Majesty,” she said, “the royal palanquin is at the door.”

And so saying she knelt and put her forehead down on her folded hands.

The Queen lifted her up then and let herself be dressed and led to the door. The time was evening, at twilight, a lucky time, for the villagers were busy with their meal, and the bearers, with their guard, had come by side roads and along the paths that pass between the fields. Moreover, a light snow fell, and this served to keep people in their houses, the doors closed. Nevertheless, when the Queen appeared the chief guardsman, after obeisance, urged her.

“Majesty, I am commanded to beg you to make haste. We travel by night, and there are enemies among the mountains, in the valleys and behind rocks.”

The Queen acknowledged this by a slight nod. She turned to the poet and his wife and then she stood for a long moment, in pure pleasure. Yes, it was her own palanquin, her private conveyance, a gift from the King at her marriage. It was made of fine wood and the panels were lacquered in gold. Into each panel was a jeweled center of many colored stones and the windows were of Chinese glass, hand-painted. At her desire the King had ordered that at each corner there should be a Confucian cross of gold, “So that,” she had told him, “I shall be safe wherever I travel in the four corners of the world.”

So indeed she had been saved and now she made a sign that the front curtain of the palanquin was to be lifted so that she could enter. And she did enter, and she sat herself down on the thick cushions covered with gold brocade and she smelled the fragrance of the rose jar which was her favorite scent wherever she was. To her it was the atmosphere of home and she breathed it in deeply. Then the curtain was lowered and she felt herself lifted from the earth and carried away into the night

It was night, too, when, days later, she reached the capital. The streets were empty except for the blind. By law only the blind were allowed to walk abroad at night and now they walked in silence, tapping their sticks in front of them upon the cobblestones. Suddenly her mood changed. She felt alone again and cold. She was returning to the palace, but could it be the same? And what of her servingwoman, who had exchanged garments with her, hiding her Queen in her cotton skirt and jacket and taking on herself the royal robes which meant her death? She had been killed, without doubt, and her gentle ghost would haunt the palace forever.

“Has the Queen returned safely?”

It was Sunia’s first question in the morning.

“She has returned,” Il-han replied.

Sunia was superintending the arrival of the first plum blossoms sent in from the forcing house in the country. The blossoms were white and all but scentless, except for a delicate freshness. Before she put her question she had sent the two men servants away.

“You did not want to tell me?” she inquired, busying herself with the arrangement of a branch. Plum trees in the winter, in spring the cherry blossoms, in summer the hanging clusters of the purple wisteria, in autumn the golden poplars, these were the seasons named in flowers and trees.

“You were sleeping like a child,” he replied. “And you know how I dislike waking even a child. Who knows where the soul wanders in sleep? I once saw a man wake demented because soul had left the body and could not find its way back quickly enough to the body.”

She laughed. “And you tease me because I believe in the household spirits!”

The two children entered at this moment, running away from nurse and tutor. The nurse came panting after the younger boy. She caught hold of his jacket and held him fast while Il-han watched.

“It is time this younger one had a tutor of his own,” he observed.

“Not until after the next summer, I beg you,” Sunia said.

The elder son came to her side and leaned against her. He was taller by a head than he had been only a few months ago, but his willful face had not changed. The lively black eyes were still bold. Seeing that his elder brother was with the mother, the younger one approached his father while the nurse stood aside, in silence.

Il-han took the child in his arms. This was a slender child, gentle as a girl, obedient, smiling as he smoothed his father’s cheek with his small warm hand.

“Are you going away again?” he asked.

“Only to the palace,” Il-han replied.

“Why do you go to the palace?”

“Because the Queen has come back.”

The elder ran to him as he spoke. “Shall you wear your court dress, Father?”

“Yes. That is why I came to find your mother. I wish her to help me.”

“I will help you,” the child said. “I and my mother.”

And soon they were busy with his court dress, difficult to wear, and Sunia advised while a man servant and two women fetched the garments and put them on Il-han, standing like an image except that he groaned with impatience. Over his undergarments of white silk they put on him the long blue satin tunic which hung to his ankles and was tied on the right breast by a silk band. The neckband was oval and under it was fastened a collar of white cotton. A belt, rectangular in shape and protruding in front and back, was secured by a strong cord of silk. Below his chest was fastened a plastron finely woven, and made of satin embroidered in solid gold thread. Upon the gold were two cranes in flight, embroidered in silver thread. These two cranes were the symbol of his high rank, for lesser nobles were allowed but one crane. Upon his feet were white cotton socks and black velvet short boots. Upon his head, after his long hair had been combed and freshly coiled, he placed his high black hat shaped like a cone with visor both front and back. At the sides were two winglike ears, symbol of his readiness to hear quickly the royal commands.

When he was dressed and ready to leave for audience, his two sons were awestruck. They stood before him like two young acolytes before a Buddha.

Sunia laughed. “Is he your father or not?” she inquired of her sons.

“He is my father,” the elder one said proudly, but the younger one wept and hid his face in his nurse’s skirts. Meanwhile the tutor had entered in search of his pupil, and Il-han dismissed them all, except Sunia.

“Leave me,” he said to them. “I must clear my mind and prepare my spirit.”

When they had gone, he took Sunia by the hand and led her to the tallest plum tree, now in snowy bloom.

“Sunia,” he said. “Have I your permission to attend the Queen?”

She looked at him amazed. “Are you teasing me?”

“No, I am asking you,” he said.

“And if I refuse? You would go anyway.”

“I would not.”

She gave her sudden ripple of laughter. “There is no man in the whole of Korea like you,” she declared.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, amazed in his turn.

“Because it is true,” she replied, “and now go tell the Queen I command you to attend her. I push you out of the house, so—”

And pretending to push him, she sent him off while she laughed. She laughed, but something stung in her heart, for still she knew the Queen had a power over him that she could not comprehend.

As for Il-han, he went his way in his own palanquin, pondering upon the two women he knew best, his wife and his Queen. In his youth he had known a few women of pleasure, “the accomplished persons,” as they were called, trained to sing and dance and converse with men. They were not indeed women so much as persons, something between man and woman, and apart from both. Yet besides them he had scarcely so much as seen any other woman before he was given Sunia for his wife. Ladies of birth and wealth rode hidden in covered palanquins, and as for the bareheaded women in street and field, no man looked at them unless he wished to be attacked. These common women had a fierce pride in their womanhood and their men stood by them. Only a boy or a man insane would have dared to approach them.

He sighed at such thoughts and wished that he were to enter the palace of the King rather than the Queen. But to the Queen he was committed and these royal two were as far apart as the Empress of China from the Emperor of Japan.

… He perceived as soon as he had entered into the Queen’s presence that she was changed. She had grown thinner, and even the fullness of her brocaded skirt and the short loose jacket did not conceal the slenderness of her body. Her face was less round and girlish than it had been and he was awed anew by her beauty, by the gentle sadness in her eyes which he had always seen lively, and by the pallor of her fair skin. She was quiet when he entered, somewhat distant as she sat upon her thronelike cushion while he stood. For the first time she did not bid him kneel or seat himself. She let him stand, keeping him at a distance for her own reasons.

He made his obeisances nevertheless and gave his greetings and he waited for her to direct what he should say and thus she began:

“Everything here in the palace is the same. And everything is different.”

“May I inquire if your Majesty has conferred with the King?” he asked.

“We have not met,” she replied, “but I have been told that he will send for me today. Therefore I wished first for you to come before me so that I might learn what is the state of the nation as you see it. I know that you will speak the truth. Alas, I can say this of no other living soul. And I know, too, that I can no longer trust even myself. I am not wise enough. Who could have dreamed that I would be forced to flee from my own palace? I have been in a far country far away — very far — very far …”

She looked about the royal room as though she saw it for the first time.

“Majesty,” he said, “I cannot wholly regret that you have seen how your people live, in grass-roofed huts, with meager food.”

“And yet more happy than I am here,” she put in. “The poet’s wife — how fortunate she is to have no greater burden than the day’s work in her small house and all for one man whom she loves!”

“She is fortunate that her life is suited to her nature,” Il-han replied. “And you know very well, Majesty, that you could never live in a small house. You are truebone, and the palace is your home, your people are your responsibility. This is suited to your nature.”

She sighed and smiled and sighed again. “You will not allow me to envy anyone or even to pity myself. Proceed! Enlighten me! What must I know?”

Still she did not invite him to be seated and he stood, his head bowed so that he saw only the hem of her full skirt, beneath which peeped the upturned toes of her gold satin slippers.

“The Regent,” he said, “is now imprisoned in a house in a city not too near Peking. He is comfortable, but he is guarded and he cannot escape. I am in communication with that great Chinese statesman—”

“Li Hung-chang?” she cried with some anger. “Among all Chinese he is one I do not trust!”

Il-han replied firmly, “He is only wise enough to see that, while China will not lose her independence, we may lose ours, for she cannot protect us. For this reason, upon his advice, we must accept the newest western country as our ally. The treaty with the United States, which we have let pause, must now be ratified so that the Americans may send a representative here to the court—”

“You tell me this—”

“I tell you because I must. We must have a friend to take China’s place, for if we have not, Japan will encroach and possess us.”

“Japan never! Remember that we drove back Hideyoshi three hundred years ago!”

“Will you never forget Hideyoshi? The Japanese are stronger than we are now.”

“They were stronger then than we were but our Admiral Yi used his cunning brain and his iron turtle ships—”

“When will you forget those turtle ships? The Japanese have new iron ships and western weapons and they have not made a hermit nation of Japan as we have of our country. They have visited western countries and learned from them. And they are preparing to fight China — I so prophesy!”

“I cannot believe that a handful of islands could dream such folly against a vast continent—”

He interrupted her. “Majesty, I am no Christian, but the Christians have a quaint story about a giant whom no one dared to kill until a shepherd lad with a sling let fly a pebble with such good aim that the stone sank into the giant’s forehead and ended him. Today it is not size that means strength — it is the youth with the pebble. Some day, Majesty, the new nations will devise a weapon no bigger than a child’s playing ball, and that weapon will destroy a continent.”

“Do not tell me about Christians,” she retorted. “They are wanderers and troublemakers wherever they are. We should always put them to death.”

“There are too many of them now, it is true,” he agreed. “They swarm everywhere, and they carry the pebbles of revolution. But we can no longer kill them, Majesty. We must accept them, not because of their religion, but because they come from the West and they bring western learning to us. Let them come, Christian though they are. We must learn everything of them except religion. We cannot go to their country, therefore we must let them come here, for our own sakes.”

“If they come,” she declared, “I will not receive them. And I will see to it that the King does not receive them. They must live as exiles.”

He gave her a long look, and she returned it. Then she rose. “I am more weary than I thought,” she said. “You are dismissed.”

And so saying, she clapped her hands and her ladies came out from the next room and led her away.

He stood there irresolute. He had made her angry and he was chilled to think so. But he had done his duty. There remained now the King. What of the King? Should he ask for audience? Was it possible that his father had already been in audience? He thought quickly, and decided that he would go to his father and see how far apart they were, father and son, before he asked audience with the King.

When he arrived at his father’s house an hour later, unexpected, he was frightened to discover that his elder was ill. He was announced at the gate and his father’s chief servant himself drew back the bar and bowed before him.

“Sir,” he said, “we have been looking for you. Your father was preparing to go to the King this morning, at command, but when he had taken food, he suddenly fell unconscious and we have not been able to rouse him. The doctor is here—”

Il-han brushed the man aside strongly and strode through the gate and to his father’s bedroom. Everything fled from his mind except the fear of what he might see. His father was old, and yet somehow he had never thought of death, so strong was his father’s spirit, a brave stubborn spirit, difficult and yet one to be loved.

He entered the room and saw about the bed the servants weeping, and the doctor kneeling beside his father and feeling for the thirty-seven ways of the pulse. Il-han did not interrupt him. He stood waiting until the doctor rose and bowed.

“Sir,” the doctor said, “your illustrious father is suffering from the fatigues of old age and drying of the blood. He needs a healing stimulant. I prescribe a brew of sanghwatung. Do not scorn it because it is cheap. There is no better restorative for chill and fatigue. Your father rose before dawn to prepare for the royal audience. It is no wonder that at his age he became unconscious.”

Since all had long known the value of this brew, Il-han accepted the doctor’s decision, and he sent word to Sunia that he would remain with his father until the elder became conscious again, his soul returned safely into his body. As the day wore on, however, the old man did not waken. Instead his left side became rigid in paralysis and he breathed in great gasping sighs. Even though he was moved into another room for benefit of change, he did not waken or improve. Il-han became more alarmed with every hour, and at last he decided upon the extreme measure. He summoned his servant who was waiting outside in the gatehouse.

“It appears to me,” he told the man, “that my father is growing worse and not better. He is not able to swallow and therefore he cannot drink even the sanghwatung. You are to go now to the western doctor, that American who lives by the east gate. Invite him to come and give his opinion.”

The servant was horror-struck. “Surely, master, you dare not—”

“I dare anything if it may save my father’s life. Go, and do not reply to me,” Il-han commanded.

The man bowed and went away, and in less than an hour by the water clock the foreign doctor entered the room. He was tall and he wore black coat and trousers, and on his face he grew a thick sandy beard. He was indeed a fearful sight, for above the unnatural color of the beard he had strange blue eyes, and short hair. His eyebrows were bushy, and in the candlelight thick hair glinted even on his hands. For an instant Il-han regretted what he had done. How could he trust a man whose appearance was so savage as this? The very odor of the man was wild, a strong meaty reek, like a wolf’s musk.

The man himself was calm. He bowed a short awkward bow to Il-han and then he sat down beside his patient.

“What happened to this old man?” he asked.

He put the inquiry to Il-han in simple Korean such as ignorant people use, but Il-han was surprised that he could speak in any language that could be understood.

He turned to his servant.

“Explain to this foreigner,” he commanded him.

While the man obeyed, Il-han observed the man closely. Though he knew there were these persons in the city, he had never seen one close. This, then, was an American! It was to such a breed that he and his countrymen must look for friendship! What had they in common? Could there be friendship between a tiger and a deer?

When the servant had finished, the man rose to his feet and addressed Il-han. “Your father is suffering from a blood clot in the brain.”

Il-han was so surprised that he forgot himself and spoke directly to the man instead of through the servant, “How can you say this when you cannot see into my father’s skull?”

“I know the illness,” the man replied. “The symptoms are clear. I will leave you some medicine, but I must tell you that it is likely your father will die before the night is over. He is very near to death now.”

Il-han was horrified at such speech. To mention death, to say that it must come, was almost to bring it down by force.

He turned to the servant in cold anger. “Remove this foreigner. Pay him his money and take him outside the gate and draw the iron bar.”

“I ask no money,” the foreigner said proudly, and lifting the small black bag he had brought with him, he took out a small bottle, set it on the low table and strode from the room with such great steps that the servant was compelled to run even to follow him. As for the bottle, Il-han threw it out the window into the pool in the garden.

In the night, two hours before dawn, his father died without waking. The hour of death was exactly known, for upon his father’s mouth Il-han had placed a wisp of soft cotton. Kneeling beside the floor bed he watched the slight stirring of the cotton. Suddenly it stopped, and he spoke to his servant, who marked down on a ready sheet of paper the hour by the water clock.

Il-han rose to his feet and covered his father’s body with a silken quilt. Then he beckoned the servant to his side.

“Instruct my father’s household,” he commanded. “According to custom, there must be no wailing for an hour, so that my father’s spirit be not disturbed in its flight. Meanwhile you are to return to my own house and fetch my sons and their mother and such other persons as are needed to care for them. We will remain here until my father’s burial.”

“Sir,” the servant replied, “before I obey, may I ask for the honor of inviting the illustrious soul to return? I have ready the inner coat of cotton cloth which was prepared for this moment when your father reached his sixtieth birthday.”

Il-han considered this request. It was proper for a member of the household or a distant relative, who had never seen the dead, to perform this rite, and he might have refused his servant except that the man grew up in this house and had cared for Il-han himself as a child and had served him through his youth, leaving only when Il-han himself left to set up his own household after marriage.

“You may do so,” he said.

The man then climbed to the roof of the house and standing exactly over the place where his old master lay dead, he prepared himself for the solemn rite.

The hour was dawn, and rays of the rising sun crept through the mountains in long bright shafts. The wind blew fresh and cooled by the night. It was indeed a beautiful day upon which to die. So thinking, the man lifted up the coat, and holding the collar in his left hand and the hem in his right, he faced the south and waved the coat three times. The first time he announced in a loud voice the full name of the dead nobleman. The second time he announced the nobleman’s highest rank. The third time he announced his death. After this he cried out again, and this time to invite the departed soul to return. When all was done he came down from the roof and placed the coat over the body of the dead, and wailed in a loud voice again and again. Then with the help of others, he lifted the body upon a special bed which faced the south, and he placed around it a paper screen.

After such announcement and invitation, the household prepared for the ceremonies due the dead. Il-han’s father had lived alone after his mother’s death many years before. In spite of loneliness he had not taken another wife, not even a young woman. His servants had cared for him, men and women, and now they set about their sorrowful work. The women put away all jewelry, and men and women let down their long hair. In the kitchen the cook boiled rice into pots of thin soup, for no rice could be cooked dry during the days of mourning. In the death chamber, the dead man’s body was washed with soft white paper and warm perfumed water. His hair was combed and tied loosely, not in its usual coil. The combings from the hair were brushed into the hair, and all that had been separated from the body during the long lifetime and had been saved was now restored, the nail parings, the hair droppings, and four teeth which had been extracted when they caused pain. These were put into two pouches and placed right and left beside the body so that in the next life the person could be whole as when he was born.

The mouth was opened with a spoon of willow wood and into it was placed a pearl, which was held fast by three spoonfuls of gluten rice. This pearl was the death pearl, grown only in the giant clams which are found in the Naktong River, a rare pearl, pure but without luster, found in but one out of ten thousand clams and without fault, for it grows of itself within the shell. Indeed, so rare is this pearl that it is removed before burial and handed down from generation to generation. The pearl in his father’s mouth had belonged to a Kim five generations before and some day it would also be placed in Il-han’s own mouth, and after him in the mouth of his eldest son. When the ritual was finished, Il-han left the room, and the servant finished his duty by putting balls of cotton into the dead man’s ears and covering his tranquil face with a cloth of handspun linen.

Now the household busied itself. New garments must be made for the dead, and a new mattress for his coffin, new blanket and new pillow. The men who serve the dead must be summoned and also the geomancer, whose duty it was to decide upon the place of burial, a place suited to the winds and the waters. The coffin too had to be built, and of pinewood, for the pine tree is evergreen and is a symbol of manhood. It does not wither or cast its leaves until it dies. Serpents and turtles and lizards and all such reptiles will never nest near a pine tree. Nor does the pine tree rot at the core to remain an empty shell. It dies whole, and quickly, and begins another life, and this, too, is good. The old life should not cling to the new and hamper the growth beyond. What is finished is ended and if dust is the end, then may the end come entire when it comes. The parts of this coffin were put together with wooden pegs for nails, and the cracks were filled with honey and resin, the walls and bottom lined with white cloth, and upon this bottom a mattress was laid. Inside the lid the word Heaven was brushed, and at the four corners the word Sea.

Into this final home Il-han, in his position as master of mourning, now helped his father to lie and the coffin was lifted into the place of honor on a raised platform. By this hour neighbors and friends and relatives knew of the death and they came to mourn. With each guest Il-han made the wail of mourning the suitable number of times, and then the guests were served with wine and food. The next day at sunrise Il-han, still as master of mourning, lit the early incense and again wailed in mourning, and food was brought for the dead as though he were living. So it was again in the evening until all ceremonies were performed according to ritual.

Then Il-han sat alone in the room where as a child he had studied his Confucian books with his old tutor, and while he waited for Sunia, he was aware of a new loneliness. His mother’s death remained in him still as a wound too deep, for he was her only child. But she had long been ill and feeble. His father was his family in those days, and his closest friend, and there had been no estrangement between them, for the elder man had declined political posts and had retired more and more deeply into his books as the years passed. To Il-han he had often said that he could not share the strife and dissensions everywhere, the struggles for power between this man and that, the treacheries of court life, the enmities between surrounding nations. He was content to keep his own spirit pure, and he believed that he could do nothing for his fellow patriots that served them better than to remain untouched by deceit and private profit. Yet he did not judge these faults in others, nor did he change the traditions. He did not, for example, consider sharing the Kim lands with the peasants who tilled it. When Il-han, in his impetuous youth, declared that his father should rectify those sins of the past whereby the Kim clan had, like other yangban clans, seized great portions of the nation’s land, his father had merely replied that each generation must take care of its own sins, and he believed that he himself had committed no sins.

It was past noon of the next day when Sunia arrived with her retinue of children and servants. Il-han met her at the entrance and he saw her face was pale, but she allowed herself no outbreak of weeping. Instead she directed the children to embrace their father, and he lifted them into his arms, first the elder and then the younger. Their eyes were large and frightened and he comforted them, saying that he was glad they had come and that their grandfather could not speak to them now, but they might run into the garden and play with the little monkey chained there to a tree, and he could come to them later. Then he returned to his room and Sunia followed.

“Sunia,” he said, as soon as they were alone. “You must wait upon the Queen, announcing my father’s death. Tell her I will wait upon her myself as soon as the rites are fulfilled.”

She was looking at him with tender and sorrowful eyes, but at these words her tenderness changed.

“Even now you think of her first,” she said.

“Because it is my duty,” he told her.

“Go to her yourself, then,” she said.

With these words she turned away from him and walked to the end of the room which opened upon a small private garden. There in a pool no larger than a big bowl a few goldfish swam in the clear water, and the sun glinted on their ruffled fins.

Il-han was suddenly seized with rage for all women. Queen and commoner alike, they thought first of themselves and of whether they were loved by men. His reason told him that he was unjust, for surely women must think of love, else how can children be born? It is children they desire and for this they seek men’s love above all else. Yet Sunia had no cause to complain of him for lack of love or of children. So his angry heart exclaimed, and then his reason reminded him that he had been many months away from home, and since his return his mind had been much troubled, and Sunia was quick to discern that his whole self was not with her. Yet, because he feared to rouse her jealousy — still inexplicable to him, for how can a woman be jealous of a queen — he had not explained to her the weight upon him, now that he had seen his country whole and the people clinging to its earth and scratching its surface for their food.

He turned his back on her, too, and thus they stood for minutes until his heart took hold again — yes, and his reason. Let these two meet, his wife and his Queen, this time in the palace, and let each take the measure of the other. Surely Sunia would come home to him again and know the depths of her folly. And he was stronger than Sunia, and as man should be stronger than woman he should make peace first.

With such feelings and reasonings, he went to her now and put his hands on her shoulders and turned her about to face him. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered as she looked up at him.

“Do what I ask of you,” he said. “Go and see for yourself. She is your Queen as well as mine.”

His gentleness melted her as it always did, and he went on.

“I left her presence in anger, Sunia, such anger that I was about to ask for immediate audience with the King. Then I thought I should come to my father first, since it was he who had access to the King. When I came here, I found him — as you know. I cannot return to the Queen now, with my mind divided and my heart in sorrow. Do this for me, my wife.”

She put up both her hands then and stroked his cheeks with her palms and he knew she would obey. When she went to prepare herself, he ordered his servant to precede Sunia and ask for audience with the Queen, declaring the emergency, and he ordered her palanquin to be made ready and to be hung with streamers of coarse white cotton, signifying a death in the family.

When she had gone, he escorting her to the gate and seeing her into her palanquin and the curtain lowered which hid her from public view, he returned to his father’s house and gathered together the head servants. When they were assembled, standing before him while he sat on the floor cushion behind the table, he gave his commands.

“I have decided for reasons of state that we must hasten the burial of my honored ancestor. He would not wish to imperil the nation because of his death and our national affairs are not yet settled, although the Queen has returned to us. Therefore the burial must not be later than the ninth day after his death, for as you well know, it must then be delayed for three months. In that time it is possible that we may have war. Therefore we must arrange the funeral for the seventh day.”

The servants looked at one another, stricken. They were elderly men, the four of them, long in the service of his father, and now that their master was dead they were afraid to disobey his son and heir. Yet they wished to do honor to their dead master and they wanted no undue haste.

“Young master,” the eldest said, “to show such haste as this is unworthy of your honored ancestor, our master. In common families, yes, seven days are enough to make a few worthless mourning garments. But in this house it would be unseemly. The longer the delay between death and burial, the higher the family. It is only yesterday that he — left us. Only today is the priest of the dead here, and at this very moment he is binding the sacred body with the seven ceremonial cords.”

Il-han interrupted him. “I trust this priest knows his business.”

“He does, young master,” the servant replied. “I stood by him while he bound the cords about the shoulders, elbows, wrists and thumbs, hips, knees, calves and ankles, all in proper order. True, I had to remind him of the evil spirits that enter even into such a house as this when the master dies. Under my own eyes then he looped the cord at the waist in the shape of the character sim, which—”

“I know, I know,” Il-han said impatiently.

The servant, because of his age, continued inexorably slowly. He remembered Il-han as a lively mischievous small boy and an impetuous youth, and though his surface was courteous, his mind continued stubborn.

“As to the mourning, young master, consider what must be made. The cloth is to be bought and sewn into garments for the family, even to the eighth cousins removed, and after them for the household servants. I have written all this down—”

“Read it to me,” Il-han demanded.

The head steward beckoned to the next in rank, who took a scroll of paper from his bosom which he unrolled and read aloud in a deep loud voice.

“For the chief mourners, yourself, young master, and your two sons, undergarments of coarse cotton, leggings of coarse linen, shoes of straw. On the upper body, a long coat of the same coarse cotton, a girdle of hemp about the waist, a hat of bamboo, a headband of coarse linen, and a face screen of coarse linen, one foot long and half as wide, upheld by two bamboo sticks. I trust, young master, that your two sons are able to hold the screens before their faces, but if not—”

“Proceed,” Il-han said shortly. These old men were making a festival of his father’s funeral!

The man obeyed. “The ladies of the first generation will wear coarse linen and straw shoes. Their jeweled hairpins must be taken away and they will be given wooden pins. As for the next female relatives, their mourning will be the same. They need not wear hats of bamboo and shoes of straw or headbands and their waist cords may be white. Distant relatives need wear only the leggings and a hempen twisted cord. But all must wear white. No colors, of course — even on children.”

Il-han could endure no more. “In Buddha’s name,” he exclaimed, “how can all this be done?”

The four old men were wounded. They fixed their eyes on the wall behind his head and waited for the chief steward to reply.

“Master,” he said with dignity, “all will be ready on the fourth day after death, which is the day of putting on mourning.”

“Then let the burial be on the seventh day,” Il-han commanded and he clapped his hands together to signify they were dismissed.

Meanwhile, Sunia stood before the Queen. She had upon her arrival been ushered into the anteroom, and there she waited a long time, too long she felt with indignation, and she believed it was because the Queen was making an ado over her apparel and jewels and hairdress. If so, she could not blame the Queen, for when she appeared at the end of an hour or more, she was beautiful indeed. Sunia had more than once begged Il-han to tell her how the Queen looked in her royal robes, and Il-han had always refused.

“How do I know how she looks?” he had replied. “I try never to look higher than her knees, and if possible no higher than the hem of her skirt.”

“But you do look higher,” Sunia had insisted, teasing and serious at the same time.

“Not if I can help it,” he said sturdily.

“But sometimes you cannot help it?”

At this he had been angry or pretended to be.

“Whatever you are trying to make me say I will not say it,” he had declared.

Now Sunia saw the Queen in full splendor, and it was as if it were for the first time, so changed she was by her royal robes and in her palace. The Queen entered, leaning upon the arms of two women, though she needed to lean on no one. She was not taller than most women are but she held her head regally. Her features were perfect and in proportion, the nose straight, the cheekbones high, the mouth delicate and yet full, the chin round, the neck slender, her eyes large and black, their gaze direct and fearless. Her skin was white as cream, her cheeks were pink as a young girl’s, and her lips were red. She was too beautiful even for a Queen and yet Sunia was comforted, for it was a high, proud beauty, willful and passionate, of a sort that demanded a man’s service rather than won his heart. Relieved somewhat of her jealousy, she looked at the Queen with lively interest, and suddenly they were two women together.

The Queen smiled. “I used to imagine you before I saw you in your house, but I was always wrong.”

Sunia laughed. “What did you imagine, Majesty?”

“I thought you would be a small woman,” the Queen said, gazing at her. “Small and soft and childlike. Instead — we could be sisters!”

Oh, what a clever woman, Sunia said to herself, how clever to destroy the distance between us, how subtle a way to win my heart! And yet in spite of this self-caution, how successful the way was, for against her own judgment, which indeed was never to trust a queen, she found herself drawn to this woman. Could a queen be so without pretense as this, and yet who but a queen could be so fearlessly frank?

“Majesty,” she said, remembering. “I have come in obedience to my children’s father. He has sent me here to announce the death of his own father.”

The Queen waved her two women away and came close to Sunia. “Oh no,” she breathed. “I heard the rumor and I did not believe it, thinking he would come at once to tell me, somehow—”

“He has his duties as only son,” Sunia said. “And he asks forgiveness for sending me in his place.”

The Queen came down the two steps into the waiting room and sat down beside the sparrow table, a square table of the time of Koryo. It was covered with embroidered silk, whose corners were hung with streamers of silk.

“Sit here beside me,” she commanded Sunia. “Tell me everything.”

Sunia obeyed, except what was everything?

“Death came yesterday, suddenly,” she said. “Luckily he — my children’s father — had just entered his father’s house, and so he went at once to the bedside. Physicians were called, both our own and the western one.”

“Not American!” the Queen gasped. “I cannot believe that my faithful courtier would—”

“He wished to try everything, Majesty. And the foreigner, though he could not prevent it, foretold the death.”

“He would, he would,” the Queen exclaimed, and she pulled a silk kerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. “And how is he?” she inquired.

“He?” Sunia asked innocently.

“My courtier.”

“My children’s father is in mourning, but he knows his duty to you, Majesty.”

Sunia spoke with some coolness and made as if she would rise to end the audience, but the Queen took both her hands and pulled her down again.

“You shall not leave me yet,” she said. “Let us be friends. Let us be sisters. Do you know I am alone here in the palace? I have no friend except the Queen Mother, and she is old and lives only in ancient times. So do I, too, live alone, by my wish, but I am not allowed peace. I am told by him — your — your lord — that everything is changed and that I must be wary and alert from day to day, and even that I must receive a new ambassador from the West — an American. Does he tell you all these secrets?”

“No, Majesty,” Sunia said.

The Queen put her palms to her cheeks in distraction. “I wish he did,” she murmured. “I wish I had not to bear all these changes alone.”

Sunia took courage. “Does not the King …”

“Oh, say nothing of the King,” the Queen said impatiently, and let her hands fall. “When do we meet, he and I? If I am summoned you may be sure it is not for communication.”

She looked for a long moment at Sunia. “Do you know,” she said, “I lived for many days in the poor grass-roofed house of a poet. He and his wife, the two of them, lived there with me and they hid me. But I saw how they lived. They were friends, he and she. When I was in the small secret room where I was hid, I could hear them talking together and laughing. Such small things they talked about, as where the gray cat had hidden her kittens, or whether a certain wild bird had returned from beyond the southern seas, and whether the next day they could buy a bit of meat for dinner. And then he read her the poem he had written that day and she listened and said it was the most beautiful poem he had yet written. And at night they lay down to sleep together in the same bed—”

She turned her head away, she pressed Sunia’s hand between both hers. “And why I tell you all this, I do not know. It is very silly. Return to your children’s father. Tell him not to hasten himself. I will wait patiently until his filial duties are finished. Tell him I will make no move meanwhile.”

She rose, smiled at Sunia, released the hand she held. Then her two women came to her, and leaning upon their arms again she left the audience room.

“Well?” Il-han asked when Sunia returned.

He was in the garden with his two sons, although until a short while ago he had been in the room of the dead where his father lay. He had examined the handiwork of the priest and then he had seated himself alone for some time with his father. According to custom, when a meal was served to the household, food must also be brought here to the dead, and only when the head servant came in with the bowls on a tray had Il-han left his father to go in search of his sons. They were still in the garden with tutor and nurse, and they had made friends with the monkey, laughing over his antics and feeding him with peanuts the nurse shelled as fast as she could.

Il-han had only finished saying to the tutor that the time had come when the younger son should also be under his care, to which the tutor had replied that he felt the younger should be under the care of another than himself.

“This elder son,” he was saying, “is of such a nature, so brilliant and so strong, that he takes my whole strength. Your younger son, sir, is different, and I fear that I am not able to teach and nurture two such different—”

At this moment Sunia had come to the door of the house and Il-han left the tutor’s words hanging and went to her at once. They entered the house together and he drew the wall screens shut as he spoke.

“Well,” she replied, “I have seen the Queen.”

“But did you give her my message?”

“Of course I did,” she replied, “and she tells you not to make haste, but to fulfill your filial duties and she will wait patiently until your return.”

“Is that all?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. What should she say? It was not all. She could say that the Queen was even more beautiful than she had remembered, she could say that the Queen behaved to her as though they were sisters, she could say — she could say nothing.

“That is all,” she said. Now she paused to look at him between half-closed lids.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he demanded.

She smiled. “How am I looking?”

“As if you were not telling me something,” he said bluntly.

When she only went on smiling, he turned away from her impatiently. “It is impossible for women to stop pretending or imagining or something or other. You delight in puzzling me!”

And with that he strode out of the room.

On the day before his father’s burial he went to the site of the grave, since it was his duty to be present while the grave was marked and dug. The site was outside the city wall, for it was against the law for any to be buried inside the city wall of the capital. The day was warm with spring, indeed a day for life and not for death. He rode his horse ahead of his servant, who sat on a smaller horse behind him. The cherry trees were coming into blossom, their soft white and pink a mass of delicate color against the gray of the mountain rock. People were stirring from their houses, the children running about with bare arms slipped out of their padded winter garments. Old men sat in the sun smoking their pipes, and old women crouched close to the earth, searching for the early green weeds to cook with bits of flesh or fowl and to eat with the day’s rice.

The city’s most skilled geomancer had chosen the site for the grave and was waiting for him. Il-han rode across the valley and halfway up a low hill, and there in a sheltered cove open to the sun, he found the man already marking the grave. With him were the gravediggers. Il-han dismounted and after suitable greeting he examined every view and aspect and then gave permission for the grave to be dug. While this solemn work was in process, he stood looking out over the city, a great city, a vast huddle of the houses of the poor, the palaces of the royal family and the noble clans, these set in parks of pine and blossoming cherry. Here in the capital were the extremes of his country and his people. How long could such division continue, while outer peoples threatened? How could he compel his people to realize their folly? Only the closest union inside the country could fend off foreign attack. His troubled mind searched again for answers to the question, eternal and dangerous, and he reviewed the dangers. He heaved a sigh as deep as his soul and was glad that his father was dead. Yet of what use was death? His two sons were alive and must meet the future he dreaded, and how could he help them except by somehow preserving for them their country, whole and independent? “Sir,” the geomancer said. “Will you approve?” He turned and walked toward the grave and looked into it. The earth was scanty, and rocks had been heaved out of it to make the pit and piled until the grave was rimmed with such rocks. To one side were the two gravestones upon which were already carved the high qualities of his father as poet and patriot, one to be buried at the foot of the grave and the other to be set up for the eternal future.

“You have done well,” Il-han told the geomancer.

There remained now only to wait for the mourners who were to bring food offerings to the spirit of the mountain, who was now to receive the body of his father, and Il-han waited until he saw the procession coming on foot from among the rocks. The bowls of food were then set forth in proper arrangement and the rites were concluded. There remained but one more duty, and it was to declare to his dead father that the grave was ready for his body, which he did as soon as he returned to his father’s house. In the presence of his father’s dead body he made declaration.

On the morning of the seventh day, his servant reported to Il-han that the shelters had been built near the grave, the funeral bier was made, and this because the family was too high to use a rented bier, the banners were complete, and all was ready for the funeral. To this Il-han made no answer except to incline his head in acknowledgment. He had kept himself apart from his family during these days, and alone he had returned to the library of his father’s house, dressed every day in mourning and eating only a little coarse food, while he studied the Buddhist scriptures and the Confucian classics in order that his soul and mind might be purified. He had so continued thus throughout the days until the hour came for the funeral procession to assemble.

In the late afternoon of this seventh day all gathered together in readiness to proceed to the mountain. Twilight was near, the suitable time between day and night when his father’s spirit would not be disturbed. In his place as the son and master of mourning, Il-han viewed the procession as it formed. He was content with what had been done. The procession then set forth. At its head were the torchmen, who held great torches made of brushwood branches bound together. These were lighted and were dragged along the ground, firing as they went a trail of lively sparks. Now and again the men lifted the torches and whirled them in flames about their heads and then dropped them again to the earth. Next came the lantern bearers in two lines, carrying lanterns of ironwork covered with the best silk in red and blue colors, and after those came a banner bearer on foot, carrying in both hands a banner of silk on which was written the name of the illustrious dead and the many honors he had accumulated in his lifetime.

In the center of the procession was the shrine, carried by bearers, and in the shrine, which was made of the finest wood, carved in detail, was set the spirit tablet. On both sides and following the shrine were the women mourners, and after them other lantern bearers whose duty it was to illuminate the catafalque itself, borne by a host of bearers chanting a mournful tune to keep their feet in step. Since the dead had been a man of honor and wealth, a bell ringer walked in front, ringing his bell as he went, and around the catafalque on all sides were banner bearers carrying the banners sent by those who wished to honor the dead. Behind the catafalque Il-han rode in a sedan chair carried by bearers, and behind him in other chairs were Sunia and his sons and the lesser relatives and mourners.

Slowly the long procession went its way through the streets, the people stopping to stare and to follow, and thus they approached the Water Mouth Gate, which was the gate for the dead. The first darkness had fallen when at last they reached the mountain and there they stopped for the night in the shelters that had been raised for this purpose. They slept in rude beds, but Il-han could not sleep. He lay down and got up again, many times, and at last he walked outside in the cold night air. The moon shone so clear that the whole world seemed to lie before him, as still in sleep as the dead.

Though it is in the course of nature that a son live longer than his father, yet a deep and solemn mood fell upon him as he realized that from now on, until he himself lay dead, he was responsible to his generation for the conduct of affairs inside his house and beyond its walls to the nation and even beyond to the world. An age had ended with his father, an age when his nation had chosen to be hermit, seeking only to hide itself from the surrounding nations and so to live in peace. Yet there could be no peace now, when foreign ships were sailing toward them across foreign seas, and quarrel rising between a new and young Japan and an old and dying dynasty in China. And what of the giant toward the north? He turned himself to the north, and there above the sharp and pointed peak of the mountain, above that solid rock, he saw the northern star, at this moment as red as blood.

In the morning, Il-han roused the procession and they went on and upward to the site. All was ready there, and with due ceremony the coffin was placed upon transverse poles and covered with a wide length of white cloth, while the geomancer stood near, a compass in his hand to make sure the position was exact. Had there been more sons, these sons would have lowered the coffin, but since there was only Il-han, others helped him at the task. The empty grave, cleansed of all evil vapors and plaguing spirits, now received its owner, while incense burned and women faced the east and the mourners wailed their formal wails of sorrow. Now Il-han, with the help of the men, slowly filled the grave with earth. Deeply as he had felt his father’s death, this was the moment of most acute sorrow. The clods fell upon the coffin with sad dull thuds and he heard his sons scream in fear. Yet he did not turn his head nor speak to comfort them until the task was done.

Then he stood on the first terrace below the grave, and facing it in his clear strong voice he announced to the spirit of the mountain that the dead was now buried in its rock and soil. For a moment he stood, carving into his memory the scene he surveyed. His father’s grave lay on the warm southern slope of the mountain, on a leveled place, the dug earth raised about it in a bank so that the grave itself lay in the hollow of a crescent. Here at its foot the earth was terraced down to the slope of the mountain and here he stood, saying in his heart the long farewell to his father. There remained but one more task and it was to appoint a caretaker for the grave. For this he summoned the chief steward, who accepted the charge with a deep bow and folded hands.

Thus the day ended and with his family and his retinue Il-han returned to his own house.

When the days of this mourning were over, Il-han asked audience of the King and not the Queen. During the long quiet hours of isolation which respect for his father demanded, he had considered carefully his duty. Without the title or high office desired neither by his father nor himself, independent as they had always been in wealth and family, he could refuse the obligations of position, and yet he had the right to approach the rulers when he had advice to give. So long as his father lived, he had not presumed to approach the King and he maintained his access to the Queen. Now, however, he had by death come into his father’s place, and it was fitting that he should first approach the King.

He made known his wish by courier, and the King set an appointed time for private audience. It was at dawn on the seventh day of the seventh month of that moon year. The season was summer. At the set hour Il-han entered his palanquin and was borne to the palace, his servant riding on horse before him to announce his arrival at the gates.

King Kojong, the twenty-sixth monarch of the dynasty of Yi, was still in the prime of his manhood. His mother, Queen Cho, and his father, the Regent, Tae-wen-gun, were early separated in spirit and mind and fact, and he had grown up in the vacuum which existed between them. Each was strong, his father with a male aggressive will and his mother with a deep feminine immobility. He had been played upon by both and had therefore grown slowly to maturity. There were times when he still struggled against these conflicting influences, to which had been added a third, his marriage to a beautiful girl of the powerful house of Min.

His secret taste in women was for small soft yielding childlike females. Instead he was tied to a strong willful woman who seemed never to have been a child. Yet she fascinated him, that part of him which was still boy, the boy whom he tried so constantly to ignore, to destroy, to eliminate from himself, and who he yet feared was his essential being. There was no one to whom he could talk about himself. For while there were the conflicts in him, these secret influences dividing him and distracting him, he understood very well that he was at the mercy also of the conflicts outside him.

He was not an ignorant king. As a child he had been schooled in Confucianism and Buddhism, and in the history of his country. Of the West he knew little, for his father, the Regent, had but one purpose, which was to close the country and make it a hermit nation. Alas, he, the son and present King, knew that this was no longer possible. Incredible as it seemed, the persistent weapon of the West had been religion, a religion based, his father had taught him, upon superstition first proclaimed by a small local group of persons who called themselves Jews, who had killed a revolutionary among their own people, one named Jesus. The human race was always in turmoil from these revolutionaries, his father had maintained, and the Koreans had no need of importing foreign ones when they had plenty of their own. With this excuse, his father had approved the murder of all foreign priests who continued to penetrate into the country, in spite of doom. Now his father, the Regent, was imprisoned in China, and he, the King, could decide for himself what must be done. Certainly he must come to some understanding with his Queen, for she remained steadfastly loyal to China, refusing to realize that Japan was in the ascendency. They had quarreled over this matter only the night before. He had sent for her, an unusual circumstance, for they had long remained apart. Yet when she returned from her flight she had, he thought, changed for the better. She had come before him formally upon her arrival, and he found her gentler than she had been since their son was found to be of weak mind. She was still beautiful, and he thought he could detect in her manner some slight wish, or longing, or perhaps only the inclination of desire in a woman who knows her youth is nearly gone. Therefore he had invited her to dine with him alone last night, with the thought that if her charm held, they might renew something of the past and she might conceive a son while there was yet time. He had subdued her more than once in the years when their passion had been strong, and it amazed him that something of that past still lived.

The evening had nevertheless been spoiled. They had fallen into the old argument, and had parted early with formal bows and with mutual impatience, and after she was gone he had sent for a palace lady of pleasure.

Now, the morning after, he heard the announcement that the son of his old friend and recently dead adviser waited for audience, and was ready to step into his father’s place. He knew Kim Il-han to be an adviser to the Queen, and he did not hurry himself. Let the man wait! It was fully two hours before he sent his chief chamberlain to the Hall of Waiting to say audience was granted. The delay would calm his subject’s possible arrogance, he told himself, and then, to mitigate or merely to confuse, he would himself be informal and friendly upon meeting.

At high noon he strode into the audience hall and seated himself upon the throne, which here was scarcely more than an ornate chair, set low to the floor so that he could draw up his feet in the Japanese fashion. Instead, he sat down and crossed his knees in the western fashion. He had never seen a white man, but he was told that they sat on seats and let their legs hang or crossed their knees and he knew that subjects observed every detail of a monarch’s behavior, anxious to catch any straw in any wind.

Il-han entered now and knelt before the King. He placed his hands together flat on the polished floor, thumb to thumb. Then he bent his head until his forehead touched his hands and waited.

“You may stand,” the King said pleasantly.

Il-han stood, his eyes on the floor, and again he waited.

“You may speak,” the King said in the same kind voice.

Without raising his eyes, Il-han then spoke. “Majesty, I come as the son of my father, now deceased. I come, as he did, only as a private citizen, but as one responsible, with others, for the people, and therefore ready for service.”

The King listened and then directed by a gesture of the hand that Il-han was to seat himself on the floor cushion before the throne.

“Let us forget ceremony,” the King said when the ceremonies were finished. “I trust you because you are your father’s son. He was a wise man. He told me once that the three nations who surround us are like the balls a juggler must keep in the air and in motion, and we must be the juggler. Do you agree?”

“Majesty, I would even add more such balls,” Il-han replied. “The western nations are eying us across the four seas. How many balls there will be for us to juggle, I cannot tell. But there will be more than three, and some may have to be cast aside.”

The King uncrossed his legs impatiently and crossed them again. He did not wear his garments of state today, but about his neck was a heavy chain of jade pieces strung on gold. At the end was a jade circle, carved with the emblem of cranes under a pine tree, and with this emblem his right hand was now busy. He had a full underlip, a sign of his passionate nature, and he pinched it now between thumb and finger, in deep thought.

“Will you accept office?” he asked at last. “Will you be, let us say, prime minister? Chancellor? What you will—”

Il-han raised his eyes to meet the royal gaze and was startled by the boldness he saw. The King’s eyes were narrow, the corners sharp and the pupils very black under wide short black brows. They were not the eyes of a poet or a thinker but of a man accustomed to act. His hand, fingering the full lower lip, was dark and strong.

“Majesty,” Il-han said, while he let his eyes fall again to the embroidered cranes and the pine tree on the King’s breast, “forgive me if I decline office. I wait for your command, day and night. I am your subject. But if I am more, I shall not be free to speak, to move, to report, to observe, to ask for audience, to be of use to you, I hope, as your own hand is useful, obedient to your brain and heart.”

The King laughed. “What you mean is that you prefer not to owe me anything! Well, that is rare enough.”

He clapped his hands and servants entered.

“Bring us food and drink,” he commanded.

While the servants obeyed, he went on, “Now, let us discuss the position of this jewel you call our country. I do not deceive myself as to why Li Hung-chang wishes us to receive an envoy from the United States. It is his weapon against Japan, who threatens war. In such a war we would be their point of departure for China. Tell me, what is the United States?”

He put the question suddenly to Il-han, who was embarrassed because he did not know the answer.

“Majesty, I shall have to inquire. I recollect that the sailors shipwrecked on our shores some fifteen years ago were Americans and I have heard that they were very savage. They molested our women, and our people, outraged, put them to death.”

“Not immediately,” the King reminded him. “The sailors were at first only arrested. Then others came out from ships to rescue them, and these men seized their shipmates from us, and with them certain of our men, as hostages. It was only then that our outraged people attacked the ship, killed eight of the Americans, and captured the others and burned the ship — all of this deserved, I was told.”

Here the King paused and thought awhile and Il-han was amazed to hear such detail.

“Perhaps the truth does not matter now,” the King said at last, “but I may as well tell it to you. It was my father who commanded that the ship be attacked. He feared that it brought more Catholic priests to avenge the death of those whom he had ordered beheaded in earlier years. My father believes, has always believed, that western religions disturb the peace wherever they go. This he has observed from such foreign persons in China and in Japan and while he ruled he forbade all foreign priests to set foot on our shores, and if they did so secretly he had them killed. Alas, some of our own people have been beguiled by them, and have themselves become Christian. I will not speak of this.”

Here he paused, and Il-han knew the King was reminded of that Kim ancestor of Il-han’s who had been killed because he was Catholic.

“I have followed my father,” the King continued. “While I was very young I refused to see the American, surnamed Low, who arrived in our port with a fleet of ships. But today I do not know …”

The servants brought the food now and set it on the table and stood by to serve. But the King sent them away again.

“They stand there like images,” he complained to Il-han when they were gone, “but they are not images. Their eyes see, their ears hear, and their tongues carry tales. Proceed!”

“Majesty, I am honored that you tell me your thoughts. I am your subject and I ought only to listen and not to speak.”

“Speak,” the King commanded. “I am surrounded by men who will not speak. Sometimes I think everyone in the palace has cut out his tongue except the Queen. She has no fears! I daresay if Buddha himself were reincarnated here she would tell him how to behave and what to think.”

The King spoke willfully, aware that this was no fit talk between himself and a subject and he enjoyed it the more for that reason.

Il-han made a small smile and did not reply. Instead he went on thus:

“Majesty, your father, the Regent, has done what he believed right in his time. For example, he resisted the Japanese as stoutly as he did all others. I must even say that he seemed at times to devise insults for them, hoping they would leave our shores. They did not leave. I beg you, Majesty, not to follow your father. I beg you to think for yourself, to decide for yourself what must be done to preserve our nation and our people. Of all the western peoples, the Americans seem the least vicious. They are young, they have no experience, and they know what it is to fight for independence for themselves. I have heard that over a hundred years ago they fought the country that ruled them, and won.”

“What are you saying?” the King demanded.

“I am saying that we must accept the Americans, as Li Hung-chang advises,” Il-han replied.

The King clenched his fists and pounded the table so that the dishes jumped. “By a treaty which takes still more from us!” he shouted.

“By a treaty,” Il-han agreed.

The two men looked straight into each other’s eyes. It was the King who yielded. He got to his feet. “I can eat nothing,” he declared, and he turned his back on Il-han and strode from the room.

How then could Il-han eat? He also rose, and putting on his outer garment, he went away. The servants saw him go and came into the empty room. The dishes of delicacies had not even been uncovered, and the servants took them to the kitchens and there with great relish and high laughter they ate the meats prepared for the King.

In the night, when Il-han returned from the long conference with the King, he told Sunia that he had been offered a high post in government and that he had declined. He did not regret his refusal, yet he wondered if she, perhaps, being more simple than he by nature, or so he imagined, might secretly envy other women whose husbands were publicly known. He had a certain fame as a scholar, a thinker, one who did not fear to do what he liked or refuse to do what he disliked, but was this enough? When she replied, he perceived that he had been wrong, and again he marveled, as he had often before, how it is that a man can live with a woman and have sons by her and still know very little of what she is. For Sunia spoke at once when he finished what he had to tell.

“You did very well to refuse a post,” she said.

It was night and they lay on the floor mattresses. A candle burned on the low table at his side. The house was silent and beyond the drawn screens the night was dark. He had talked for a long time, and she had listened.

“Why do you say so?” he asked now.

“For one reason,” she said. “You always forget small things. You are a great man, but only in great things. You speak to kings and queens as though you were their brother, but you do not know one servant in this house from another, except your own man. And I wonder sometimes if you would even know your sons, if you saw them in a crowd of children. Now you will have time to know your sons — and me, too, I daresay!”

She broke off to laugh, and she had ready laughter, but he was surprised at what she had said.

“You describe a very foolish fellow,” he complained, “and I think I am better than that.”

She turned on her side then and leaned her head on her elbow and looked down into his rebellious face. “You are only foolish, I say, in small things. If you were clever in small ways you would be foolish in great ones and I am satisfied with what you are. More than that, I know very well that I am a fortunate woman, a lucky wife, a blessed mother.”

“Now, now,” he said, laughing in turn. “You blame yourself too much. A woman gets what she deserves.”

This banter went into sudden passion between them, he aroused by the sight of the lovely face so near, her eyes lustrous and dark in the candlelight. In this way he knew her very well, for when she was ready a peculiar fragrance came from her body. He had learned, but not easily, that while without this fragrance she could submit, it was without response, and then he was robbed of half his joy. While he was a bridegroom, a husband too young, he had not been able to restrain his passion, or suit its timing to hers, even though he cursed himself because, if he did not, they were further apart afterward. But with the fullness of manhood he learned, and he was rewarded. Better to have her whole, at her own time, than resisting when she was not.

Now her fragrance came sweet and strong, and he held her long and close. When they drew apart, they were closer than ever before, and they lay in peace and silence, she thinking while he fell asleep.

He woke after an hour or so and was thirsty and she poured a bowl of tea and then came out with what she had been thinking.

“While we are in mourning, you can do nothing outside, and you must promise me to learn the difference between our two sons. I feel each is different from the other, each not ordinary, but I have not the wit to know what the difference is. This is the first thing I have to say.”

He drank the tea and held his bowl for more.

“Then there is a second? And a third, doubtless! When a man has a little time to be idle, be sure his wife will fill it for him.”

She pretended to snatch the bowl away from him.

“Dare to think I am like other wives!”

“Fortunately you are not.” He was suddenly wide awake, relaxed, amused, and wondering whether, if he indulged her, her fragrance would flow again. She had changed her garments, he could see, and the odor was that of clean freshness.

“You are to stop thinking your own private thoughts,” she retorted. “You are to listen to me, if you please! Il-han, I say you should know some of these Americans before you advise the King again. You are in a high, responsible place. You advise rulers. Yet how do you know if Americans are good or evil? What if you lead the King into wrongdoing and our people suffer because you know too little of what you are talking about?”

This was the surprising woman. While he could have sworn she had no concern for anything beyond her household, she came forward with this simple wise conclusion. Unpleasant though it was to consider consorting with foreigners, what she had said was true. Chinese he knew, and Japanese, and a few Russians, but he knew almost no Americans.

All inclination for renewed lovemaking ebbed out of him.

“Go to sleep,” he told Sunia. “You have said enough to keep me awake the rest of the night and for many nights to come.” And he pinched out the flame of the candle between his thumb and forefinger.

In these days of mourning for the one dead, Il-han devoted himself to the living. Each morning he sat near while the tutor taught his elder son and he was pleased by the boy’s quickness where he was interested and then displeased because where he had no interest he idled. Nevertheless he did not interfere and as the days passed he saw that the tutor understood the child well, and when the child looked away from his books he did not reproach him. Instead he bade the boy run in the garden or he gave him a brush and colored inks and let him paint a picture.

“In a picture,” he told Il-han privately, “I discover the child’s hidden thoughts and feelings.”

“What does he paint?” Il-han asked.

The tutor was troubled. “He paints violence,” he said at last. “In this gentle and noble household your son paints a cat with a bird in its teeth, or a devil peering out from the bamboos, or a hawk with a mouse bleeding in its claws.”

Il-han heard this with surprise. “No one has ever treated this child harshly. Why should he have such thoughts?”

“I surmise that it comes from the times in which we live,” the tutor replied. “He hears of robbers in the city and of bandits in the mountains and he has asked me many times why the Queen was all but murdered, and he is aware of the quarrels among the noble clans. When he is in the country at your honored father’s house, as he has always wished to be in the summer, he makes friends with the sons of the farmers who till your lands, sir, and they are wild children. I try to keep him away from them, but he escapes me and I find him there in the village, his good clothes torn and dusty, and his face and hands as black as theirs. He is often rude to me then, and he uses coarse language that he has heard them use. Indeed, he has told me more than once that he wishes he were the son of a peasant, so that he could be free to run the streets and do what he likes.”

This was grave news, and Il-han was pricked by his conscience. While he had been concerned with the Queen and the King, his son had found companionship among the ignorant and the poor. That very day, when the morning’s lessons were over and the noon meal eaten, he took his elder son by the hand and led him toward the bamboo grove.

“Let us see whether the young shoots are ready to break through again,” he coaxed.

The season was too early, he feared, but no, when they came into the shadows of the grove, the bamboos so thick together that the sunlight fell through in drops of light, they saw the earth was loosened by the uprising shoots. Here and there a pointed sheath of palest green, feathered at the tips, showed above the earth.

“Do you remember,” Il-han asked his son, “how once you broke the shoots and killed the trees?”

“You said they were only reeds — not trees.” The boy spoke willfully, but Il-han could see that he did remember. Still holding the boy’s hand he explained what he had said before.

“You were too small to understand what I told you. Although they were only hollow reeds they were living, and they spring anew from old roots. I said that in our country the bamboo shoot is the symbol of the strong uprising spirit of a man. Perhaps the man is a great poet, or an artist, or perhaps he is a leader among the people, even a revolutionist. It is easy to crush these bamboo shoots. You could do it even when you were very small. It is easy to destroy but hard to create. Remember that, when you want to destroy something.”

The boy was struggling to pull away his hand, but Il-han would not let him go until he had finished what he wanted to say. Now he loosed him and the boy, as soon as he felt himself free, ran swiftly away. Il-han looked after the flying slender figure, and was deeply troubled. From then on he kept watch of this son, and when he saw him push his younger brother, or tear down what the younger son had built of stones or small blocks of wood, he took the elder firmly by the hands and held his hands behind his back and reminded him again and again. “It is easy to destroy, but it is hard to create. Do not destroy what your brother creates.”

Sunia observed this one day. “It is not enough merely not to destroy,” she said. “Why not help him to create something himself?”

Again she had said something to stir his mind, and Il-han thought of his ancestor Chong-ho, surnamed Kim, who was the first mapmaker. This ancestor, as a boy in the province of Kuang Hwang-hai, had been restless, too. He had wandered over mountains and beside rivers, and he began to wonder where the rivers had their sources, and how the mountains lay, and what the shape was of the winding coastlines, and how many islands were beyond.

Il-han told his elder son one day of the mapmaker. “This ancestor of ours asked everyone where he could find a map of our country which would tell him all these things. There was no such map. He promised himself then that he would be a mapmaker when he grew up, and he studied every map he could find, traveling here and there to see whether the maps were true. They were not true. Mountains and rivers were in confusion and the shorelines were straight where they should be curved into bays and coves, and the sources of the rivers were only imagined. When he was a man he came here to Seoul and asked the rulers to help him, but no one cared for maps or knew their usefulness. He was discouraged but he did not give up. He traveled everywhere again, measuring and drawing pictures and writing down what he found, until he had made the first complete map of Korea. Then it had to be printed. Still no one helped him and he worked and saved and bought blocks of wood and carved the shape of the map upon them. He inked these blocks and stamped them on paper and there was the map! Alas, the King in those times only thought that our ancestor was helping some enemy, and he had the maps burned with the blocks of wood. But our ancestor had memorized the map, and then the King decided that he should be killed.

The boy listened to this, and his face turned pale. “How did they kill him?”

“Does it matter?” Il-han replied.

“I want to know,” the boy insisted.

“They cut off his head,” Il-han said shortly.

The boy thought for a moment. Then he said in a cool voice, as though without interest, “There must have been much blood.”

“Doubtless,” Il-han answered, “but that is not important. I tell the story because I want you to know of our ancestor, and how brave he was to create something so good and useful as a map, and how foolish it was to destroy him. Even the King was ignorant.”

He did not know whether his son heard him. He thought he had not, for he felt the child’s hand on the back of his neck.

“What now?” Il-han inquired, and pulled the young hand away from his neck.

“The bone,” his son said, his great eyes staring and dark. “They must have used a saw to cut the bone.”

At this Il-han pushed the child’s hand aside and went away. But in the night he woke suddenly and fully heard in the distance the sound of the night watchman in the street, on guard against fires. Among the huts of the poor a fire burning in the middle of a room could set a thatched roof ablaze, and even in the houses of the rich a faulty flue or rubbish thrown out by a careless servant could destroy the city. All night the fire guard walked the streets, striking his two bamboo sticks together so that folk, waking, would know that he was watching over their safety. Il-han listened to the man come nearer, until the clack-clack was loud and clear and then it faded again into the distance. It was not this sound that had waked him, for he slept through it every night of his life. No, he was waked by a deep worry inside his mind and his heart, a worry he had set aside in the day, and which now rose up in the darkness of the night. From this time on, he swore to himself, he would spend some part of every day with his elder son. For he could not forget the hand feeling the bone in his neck, the small cold hand.

… The younger son was another creature. This child could not bear to crush a fly or pull a cat’s tail.

It was Il-han’s habit that, until a child was free of his nurse, he took no great notice. Indeed the first notice he gave to this second son, beyond the worry of his shortened ear, was on his first birthday, one of the three highest days in a man’s life, the second being his wedding day and the third his sixtieth birthday. True, he could never forget that this baby son had looked as pretty as a girl on that day. For Sunia had ordered her women to make special garments for him, light blue silk trousers, a peach-pink short coat, the sleeves striped in red, blue and green, a blue vest buttoned with jade buttons, and on his head the pointed cap on the sides of which were the Chinese’s letters for long life and prosperity. Il-han had noticed that Sunia had cut the sides of this hat long to cover the child’s ears. She could not forget, and in her persistent grieving that her child was not perfect, he recalled again that he had heard of foreign doctors who could mend such faults. He had not reminded her, however, for he wished not to add a sadness to the bright day. Guests had come bearing presents for the child and feasts were prepared for all, the best for the relatives and guests and lesser dishes for the servants they brought with them, as well as for his own. What he remembered now was his small son seated on the warm floor, while before him Sunia placed the objects for his choice, a sword, short and square-bladed, a book, a writing brush, a lute, and other such things. The child had looked at them for a while, seeming even at so young an age to know what they meant. Then he had put out his hand and grasped the handle of the sword, but he could not lift it and he cried and again he had tried to lift the sword and each time he failed and cried again. Sunia had coaxed the child with other objects, but he refused and hid his face in her bosom, sobbing.

This younger son, Il-han now observed anew. The child was delicately shaped, the bones fine and the flesh soft. From which ancestor the elder child had drawn his square shoulders and unusual height none knew, but the second child looked like Il-han’s father. He had the same large poetic eyes, and fine brows and high forehead. There were times when Sunia said she believed that the old man’s spirit after he died had entered into the child, so quiet and staid were the child’s movements, and yet graceful. He liked to play with small animals, with birds, butterflies and goldfish. Especially he loved lighted lanterns and flying kites and music. Sunia could play the Black Crane harp, so-called because in the time of Koguryo a musician had made a new instrument from the ancient Chinese harp, and while he played a hundred melodies upon it, a black crane had come down from the sky and danced. This harp could persuade Il-han’s second son to come out of any melancholy or fit of weeping if he fell down or were ill.

These were the qualities that Il-han observed in his second son but the child was still too young to reveal his individual mind and soul. Nevertheless, when he sat with this child on his lap and if the child followed him into the garden and clung to his forefinger, Il-han always saw the deformity of his ear and he determined that one day he would ask a foreign physician to mend it. He examined this ear carefully himself, and he concluded that the necessary flesh and skin of the lobe were all there, but that it had been crushed, perhaps by some position the child had taken inside the mother’s womb. His son’s folded ear lobe now became a reason for Il-han that he should bestir himself when the period of mourning was over and acquaint himself with men of the West, through whom he might find one to be a surgeon.

Yet before he could fulfill this purpose, Il-han received a courier from the King’s palace, commanding his presence. Since the period of mourning was over on that very day, Il-han could not refuse. He put on his court robes and went to the palace and was there received by the King.

“Do not stand on the ceremonies,” the King said when Il-han prepared obeisance. “You are to ready yourself to go on a mission to the United States.”

Il-han was already kneeling before the King, his head bowed on his hands, and when he heard these words over his head he could not move. He, go across the wild seas to a country that for him was no more than a few words he had heard spoken! His mouth went dry.

“Majesty,” he mumbled, “when must this be?”

“If we are to make a treaty with the Americans,” the King said, “then I must know what their country is and what the people are. I have appointed three young men on this mission, but you are to accompany them and see that they behave well and that they observe everything. You may stand.”

Il-han rose to his feet and stood with folded arms and bowed head. “Majesty, is this to be done in haste?”

“In some haste,” the King replied, “for it is our wish to move quickly. We ratify the treaty with the United States at once, and before you and these others leave our country. I hear that the old Empress in Peking is displeased with Li Hung-chang, and declares that all treaties must still be made through China. But we must deal directly now with the Americans and establish our right as a sovereign nation so to do.”

“Whom then do you send, Majesty?” Il-han next inquired.

“First,” the King replied, “I have appointed my brother-in-law, Prince Min Yong-ik, Heir Apparent to the throne.”

This prince Il-han knew very well. He was by adoption a nephew to the Queen, and was her ally. In the revolt the Regent had ordered him killed, but he had escaped his murderers by putting on the robes of a Buddhist monk and hiding himself in the mountains.

The King proceeded. “The second is Hong Yong-sik, the son of our Prime Minister. I send him because he has already been ambassador to Japan, and he is not ignorant of other countries than our own. The third is one whom I keep constantly near my person, for I trust him. He is So Kwang-pom.”

This young man Il-han also knew. His family was an ancient one, whose members through centuries had been known as wise and just. In this generation So Kwang-pom believed zealously that Korea should be independent of China, and he had headed a party of other men who so believed. He had even once gone secretly to Japan and had returned to tell the King fearlessly how Japan was changing into new ways, and was making new weapons, and dreaming even of making war upon China. The young man was a baron, and by inheritance, and this gave him the right to have access to the King.

All three men were young, about thirty years of age, but this third one was the most modern and bold, while Min Yong-ik was the leader of the Min and the favorite of the Queen.

“Besides yourself,” the King was saying, “I have chosen two others, Chai Kyung-soh, who is skilled in military affairs, and Yu Kil-chun, who has also lived long in Japan.”

Il-han bowed his head. “How can I refuse the royal command?”

The King accepted this decision and with a brief nod, he strode from the room. Il-han could only return to his house, his mind in a daze that the King had moved ahead of his advice and with such speed.

On a certain day in late spring of that same year, sixteen days after the King had told him that he must go abroad, Il-han was again on his way to the palace by command. He wore his court robes, on his breast the square of silver brocade embroidered with three cranes to signify his high rank. The day was fine and he had commanded the front curtain of his palanquin to be raised so that he could enjoy the mild air and the light of the sun. The occasion of the royal summons was the ratification of the treaty with the United States, a solemn ceremony. True, ratification had been long delayed, but preparation had begun even before the revolt of the Regent and all the sad events that had taken place until he was safely exiled. The important first steps were taken when Shufeldt, an American officer whose rank was Commodore, had negotiated the treaty under the approval of the Chinese statesman Li Hung-chang who, wishing at that time to remain in his own country, had sent his representative, Yuan Shih-k’ai, to live in Seoul and uphold China as suzerain over Korea, and this although the treaty asserted that Korea was a sovereign nation and needed no conference with Chinese before it was ratified. Thus far affairs had proceeded until the Regent routed the Queen from the palace and disturbed the nation. Now that the King was again in power he commanded ratification on this day.

For Il-han the day was the beginning of his long journey abroad. He had not yet told Sunia, knowing that her woman’s heart would immediately set up a clamor concerning his health, the strange foods he must eat, the foreign waters he must drink, the wild winds he must breathe, all different from those in his native land. Yet today, after the treaty had been ratified, he would have to tell her, for there could be no delay in the journey.

Two hours after noon, then, on this nineteenth day of the fifth month of the solar year of 1883, and the sixth month of the lunar year, Il-han stood in the great hall of the Royal Office of Foreign Affairs. With him were Min Yong-wok, president of this office, and the chiefs of the four royal Departments, each with his retinue. Il-han was present at the King’s command as special representative.

The day was mild with approaching summer, the wall screens were drawn, and the gardens lay in full view in the clear sunlight. At the appointed hour all were ready and ten Americans entered the hall. Il-han had never seen them close and he could not forbear staring at them. They were all tall men and they wore naval uniforms of red and gold jackets over black trousers. One man wore gold wings on his shoulders, the sign of highest rank. The ten came forward and the court crier announced in a loud voice the name of the leader.

“General Lucius H. Foote, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kingdom of Korea!”

The name Foote, translated, astonished the Koreans, and for a moment Il-han himself was confounded. Was this a mischievous trick of the announcer, a design to embarrass the foreigners? Foot? Could a man of high rank be so absurdly named? He caught the eye of Min Yong-wok, and they exchanged a questioning look. But no, the Americans were not angry, since they understood no Korean, and they presented the treaty in English to President Min, and the president presented, in return, the Korean copy. The ratified treaties were exchanged between the two men and thus a bridge was raised between two countries on opposite sides of the seas. The ceremony took no more than a few moments. The Americans then withdrew and Il-han returned to his house, marveling that in so short a time two nations could enter into friendship, their millions of people tied together by a piece of paper and written words.

“I shall die while you are away,” Sunia said.

“You will not,” Il-han said.

It was the middle of the night. They were in their own room and the house was silent about them. Outside in the garden pools the young frogs piped their early song of love and summer. He had told Sunia that he was going to America at the King’s command. She had listened without a word, and now she said simply that she would die.

She did not answer his denial. There beside him she lay, her hands locked under her head. He looked down into her face, pale in the moonlight.

“You will not have time to die,” he went on. “While I am gone, you must take my place with the Queen. You must visit her, hear her complaints, advise her, watch over her, consider her.”

“I will not,” Sunia said.

“You will, for I command you to do it,” Il-han replied. “Moreover, you are to become acquainted with the wife of the new American ambassador. You are to know her, you are to present her to the Queen as your friend.”

“I do not know even her name,” Sunia said, not moving.

“She is Madame Foote,” Il-han said.

Sunia heard this and suddenly she laughed. “You are making jokes! Foot? No — no—”

He let her laugh, glad of the change in her mood, and she sat up and wound her long hair around her head. “How can I call her Madame Foot? I shall laugh every time I see her. The female Foot! How did the man Foot look?”

“Like any man,” Il-han said, “except that he had a short red beard and red hair and red eyebrows over blue eyes.”

He was glad that Sunia was diverted, and he went on to describe the Americans, their height, their high noses, their great hands and long feet, their trousered legs and clipped hair.

“Were they savage?” Sunia asked.

“No,” Il-han said, “only strange. But they understand courtesy and they seem civilized in their own fashion.”

In such ways he led her to accept the matter of his crossing the sea and entering into foreign countries. It was no easy task, nevertheless, and all through the summer months, while preparation was made, she busy with his garments both for heat and cold, with sundry packets of dried foods and ginseng roots and other medicinal herbs, there came dark hours in the night when she clung to him, weeping. She insisted that at least his coffin must be chosen before he went, lest he die while he was abroad and his body be sent home with no place to rest. So to humor her he chose a good coffin of pinewood, and had it placed in the gatehouse, while he laughed at her and told her he would come back healthy and fat and far from dead.

The day of departure drew near, in spite of everything, and Il-han made his last visit to the palace, appearing before the Queen and then the King. To the Queen he commended his wife Sunia.

“Let my humble one take my place, Majesty,” he said. “Accept her service, and let her do your bidding. Tell her what you would tell me, for she is loyal and has a faithful heart. I have only one request to make for myself, before I leave.”

“I shall not promise to grant it,” the Queen said. She was in no good mood on this last day, for she did not favor friendship with the Americans and had mightily opposed the journey.

Il-han ignored her petulance. He proceeded as though she had not spoken.

“I ask, Majesty, that you invite the wife of the American ambassador to visit you here in your palace.”

At this the Queen rose up from her throne. “What,” she cried. “I? You forget yourself!”

“The time will come when it must be done, Majesty,” he said with patience. “Better that you act now with grace and of your own accord than later by compulsion.”

She walked back and forth twice and thrice, her full skirts flowing behind her. On the fourth time she drew near to the end door of the audience hall which led into her own private rooms. There, without looking back at him, or pausing to speak one word, she disappeared.

For a long time he waited and she did not return. Then a palace woman came out and bowed to him and folded her hands at her waist and spoke like a parrot.

“Her Majesty bids you farewell and wishes you a safe journey.”

She bowed again and turning went back from whence she had come. Il-han left the palace then, amazed that in his breast he felt a strange sore pain of an unexpected wound struck by one he loved. He hid it deep inside himself, and refused to allow himself to examine his own heart. He had no time, he told himself, to fret about a woman’s ways, queen though she was. He bore the monstrous burden of his people and carrying this burden always with him, he bade his household farewell, accepting the anxious hopes for his safe return. The last moments he spent alone with Sunia and their sons and to comfort her he stood before the ancestral tablets and together they lit incense and she prayed, her voice a yearning whisper.

“Guard him all the way,” she besought those dead. “Keep him safe in health and bring him home again living and with success.”

The second son, whom Il-han held in his arms, began suddenly to cry, but the elder stood as stiff as any soldier and said nothing. There was no time left for child or wife. Il-han held Sunia to him for a long instant and tore himself away. He stepped into his palanquin while a crowd stood by to watch and cry farewell. Then he felt himself lifted from the ground and borne swiftly on his way.

On the fifteenth day of the ninth month of that solar year, Il-han and his fellow compatriots arrived at the capital city of the United States. During the long sea journey he had studied the language of these new people, the only one so to learn, for the others saw no need to know a language they would never use. But he, with the help of a young Catholic interpreter, shaped his lips to the unusual syllables, and when he reached Washington, a city named for the first President of these people, he was able to read signs and the large print of newspapers and even to understand a few words spoken.

Already Il-han knew that his own people had much to learn from the Americans. Even the ship in which they traveled had been dazzling in marvels and he had made friends with the captain, a bearded man whose life had been upon the seas. With this man he had climbed upon the bridge and watched the turning of the wheel that steered the ship, and he descended into the bowels of the ship and saw the great furnaces where naked men threw coal into the monstrous maws to make steam that drove the ship with power. The train in which they had crossed the continent had provided further marvels, the engine powered by the same steam, and at such speed that even he was dizzied, though not vomiting as his fellows did. Five days they sped across mountain and plain, and he was overwhelmed by the vastness of the country, and astonished at the fewness of its people.

Here in the American capital he met the greatest marvels, especially the water, hot and cold, that gushed from the wall, and lamps whose fuel was an invisible gas. Much discomfort there was too. He could not sleep well in a bed high from the floor, and twice he fell out as though he were a child and braised his shoulders, and after such misadventure he pulled the mattress to the floor. The food was unpalatable and tasteless and he missed Sunia’s kimchee, and the spices and the richness of his own foods. Moreover, there were those eating implements, a pronged fork, a sharp knife, and he could not cut the slabs of meat, nor down it running red with blood. He chose a spoon and such foods as he could sup.

These were small matters, and soon he learned his way about the city, though only with the help of a young naval officer who had been appointed to stay with the delegation from Korea, an ensign named George C. Foulk. Seeing the name printed, Il-han spoke it complete until the young man had laughed.

“Call me George,” he said.

This George Foulk had lived four years in China and Japan and once had even spent a few months in Korea, so that he spoke Chinese and Japanese and some Korean. Il-han was fortunate that he himself was not official in rank and could go or not go on official calls. While the others waited here and there, he walked about the city with George and listened with lively interest to what the young man explained of history and science and art in the streets and museums and buildings. All that he, Il-han, saw and heard he stored in his mind, to be used for his own country when the time came.

Nevertheless, the formal meeting with the President of the country, whose name was Chester A. Arthur, Il-han must attend as special representative of the King of Korea. It took place not in the capital but in the city of New York in a great hotel where the President was staying, for what reason Il-han did not know. Thither they went and were installed in palatial rooms, where they waited for the appointed time. The day arrived and the hour, and Il-han prepared himself. He wore his richest robes of state, a loose coat of flowered plum-colored silk over a white silk undertunic. Over these he put his ancestral belt of broad gold plates. Upon his breast he hung his apron of purple satin embroidered with three cranes in white silk thread, surrounded with a border of many colors. On his head he wore the tall hat traditional for yangban noblemen, made of horsehair woven upon a bamboo frame and tied beneath his chin. Besides himself only Min Yong-ik, the head of the delegation, wore such robes. Two others could wear aprons with one crane embroidered on them. The rest wore no breast aprons but the coats of plum-colored silk and the white silk tunics in blue or green with tall hats.

Shortly before noon, word came that the President was ready to receive them. He stood in the center of the parlor of his private suite, and Il-han, entering first, saw a thick-bodied man wearing tight gray trousers and a long dark coat cut back from the waist. On his right was his Secretary of State, a man surnamed Frelinghuysen, who stood quiet and apart. On his left was his Assistant Secretary, surnamed Davis, and several others, among them George Foulk. Il-han and his fellow Koreans entered in single file and formed themselves in a line before the American dignitary. Then at a signal from Min Yong-ik they knelt at the same moment, and raising their hands high above their heads, they bent their bodies forward slowly in unison until their foreheads touched the carpeted floor. They remained in this position for moments, and then rose and went toward the President, who, with his suite, had bowed deeply as they entered and so remained until the Koreans had risen.

Now Frelinghuysen came forward and he led Prince Min to the President and introduced him. The two clasped their hands together, Prince and President, and they looked deeply into each other’s eyes, murmuring compliments, each in his own tongue. One after the other the Koreans were introduced to the Americans, and then the Prince and the President exchanged formal greetings, each in his own tongue, translated in turn.

After the ceremonies, the Koreans retired, and on that same days they took ship. With the American officers delegated to accompany them, they went to the city of Boston, there to inspect buildings and manufactories.

Time fails me [Il-han wrote to Sunia in the days following] to tell you of the many sights I have seen. My head is crowded with sights, my mind is enriched, and I shall need the rest of my life to tell you everything. I have seen great farms where machines take the place of men and beasts, and these I have observed most carefully, for you know my concern with the life of our landfolk. Alas, we are centuries behind these Americans! But I have seen the factories where textiles are made, especially in a city named Lowell, and there, too, I perceive how far behind we are with our handlooms. I cannot deny that our stuffs are finer, especially our silks, but can we compete with machines? I have seen hospitals and telegraph offices and shipping yards, the great shops of jewelers and merchants of all kinds. Tiffany in New York is a mighty name in jewelries, and I was glad I had not you beside me as I examined their baubles, else I could not have contained you, or myself for that matter, who wish to give you all you long for. The post office — ah, that we had such speed and exactitude, a letter posted today hundreds of miles away by tomorrow, and this not by foot but by train! And I saw sugar refineries where the whitest sugar is made, all by machines, and fire vehicles, whereby fires in great cities are put out before they destroy a hundred houses, and great newspaper offices, and above all, I saw the military academy at a place on a great river, where young men are trained as officers of the national army here. These and much more I have seen, and when you and I are old, Sunia, and sitting upon our ondul floor together, I shall still have new things to tell you, for a lifetime is not enough for all I have seen.

When the mission was ended, the Koreans bade farewell to the President in his palace, for they were in Washington again to observe how the government performed its duties. On the last day, they divided themselves. Some went to Europe and homeward by the Suez Canal, some went home directly by the way which they had come, but upon the President’s invitation three went homeward on an American warship, and with these went Il-han, for George Foulk accompanied them, and Il-han wished to stay by this young man and with his help gather more information concerning the history and political life of the western peoples. By now Il-han could read books in English partly by himself, but George Foulk was there to help him when he could not understand, and Il-han made translations of such works for the King to read, and for the Queen, if she would. Only Prince Min would have nothing to do with such works. He declared that Korea could never match the western countries and therefore her strength must remain in her own old ways. So saying, he retired to his cabin on the ship and returned to the Confucian books he had brought with him.

The warship carried Il-han and three others and George Foulk to Europe, where they disembarked at Marseilles, and for seventeen days they traveled through other new countries and saw still more new sights, until Il-han, fearing that by now one sight would be confused with another, spent every evening writing down what he had seen during the day and where he had seen it.

It was spring again before he reached home, and indeed all but summer, for it was the last day of the fifth month of the solar year, 1884, when the ship weighed anchor in the harbor at Chemulpo. From there they were escorted to the capital in sedan chairs and on horseback, and Il-han chose a horse, and so did George Foulk. Side by side they rode through the sunlit landscape, but neither saw the surrounding beauty. They talked long and quietly together, and the burden of their talk was Il-han’s fear that Prince Min’s influence might be against reforms.

“Our only hope,” he said, “is to leave the past and move into the present. I have hope, for I understand now that a small country can grow strong by means of science and machines. We must search out our best young men and send them to your country to learn, and return them here to teach. We must open colleges for our youths. Yet how can I persuade the King when Prince Min is so powerful? And certainly I shall not be able to persuade the Queen, whose relative he is. I make a prophecy and I pray it will not come true. The Prince, I prophesy with fear and sadness, will pretend to have interest in what he has seen, but it is only pretense. He will pretend to suggest reforms and then he will prevent them in secret. This is my fear.”

He gazed far across the land as he spoke. The season was the planting of rice and in the valleys the farm families, young and old, were thrusting the young plants into the shallow waters of the rice fields. In the bamboo groves the new shoots were waist-high. So fair a country!

At the entrance to his own house Il-han descended from his horse and beat upon the gate with the stock of his whip. He was alone, for Foulk had parted from him at the city gate to go to the American Embassy, and the others had stopped earlier at their own homes. Il-han’s house was the farthest and so he was last and he stood waiting. The gate opened a crack and he saw his servant peer through, and then fling the gate wide and fall to his knees to put his forehead in the dust.

“Master — master — you sent no word! We did not know when to expect you.”

“I did not know the exact hour or even the day,” Il-han replied.

He lifted the man as he spoke and then strode through the gate into the gardens and to the house. Silence was everywhere, and he inquired of the servants, who now came running, where their mistress was and his sons.

“Master, your sons are flying kites on the city wall,” his servant told him, “and our mistress waits upon the Queen.”

“Does she go often to wait upon the Queen?” Il-han inquired.

“Indeed she is the Queen’s favorite,” a woman servant put in.

Il-han could but go to his own rooms then to await Sunia’s return. Meanwhile he sent for bath water and fresh garments and for the barber to shave him, and while he made himself clean, he rejoiced in his return to his own house. All seemed better even than he remembered, and when he was finished with barber and bathboy and servant, he strolled in the gardens, and saw how the trees had grown, how the plants flowered. The blossoms on the persimmon trees were yellow and in full bloom and the goldfish were merry in the pools and a bird sang in the bamboo grove. Here he waited for Sunia, and suddenly he saw her, her full skirts of apple-green silk flying behind her in the speed of her coming. He opened his arms, for none stood by to watch them, the servants hiding themselves kindly, and she ran into his embrace. Oh, good it was to feel her in his arms, her warm body pressing against his, her sweet cheek against his!

“You should have told me,” she breathed. “I have missed all the expecting. How can I believe you are here?”

She drew back to look at him, to feel his arms, press his hands, clasp his waist again. “You are older,” she exclaimed. “I think you are thinner.” She paused to stare at him aghast. “You have cut off your hair!”

He had not told her that he had cut his hair. “I cut it—” he said and was stopped by her stricken look.

“You mean you are not — you wish you were not — married to me!”

What could he say? It was true that when a man married it was old custom that on the crown of his head he must erect the coil of his long hair.

“There are new times,” he said somewhat feebly.

She looked at him with doubt and then a smile caught the corners of her mouth.

“You want to look different from other men here, you want to be anything that is willful and stubborn. Oh, you are not changed, not a whit, hair or no hair.”

They embraced again, with passion, and hand in hand they walked into the house.

“Before the children come home,” Sunia said, “let me tell you why I am so late.”

She proceeded then to tell her tale and Il-han listened, marveling how she too had changed and was no longer the shy girlish woman she had been. Here then was the gist of her story.

While Il-han was in foreign lands, the American General Foote had endeavored to present himself to the King and the Queen, but the Queen had refused to receive him, and she forbade the King to receive him.

“What,” she had exclaimed to Sunia, “shall the King show himself divided from me? Let the chief of the Foreign Office receive this Foote, not we who are truebone royalty. We are too high for him. Is he a yangban in this country or even in his own?”

When she was told that Americans had no yangban she grew more willful. “All the more reason,” she declared, “for not receiving one of them in our palaces.”

Thus it went until Sunia devised a clever scheme of her own. She had become friends with the Queen in her own woman ways, and she perceived that the Queen liked new sights. Thereupon she herself went one day to call upon the female Foote, and quite alone except for a woman servant, she entered the mansion where these Footes lived. All was strange to see. The tables and chairs were high, the floors were covered with thick wool mats, and the walls were decorated with foreign scenes and portraits of unknown persons. The female Foote received her kindly, nevertheless, welcoming her with both hands outstretched and leading her to sit upon one of the high chairs, from which her feet swung clear of the floor, it was so high, and she was afraid of falling off, until the lady Foote saw her distress and bade a servant put a stool under her feet

This foreign lady could speak some Korean, much to Sunia’s surprise, though with a strange twist of the tongue, and she was free and gay and she asked many questions which Sunia answered, until soon they were two women talking together. The lady then asked Sunia if she would like to see the house, and when Sunia said she would, for her curiosity was sharp, the lady Foote took her everywhere upstairs and down but the worst was when Sunia was compelled to come down the stairs again, which she could do only by sitting and sliding from step to step lest she fall headlong, since never before had she been that high. She saw many things in that house, a machine that could sew fine stitches, another machine that could write letters, beds on posts and surrounded by nets to keep off mosquitoes, an iron cook stove, and such things, more than she could count.

All this she told the Queen, and when the Queen asked how the lady Foote was dressed, Sunia said, “She wears a full skirt held out by a thin hoop, and her upper body sits on top like a Buddha on a mountain.”

At this the Queen laughed aloud. Then she looked thoughtful. At last she spoke. “Perhaps I will invite her to come here and show herself.”

“Majesty, I pray you will do so,” Sunia replied. “It is more diverting than a play to see her walk. Her feet are hidden and one would think she went hither and thither on wheels. And her waist, Majesty! It is small like this.” She measured a little circle with her two hands.

The Queen marveled.

“How can that be? Is she divided in two?”

Sunia had wondered for herself how it could be, and she had inquired privately of a woman servant in that home, who had told her that the lady Foote encased her middle in a steel-enforced box. So she told the Queen.

“She boxes herself in at the waist, to make herself small.”

Upon this the Queen could not restrain her curiosity, and the lady Foote was invited and the Queen sent her own palanquin to fetch her to the palace. Alas, as the bearers told everywhere, the lady could not squeeze into the palanquin because of her wide skirts.

“However high we raised the front of the palanquin,” they told, grinning at every word, “she could not get herself inside. Even her husband stood there laughing, and we all laughed. But she was not put off one bit and, laughing with us, she backed in like a mule between shafts. Then her skirts stood out so far that we could not put down the front curtain and so we carried her through the streets. The thousands stood to watch us, for word flew from mouth to ear everywhere and people ran out from their houses. Some even hid beneath the palanquin and we beat them out with bamboo sticks.”

Thus the foreigner was carried through the streets until they came to the palace. There she had new difficulty in descending from the palanquin and she must be pulled out and set straight, whereupon her skirts belled out in a vast circle, a pretty sight, Sunia said, for her gown was made of rich golden silk, long in the back like a tail, and the front was hung about with wide lace and there was lace falling from her sleeves over her hands. Only one part of her was unseemly, and this was her front, where her breasts stood out like hillocks under the silk. This, Sunia concluded, was the misfortune of the foreign women, that they had big breasts.

At this moment she paused and looked at Il-han sidewise. “And did all the women in America have such swollen breasts?” she inquired.

Il-han looked sidewise at her in return. “I did not look at them,” he replied.

So she went on with her tale.

When the King heard the female Foote was coming he declared that he too must see her, which he could not unless the Queen allowed. She granted his wish, however, and Sunia met the guest in the reception hall and led her through the antechamber and into the throne room, where the King and Queen sat on their thrones, with a nephew prince at their side. Sunia had taught the guest how to salute the truebone royal pair and she, though foreign, performed the salutations very well and then stood while the King and Queen rose. The King wore a long robe of dark red silk, the Queen wore a long flowing skirt of blue silk and a jacket of yellow silk most exquisitely embroidered with multicolored flowers and fastened with buttons of amber and pearl. Her long black hair was fastened in a smooth coil at her neck with pins of filigree gold set with jewels. Upon her nobly shaped head she wore an ornament also of jewels, and from her waist hung jeweled baubles fastened to bright silk tassels.

The King and Queen exchanged speeches with the lady, their guest, and she responded so freely and with such spirit in her simple language that soon they were laughing together. The royal pair then sat down again, and an ebony stool was brought for the guest since she could not sit upon a floor cushion, so upheld was she by her hooped skirts.

“The Queen,” Sunia told Il-han, “was by then so pleased with the ease and freedom of the lady Foote, that she declared she would make a fête champêtre for her in the palace gardens, and she invited her on that very day to return another day for this fête.”

“And did she so?” Il-han inquired, marveling at the ease with which Sunia had accomplished such a victory over the Queen.

“Never was there such a fête,” Sunia exclaimed and she described it, her hands flying like birds while she talked.

The fête, she said, excelled all fêtes that were ever heard of in the capital. Two hundred tall eunuchs in splendid uniforms escorted the Queen and the guest through the gardens. All the trees had been brought to blossom at the right day, apricots and plum and cherry, and great displays of chrysanthemums, out of season, glowed among gold-lacquered pagodas and pavilions. Fairy teahouses and miniature temples the Queen had commanded built for the occasion, and music sounded through the groves of bamboo and flowering trees and among willows drooping over ponds. Bright-hued birds the Queen had commanded to sing and fly had been brought from the southern islands and servants in garments as bright flitted everywhere like butterflies.

The guest wore new garments, Sunia said, the skirts wider than she had before and her arms were bare, but she wore gloves of soft white leather so long that they clothed her arms like sleeves. The court ladies clamored to try these gloves on their own hands, but their hands were like baby hands inside the gloves. These ladies played with the guest’s diamonds and felt her boxed-in waist and asked where she bought the creams that made her skin so white and smooth.

Thus the day wore on, for it took all day to see the many sights the Queen had commanded for the astonishment of this foreign guest. Musicians sat inside the pagodas and strummed their lutes and two-stringed violins, gongs sounded their mellow notes. Near the bank of a lake where lotus bloomed, a bud opened to reveal a small naked child whose waiting mother lifted him from his rosy bed. A sailing boat on another lake carried girls who danced old legends on the decks, acrobats swung from branches of the trees along the shores, and everywhere about the vast gardens troupes of actors made playlets for amusement of the Queen and her guest.

“Indeed we all went mad with merriment,” Sunia said, laughing at her memories, “and when the lady Foote parted from the Queen the two embraced as though they were sisters and the Queen could not bear to let her go. And a good lucky thing it was that the fête came first—”

Here Sunia’s face grew grave and she paused.

“What next?” Il-han inquired.

“You know how suddenly the Queen can change,” Sunia said. “One moment she is all kindness and gaiety and the next she is a cruel witch.”

He nodded. “So what did she do?” he asked.

“You know how many of the Queen’s kinsmen were murdered by the Regent,” she said.

Il-han nodded again.

“Well,” Sunia went on, “even before all this merriment the Queen made up her mind in secret that she would command the death of all those who had taken part in the return of the Regent.”

“No,” Il-han cried, aghast.

“Yes,” Sunia said. “As soon as you were gone she commanded them to be killed. Some had already fled beyond her reach and she commanded that their wives and children should be slaughtered.”

Il-han covered his eyes with his hands at this, but Sunia went on, her voice steady.

“Yes, she did, and it would have so been done except that I went to the lady Foote after the fête, when I heard of it. I went that same night and begged her to move the Queen’s heart.”

Il-han lifted his head from his hands. “Who told you?”

“Your man servant,” she said, “and he heard it from a eunuch in the palace, whose sister was among those doomed by the Queen. Upon that the lady Foote came in haste, uninvited and unannounced, only two days after the fête, and she faced the Queen.”

Sunia paused to sigh and shake her head and bite her underlip.

“She had asked me to accompany her, and I saw and heard all. Oh, that Queen! Her face was hard as white marble, and her heart was not moved, not by one word that the lady Foote could speak. ‘Why have you come here?’ she screamed. ‘Who bade you come? Leave the palace!’ This she commanded. And then she screamed, ‘I will see your face no more.’ Such screams she made but the lady Foote only grew the more gentle. At last she knelt before the Queen, she took her hand, and she began to speak of the Lord Buddha who bade us take no life, not even the life of a worm, lest it be hindered on its upward way, and she spoke of the noble Confucius, who taught us that the great are always merciful to the small, for in such mercy is their greatness.”

Il-han broke in. “Did the Queen listen?” His throat was dry and his voice came in a whisper.

“At last she did,” Sunia said, “but only when the foreign lady spoke of our own gods. She listened and her eyes grew soft and after a long while she said that the lives of all should be spared. At this the foreign lady wept and then the Queen wept, and they clasped hands and the Queen begged the lady never to leave Korea. And she sent her home in her own royal palanquin and she gave her that palanquin as a gift, the same one which you sent to bring the Queen home to the palace from exile in the poet’s house.”

So long had Sunia talked that the sun was setting over the wall and now they heard the voices of the children at the gate.

Il-han looked at her with eyes not only tender but proud. “You have done well, my wife, better than I myself could have done. From now on I share all my life with you. Man and woman, we are equal, partners in everything. I shall have no secrets from you, ever, so long as I live.”

They clasped hands and Sunia’s eyes brimmed with tears. Better than words of love were his words of acceptance and praise.

“Alas, that my prophecy must be fulfilled!” Il-han exclaimed.

On this day he had met with George Foulk to renew their friendship, which they now did in a teahouse beside a small lake where lotus bloomed. Sitting on their floor cushions beside the low table, while a singing girl played the bamboo harp, George Foulk told him in low tones that the Prince, Min Yong-ik, had come the day before to make a private call upon the American Minister, Foote.

The Prince had come, George Foulk said, with only three in his retinue and he had commanded even these three to stand outside the room where he was received by the American. Foulk had been summoned to act as interpreter, and so only he knew what had taken place. The Prince, he said, had seemed in a dark mood. His face was pale and his eyes were sunken as though he had not slept. He let his head hang, after salutations, and when the American inquired kindly whether he had enjoyed his journey to the West, the Prince replied that he had come home deeply troubled and in sadness.

“Why sadness?” the American inquired. “I hope that my people did not show you discourtesy.”

“No,” the Prince replied. “Everywhere we were given honor. My sadness is because I do not believe that my country can ever equal yours. We are oppressed and divided, and without hope. How can we survive as a free people, when we are crowded by these surrounding powers? Sooner or later they will cut us up and eat us in three parts, or one, triumphant, will swallow us whole. We are doomed by destiny, I and my people. I was born in the dark. I went into the light. I have returned into the dark again. I cannot see my way clearly. I hope, yet even hope is feeble.”

When Il-han heard this now, he could only repeat his fears. “You will see,” he told George Foulk. “The King will announce many reforms, but none will take root. The Prince will not allow it.”

Il-han’s fears became reality. At first the King could not move fast enough to make reforms. He sent for Il-han again and again, inquiring into every detail of all that he had seen in America, and when he learned how the Americans lived and how they were governed, he sent requests almost daily to the Americans begging for military officers to show how a new army could be raised and trained and he asked for teachers of machinery and teachers in government and in every way of life, until George Foulk told Il-han privately that the Americans were distracted by such demands, and even put to embarrassment before the other western nations.

“The other western nations are looking at us askance,” Foulk said. “They imagine that we are trying to settle into your country and take it for ourselves, whereas we have no such intent.”

They parted in gloom each time these two, Korean and American, only to meet again and again, each to learn of the other in private ways. Il-han did not tell what he knew from Foulk to anyone except Sunia, and he and Sunia agreed that it was too soon to speak to the King, and not safe to speak to the Queen. Let the King swing his nets far, and when they saw what fish were caught, it would be time enough to act. So, although Il-han called upon both King and Queen in duty, he was cool in what he said, and gave no advice, nor was advice asked. But he knew that while the King worked feverishly for quick reforms and the building of a new nation before Japan grew strong and before a war broke out between Japan and China, or Russia and Japan, for Japan was set for war and conquest, the Queen worked in secret with Prince Min to stop each reform before it became real. In spite of such intrigue, the King persisted, never believing that the Queen worked against him. She was always gentle with him and came docile to his command, and he thought her as changed as he was when in the privacy of the royal chamber, one night after rare intercourse, he told her of what he had done and what he pleased to do. She listened, admiring and agreeing, and giving him encouragement, only to return to her own palace and plot with Prince Min. This she did not in evil intent, but because she and the Prince loved their country, too, but in their way, and what they did was in true conviction that they must stay with China, their protector and suzerain from ancient times.

Even Il-han was deceived to a degree that later astonished him when the revelation of all this took place at a great dinner given by Hong Yong-sik to celebrate the new postal system which the King had commanded to be established throughout the country. Since this Hong Yong-sik had been among those who went on the mission abroad, on return he had abetted the King and urged him on, until the King had made him the head of the new national post office. Hong had not only accepted the position, but he had become the leader of all those who opposed the old regime and, above all, Prince Min himself.

Who could believe that Hong Yong-sik would go to such lengths? On the day of the dinner, when the guests were assembled in the great hall, all was merriment and music. The guest of honor was the American ambassador, Foote, and the next guest of honor was Prince Min himself, and after him Il-han and then George Foulk. Below these were other Americans, among them a physician surnamed Allen, and below him other Korean yangban.

In the midst of the feast suddenly there was a shout.

“Fire!”

The word rang through the hall. “Fire — fire!”

All started to their feet, but Prince Min rose first, for it was a law that a high military official should attend any fire in his neighborhood and give all aid to put it out before it spread elsewhere. But Il-han guessed that the cry was only a signal and he ran after Prince Min to warn him. Alas, it was too late, for certain among the guests in the lower seats were running after the Prince. They tore off their brilliant robes of many-colored silks as they ran and showed themselves in common cotton garments underneath. These men pursued the Prince and caught him at the open door and they drew out short swords and hacked him again and then again and then they escaped, climbing over the walls and leaping down the other side.

Prince Min staggered back into the hall. Seven cuts had gashed his head open and one cheek had been carved out and hung down over his jawbone. His several arteries were cut and blood poured from him. Il-han sprang forward to catch the Prince as he fell, but he was not more quick than the American ambassador, who lifted Prince Min’s feet. Together they laid him down upon the cushions. The servants were wailing and running here and there in uselessness, but General Foote shouted to the American physician, Allen, and this man in a short time stopped the flow of blood with tourniquets of cloth torn from garments and held fast with the same chopsticks with which a few minutes before the guests had been eating the delicacies.

The Prince by now knew nothing. Whether he would live or die could not be told, but after some time the physician Allen declared that there was hope for his life, and he sent for medicines and for instruments to sew up his wounds, and thus the life was saved. Il-han stayed near throughout, and when at last there was some assurance that the Prince would live, he urged the American ambassador to return to his embassy.

“Your lady will be frightened to see you,” he said. “If you will permit me, I will go with you myself.”

The American accepted this and the two men then went on foot, for by now there was no bearer or any equipage to be found, and George Foulk followed. Total confusion was everywhere and Il-han did not tell the American that he feared this attempt at murder was only the beginning of new revolt against the Queen. Together they walked through the crowded streets, pushing their way between the people, the snow crunching and cracking under their feet, until they came to the Embassy. Here when the gates opened Il-han saw for the first time the lady Foote. She stood in the doorway of the house, her full skirts of crimson silk flowing about her, and he saw her clearly in the light of a lantern a servant held behind her.

She screamed when she saw her husband, for he was covered with blood.

“You are hurt!” she cried.

“It is not my blood,” he replied. “It is the blood of Prince Min. They have tried to murder him, but they have failed.”

So much Il-han could understand, and he prepared to withdraw, yet when he looked again at these two he was impressed by the intelligence he saw on their faces, and he remembered how good the lady had been and how she had kept the Queen from the folly of murder. He lingered a moment.

“Your Excellency,” he said to the ambassador, George Foulk translating. “I must warn you now that this is indeed the beginning of a fire which we may not be able to put down. Let me ask the King to send his royal guard here to escort you to the palace where we can protect you.”

Bloodstained as he was, the American was still proud. He drew himself to his height and he took his lady’s left hand and put it in the curve of his right elbow.

“I thank you, my friend,” he said, “but we must remain in our own place, my wife and I. In all circumstances I must insist upon the inviolability of my government’s embassy. Here there must be a center of peace, however the mob riots outside our walls.”

When George Foulk had repeated this in his own language, Il-han could only bow and withdraw. He looked back once, at the gate, and he saw those two, man and wife, standing side by side in the doorway. The woman’s face was as calm in determination as the man’s, and he could but envy them their faith in themselves and in their government.

… When he returned to his house, he found Sunia gone. His man servant waited for him, weeping and distracted.

“I begged her not to go, master,” the man wailed. “I told her that you would find your way home.”

“Surely she did not go in search of me!” Il-han exclaimed.

“She went to the Queen,” the man wailed. “She thought you might have gone to save the Queen.”

The tutor now ran out. “Sir,” he said, “it is the King who is in danger.”

“How do you know?” Il-han demanded.

“I am told — I am told,” the tutor said urgently. “Never mind how, but it is said that the King has asked the Japanese minister for help and Japanese soldiers have surrounded the palace. A battle is taking place at this very moment.”

Il-han turned at once. “Take care of my sons,” he commanded, and he ran into the street followed by his servant. On foot he made his way through the crowds now shouting and screaming, some for the King, some for the Queen, most of them only adding to the noise and madness. Steadily he pushed his way among them and between them, they too maddened to see him or care who it was that burrowed here and there and always toward the palace. At the palace gates he spoke to the chief guard and gave his name. All knew him as loyal to the King and allowed him to pass. He entered then and saw in the gardens before the palace the bodies of the dead, some bleeding into the snow beneath a pine tree, some lying on the ice of a frozen lotus pond, and others scattered, twisted and crumpled. He bent and searched each face as he passed, and recognized one and another. They were all followers of the Queen, upholders of her determination to stay with the Chinese and oppose the reformers. Pools of blood lay in every crevice and low place, on stones and frozen ground, as he made his way toward the palace, expecting as he went to see the Queen herself bound with ropes and dragged out to her death. Then he lifted his eyes by chance and in the distance beyond the palace walls he saw the American flag flying in the wintry wind. At this sight he took courage, and he wondered if the Queen, hiding somewhere inside her palace, saw that flag, too, and took courage with him.

Suddenly, before he could reach the entrance to the palace, he heard a fresh uproar in the streets, and the sound of cannon. He stopped and listened and heard Chinese voices crying their war cries, and he knew what had happened. Yuan Shih-k’ai, the Chinese general sent by the Empress Tzu-hsi to maintain the power of her throne over Korea, had ordered soldiers to protect the palace and the truebone royal King and Queen. What could this mean but a battle between Chinese and Japanese, here in the palace itself? Il-han ran into the palace then and into the King’s throne room. There the King sat on his throne, and by him sat the Queen, both in their royal robes, surrounded by a handful of Japanese soldiers.

“In Buddha’s name,” the Queen cried, “why are you here?”

“Majesty,” Il-han gasped, and threw himself before them, “I came to see if you were hurt.”

“Your wife was here first,” the Queen said, “and I sent her home again under guard. If I am to die, I die alone.”

“You will not die alone,” the King said.

Before he could speak another word, the doors burst open and the Chinese soldiers swarmed in, carrying foreign guns and short Chinese swords. At the sight of them in such number, Japanese soldiers fled, leaping through windows and crashing through doors. Hundreds of Chinese followed them as they struggled to get to the Japanese warship that was in the harbor, but the Chinese cut them down until few indeed reached the safety of their ship. Then in fury the Chinese fell upon the wives and children of all Japanese in the city and cut them to pieces, too, and threw the parts into the water surrounding the ship.

So violent was the battle that even the British left their quarters and ran to the Americans for safety, and in that whole city only the American flag still waved in the wintry wind. Inside the Embassy the Americans took counsel, for they believed that they too would be attacked in the senseless frenzy of the mob, and they planned that if the mob broke through the gates and tore down the flag, only the lady Foote could save them. She alone was well loved by the people, for all knew how she had persuaded the Queen not to kill the families of those who had rebelled against her, and how she had done this by reminding the Queen of her own gods. If the mob broke in, therefore, it was planned that the lady Foote would sit in a chair in the middle of an empty room with all the valuable documents beside her, and she would ask the people to spare her and for her sake all her fellow citizens. This Il-han did not know until afterwards, when George Foulk told him. For in the end the mob did not enter the American Embassy, and the flag continued to wave above its walls.

While this was going on Il-han remained with the King and the Queen, for by now they were surrounded by the Chinese, and Il-han stayed with them until the city was quiet. When the Queen rose to return to her own palace he knelt before her and said nothing until she spoke.

“Lift your head,” she commanded, and he lifted his head.

“Get to your feet,” she said, and he rose to his feet.

She gave him a long steady look.

“There will be another time,” she said. “Watch for it — and come earlier to save me.”

“Yes, Majesty,” he said.

He waited until she was gone, and then he turned to the King, preparing once more to kneel but the King stopped him with lifted hand.

“Here is sorrow,” he said, “when a kingdom comes between a man and his wife.”

He dropped his hand then and bowed his head, and Il-han knew himself dismissed.

When Il-han reached his own gate, it was barred as though for siege. He beat upon the gate and he waited but there was no answer.

“Beat again with me,” he commanded his servant.

They beat four-handed, raising such clatter that doors opened along the street and neighbors put out their heads. When they saw what was going on, they shut their doors again in haste.

In such times every small sign was of significance, and Il-han felt his heart grow cold with fear. Had some vengeance been wreaked upon his family by unknown enemies? Enemies he knew he had for he had been friend first to the Queen and then to the King, and in his double duty doubtless he had made enemies on both sides. He was casting about in his mind to know what he could do, when suddenly the gate opened a crack and the gateman looked out. When he saw who was there he beckoned to Il-han to come in, but he held the door so that only he and the servant could enter and then he barred the gate again.

“What is this?” Il-han asked.

He looked about as he spoke. Silence was everywhere. The usual bustle of servants, the shouts and laughter of his children, and Sunia’s voice of welcome, all were gone.

“Master,” the gateman whispered. “We had warning just before sunset that this house would be attacked in the night.”

“Warning?” Il-han exclaimed. “How did it come?”

“The tutor told our mistress,” the man replied. “He was away all day, after you left, and he came in at noon and he told.”

“But why?”

The man shook his head. “I know nothing. Only my mistress bade us make all haste to leave and under her command we put clothing and food into boxes and baskets and as soon as darkness fell all went to the country except me. She bade me stay here until you came and to saddle your horse ready. I have saddled the two horses for I am to go with you.”

Il-han was astounded and somewhat vexed. “How can I leave the city at this time? All is in confusion and I do not know at what moment I shall be sent for at court.”

The servant interrupted. “Master, these questions can be answered when you are with our mistress again. Now we must leave, for who knows what lies ahead? You could be seized at any moment. You must retire now to your grass roof, otherwise you will lose your life, and if the Queen is angry with you, your family, too, will die. Who knows whether she will listen a second time to the American woman?”

When Il-han still hesitated, the servant began to weep silently but Il-han would not allow such pleading.

“Do not distract me with tears,” he said sternly. “I have more to consider at this moment than my own life or even the lives of my sons.”

Upon this the servant sobbed aloud. “And can you serve if you are dead? Your father stood here even as you do. I was only a boy but I stood beside him. But he was wise — he chose to retire to his grass roof and live and protest, rather than to let his voice be silenced in death.”

“My father?” Il-han exclaimed.

“Go to his house,” the servant said. “Search his books and you will find what he was. You never knew him.”

Why this moved Il-han he himself did not know, but he bowed his head in assent and the man went to the stables and led out the two horses, saddled and ready. Il-han held in his restless horse until he heard the gate of his house barred behind him and then he galloped into the night.

It was soon after midnight when he drew rein before the wooden gate set into the earthen wall which surrounded the farmhouse where his father had lived for so many years, alone except for his few old servants some of whom still lived here and would until they died. The ancient gateman sat outside on the stone step, staring into the darkness and huddled in his padded jacket. The night wind blew chill and the moon was dark when Il-han came down from his horse and the old man wakened and lit his paper lantern and held it up.

“It is your master,” Il-han’s manservant told him.

“We are waiting for you,” the old man said, coughing in the night wind.

With this he opened the gate, and Il-han strode into the courtyard. The sound of the horses’ feet told Sunia that Il-han had come and she opened the door of the house and he saw her there, her head lifted, the candles burning in the room behind her. He entered and closed the door.

“I thought you would never come,” she said.

“The road was endless,” he replied. “Tell me what happened.”

Before she could reply they heard a knock on the inner door, and she called entrance and the tutor came in.

For the first time Il-han saw this man was no longer young.

He came in, not shy or hesitating, and he looked Il-han full in the face.

“Sir,” he said, “shall I speak now or shall I wait until you are bathed and have eaten and rested?”

“How can I rest or bathe or eat when I know nothing of what has happened?” Il-han replied.

“Can anyone hear us?” Sunia asked, her voice low.

“I have my men on guard,” the tutor said.

“Your men!” Il-han exclaimed. “Who are you?”

The tutor motioned to Il-han to be seated, and Il-han sat down on the floor cushion at the table in the center of the room. He was suddenly very weary, and he braced himself for whatever news he must hear. When he sat, Sunia sat also, and he gestured to the tutor to be seated. Had he been only the tutor he would not have dared to seat himself, but now he did and face to face with Il-han who had been his master, the tutor spoke.

“I do not know whether you have heard that a new revolution is growing everywhere like fire in the wild grass. Yet it is so. The landfolk are ready to rise up in every village and on every field. They can no longer suffer what they are suffering nor will they any more pay with their life and their strength for what is being forced upon them.”

A dark foreboding fell upon Il-han. “I suppose you mean the Tonghak.”

“Only a name for being in despair, sir,” the tutor said. “I must tell you that it was I who gave your household warning. I am grateful to you for sheltering me all these years in your house, as your father sheltered mine. Now I must warn you that the turmoil has only begun. The landfolk have lost hope. They have come together under the Tonghak banner and no one can foretell what they will do.”

“Tonghak!” Il-han cried. “Are you a Tonghak?”

“I am,” the young man said. He stepped back and folded his arms and looked straight into Il-han’s eyes.

“I cannot understand this,” Il-han exclaimed. “You have had ease and courtesy in my house. None has oppressed you or watched you. Why do you join with those Tonghak rebels?”

“Sir,” the man said, “I am a patriot. I take my place with our people. And who knows them better than you do, sir? The landfolk are the ones who pay for everything. They only are the taxed, for we have no industries such as you say the western nations have. Here all taxes fall upon the land. When the King wants money for these new ventures of his, the new army, the post office, the trips abroad, such as the one you made, not to speak of the diplomats and the delegations, the new machines he wants to buy, where does the King get the money? He taxes the landfolk! And as if this were not enough, who pays for the corruption inside the Court? And outside as well, for every petty magistrate has his little court, and the Queen has her relatives and her favorites, and who pays — who pays? The countryfolk who till the land, even the land they cannot own, which they can neither buy nor sell because it belongs to some great landlord, and he does not pay the tax, oh no, it is the lowly peasant who only rents the land who pays the tax! Sir, does your conscience never stab you in the heart?”

Il-han stared at the tutor as though he saw a madman. “Am I to blame?” he demanded.

“You are to blame,” the tutor said, his voice and his face very stern. “You are to blame because you do not know. You do not allow yourself to know. You traveled through the country for many months, did you not, and you saw nothing except mountain and valley and sea and people moving like puppets. Have you ever heard of a Russian named Tolstoy?”

“I know no Russians,” Il-han said.

“Tolstoy was a man like you, a landowner,” the tutor went on. “Yet his conscience woke. He saw his people, the people whom he owned because they belonged on his land, and when he saw them he understood that they were human beings and he began to suffer. Sir, you must suffer! It is for this that I have saved you.”

Il-han could not swallow such talk. It was enough for him to be amazed that the meek young man who he had thought was only a scholar, employed to teach his elder son, now showed himself a stranger.

“How have you saved me?” he demanded.

“I saved you as my father saved your father,” the tutor replied. “When angry people were about to kill your father in his time, my father persuaded them to let him retire to this grass roof.”

“My father was a good man,” Il-han said.

The tutor was relentless. “A good man, but he did not lift his voice when others were evil. And you too, you are a good man, but you do not lift your voice. You have access to the King and to the Queen but you have not raised your voice for your people.”

Il-han returned look for look. “What would you have me say?”

For the first time the man’s black eyes wavered. “I do not know.”

He waited a moment, biting his lip. Then he lifted his eyes again to Il-han’s eyes. “For that, too, I blame you. It is you who should know, and because you should know, because you must know, I have saved your life and the lives of your family. Today, in the congress of the Tonghak, I stood up and declared that among those who are to die you must not be killed. You — you are not to die! But I swore by my own life that you would be brave enough, when you knew, to speak against the corruption of the government, and against the taxes heavy as death, and the pushing men from Japan who are bringing their cheap goods here for our folk to buy because there are no other goods. And above all, you must speak bravely against the Japanese tricksters who by one means and another are buying land from the landowners because the landfolk can no longer pay even the taxes on their harvests.”

These words fell upon Il-han like blows from an iron cleaver. For a while he could not reply, and indeed for so long that the tutor could not endure the silence and he cried out again.

“I tell you, it is only for this that I have saved you and your sons!”

To which Il-han again after a long silence could only answer with deep sighs and few words.

“Tonight I must rest,” he said.

“But tomorrow?” the tutor insisted.

“Tomorrow I will think,” Il-han promised.

The tutor rose then and bowed and went away, and suddenly Il-han was so weary that he could only look at Sunia, begging for her help.

“You need not speak a word,” she said. “Your bath is hot, your supper is waiting and then you must sleep.”

He rose. “You who understand—” He felt her hand slip into his and hand in hand they went toward the rooms she had prepared for their life.

“What shall I call you?” he asked the tutor.

It was noon of the next day when he summoned the man to come to him alone. He had not yet seen his sons, and he had told Sunia that he would not until he had spoken again with the tutor. His older son was old enough to have been shaped by his tutor beyond knowledge, and he must know not only what the tutor had to say further but also what he was. It seemed to him, after his sleepless night, that all his years until now had been meaningless. He had lived at the beck of the Queen and the call of the King, conceiving this to be his duty. Even his long journeys into his own country and then into the foreign countries had been in service of the truebone royal house, rather than for the sake of the people. Was it indeed true that people and rulers must be separate? When he served one, must it mean that he did not serve the other?

“I can no longer think of you as my son’s tutor,” Il-han said when the tutor came again into his presence. “You are someone I do not know. Your surname is Choi but what is your name?”

“Sung-ho,” the man replied. He smiled half ruefully. “I wish I could call myself after the great Ta-san of the past, but I am not worthy. I must continue merely to use the name my father raised for me when I went to school.”

“Perhaps you will make a great name of it,” Il-han said.

Sung-ho only smiled again.

“I have a question to ask,” Il-han went on.

“Ask what you will,” Sung-ho replied.

Il-han saw how confident the man was, how bright his look, how straight his carriage. He sat on his cushion without diffidence, eager and ready.

“Is it you who have shaped my elder son so that he prefers to live here in the country under this grass roof rather than in the city?”

“Inevitably I have shaped him,” Sung-ho replied. “At first it was only that the city was hot in summer while here it is always cool. But as I shaped him, I shaped myself. Had I not spent summers here with your father under this grass roof I might never have come to know the landfolk.”

“Are the people on my land Tonghak?” Il-han asked.

“They are,” Sung-ho replied. “At least all who are young.”

Il-han smiled wryly. “Does this mean that you will all rise up in the middle of some night and behead me?”

“No,” Sung-ho said sturdily. “It means that we look to you to speak for us.”

Il-han was somewhat confounded at this. Was he then in duress? He poured two bowls of tea, so that he could have time to think, and he handed one to Sung-ho, but not with both hands as he would to an equal. To his surprise, Sung-ho also took the bowl with one hand, and not with both hands as he must from his superior.

Il-han went on. “Tonghak is a dumping pot for all sorts of rascals and rebels, debtors who will not pay their debts, thieves who will not pay their taxes.”

Sung-ho did not yield one whit. “You know very well how common people insist upon tricks and conjurings from those whom they love and admire, and who they think can protect them, and is it just to demand that every Tonghak be free from corruption when the yangban themselves are corrupt?”

It was Il-han who must yield. “I cannot deny it,” he said.

At this Sung-ho softened his voice. “I exempt you always from the corruption of your kind. I know you to be an honest man, and I swore this in order to save your life.”

Il-han laughed. “You will not allow me to forget that I owe you my life!”

“I will not allow you to forget,” Sung-ho agreed, and he did not laugh.

Before Il-han could proceed, he heard the voices of his two sons, one shouting in anger, the other wailing in pain. Both he and Sung-ho leaped to their feet, but the door burst open and Il-han saw his elder son walking toward him and dragging something behind him. This something was nothing else than his sobbing younger son, bound hand and foot with rope. In his right hand the elder son held a dagger-shaped stick of bamboo.

“What are you doing?” Il-han shouted and seized his elder son while Sung-ho lifted the younger child to his feet and pulled away the rope. Without stopping to inquire why his elder son had been so cruel, Il-han lifted his hand and slapped him first on one cheek and then on the other, and this so hard that the boy’s head turned left and right and left and right. Now it was the elder one who began to roar loud sobs.

“You!” Il-han said between set teeth. “You, who are a savage!”

“No,” the child sobbed. “I am Tonghak, and he is a yangban who takes money—”

The younger child was loosed by now and Il-han clasped him and lifted him to his shoulder. The two men exchanged looks.

“You have made my elder son into a criminal,” Il-han declared.

Sung-ho returned his hard look with another as hard.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I do not belong in your house.”

With these words, he disappeared and from that time on Il-han saw him no more, nor did he know where he went or whether he would ever return.

Here Il-han was, then, left with the two children, both crying, and a servant ran to tell Sunia, and in a moment or two she was there. The child she comforted was the elder one, Il-han observed, and he protested.

“Do not comfort that one,” he exclaimed. “He would kill his brother if he could.”

“How can you say so?” she exclaimed. “He is only a child.”

She put her arms around the elder son and murmured to him, and Il-han stood holding the younger one on his shoulder until suddenly he was impatient.

“Come, come, Sunia,” he said, “let us make some order in this family of ours. Take the children away and feed them and put them to bed. Leave me alone for a while.”

She obeyed, casting hostile looks at him as she went, to which he paid no heed. His own confusion must first be resolved before he could be father and husband again. Impatient to be alone, he closed the door after them, and sat down on the floor cushion facing the garden and sank himself into meditation.

The disorder in his family was the disorder of his people. How diverse were the elements! Here under the grass roof of his father’s house, here where his father had lived out his long life as a scholar and a recluse, the spirit of the past descended again. Must he repeat the life of his father in his own life? He had endeavored to avoid the national disease of dissension. He had maintained a prudent and middle course, now with the Queen, now with the King, aware of old loyalties, yet ready for new. To live a floating life, swimming with the tide and never against it, ready for all change provided it was for the good of his country, he had nevertheless come to the same place where his father had come in the years before he himself was born, and this by a totally different path. His father had never wavered in his faithfulness to the past, and so had been hated only by those who dreamed of the future. Now he, the son, was hated by all, by those who clung to the Queen and by those who clung to the King. Was there no place for him in his own country? If not, what could he teach his sons? Here in his own house the Tonghak rebellion was brewing, while he unknowing had pursued his middle way. He felt lost and distracted and the day passed without clearing his mind or lifting his spirit.

“All that I know about myself,” he told Sunia in the restless night, “is that I am Korean. I am born of this soil, I have been nurtured on its fruits and its waters. The blood and bones of my ancestors are my blood and my bones. Therefore I must know myself first.”

She let him talk, his head on her breast. And after a while he said, “I have never had time to know myself. I have always been at the call of others. Now I shall answer no summons. I will close the doors of my grass-roof house against the world. I shall be alone with myself.”

Womanlike, she listened to such musings and answered yes, yes, do so, whatever you think best, and when morning came she busied herself again about the old house, silk-spinning and making kimchee and keeping festivals. To live in this country house after the years in the city was in itself a task, for here nothing was convenient. The kitchens were old and the caldrons worn thin, mice and rats ran everywhere, lizards came creeping out of walls, and spiders festooned their webs among the blackened roof beams. In the wall closets the bed mattresses were mildewed, in the rooms the floor cushions were torn and their linings split. There were also her sons, and where to find a new tutor for them was a burden.

“You must teach them,” she told Il-han one day, “or else you must find a teacher.”

Who would dare come now to this house to teach his sons? In the end Il-han was compelled to teach them, lest they grow up fools and yokels. Yet he found the teaching a task, and he could only force himself to it, teaching them two hours in the morning and then setting them free for the rest of the day, and Sunia complained that they were twice as mischievous after he had taught them as they were before, the elder one always in the lead. At last she set Il-han’s man servant to watch them and keep them from falling into the fishponds and smothering in the rice vats and running down the road to be lost.

As for Il-han, he did not know what to teach his sons and he could only teach them what he himself was trying to learn. As he studied afresh the history of his people, each day he made a simple lesson for his children of what he himself had learned the day before. His father’s books were his source and his treasure, and how vast the library was he had not realized until now. Here in the shelves of four connecting rooms lay the rolls of manuscripts and books, a room for each of the subjects of learning, one for literature, another for history, another for philosophy, and the fourth for mathematics, economics and the calendar. With philosophy was also politics, for these two were inseparably together both in history and in the present, and one cannot be considered without the other.

He knew that his people were divided by geography. Those of the rugged north, where craggy mountains split the sky, were more rude, less cultivated, less learned than those of the south. Troublemakers they were called, revolutionary by nature, and the cause for this was partly in that most landfolk owned their own land. Moreover, they did not plant rice paddies but they grew wheat on dry fields. They were scornful of the people of the south, declaring them effete and lazy, scheming rascals without ambition, working on land that others owned. This division went so deep that even here in the capital city, south meant those nobles whose families lived in the southern part of the city, as Il-han’s family had for many generations, and north meant those whose houses were in the northern part of the city. The Noron, or northern, faction, was sometimes in power in government, and sometimes the Namin, or southern faction, took power. The struggle in the capital was the symbol of the struggle everywhere among his people, and he himself was a symbol, for he and his fellows had as children been kept within the circle of the Namin, and Sunia’s family had been Namin, like his, else neither his family nor hers would have considered it possible to allow marriage between them. Namin would not marry Noron. Yet it seemed to him sometimes as he continued day after day to study the books in the library and to express them in essence to his sons, young as they were, that this very division had its benefits. For while one faction was in power, the opposition in retreat fought it with vigor and device, and their rebellion was expressed in strong music and passionate poetry so that much of the great literature of his people sprang from the sources of dissension.

This conception seemed to him so apt, so correct, that he cast about in his mind one day as to how to express it to his sons in language which they could understand. It was autumn again, the season of high skies and fat horses. Sunia and her women were making kimchee, and the smell of fresh cabbage, of white radishes a foot long, of red peppers and garlic and onions, ground ginger and cooked beef scented the air. She ran into his room, he looked up from his book and saw her there, wrapped in a wide blue cotton apron, her hands wet with salt, her beautiful face pleading and impatient.

“Can you not keep the boys with you today?” she demanded. “We are distracted with their naughty ways. The elder one throws the cabbages here and there like balls, and the little one follows him. I cannot watch them and get the kimchee into the vats, too. That elder one — he hid in a vat and we could have smothered him without knowing it.”

“Send them here,” he said, his own patience tried. They came in then, the two of them hand in hand, dressed in clean garments and with hair freshly combed. His heart melted at the sight of them in spite of himself, but he made himself stern.

“Sit down,” he said as coldly as he could.

They sat down, awed for the moment by his coldness, and he bit his lip, contemplating them as they sat facing him. Their brown eyes, so trusting and clear, their cream-white skin tanned by the sun, their red cheeks and lips, made him long to embrace them but he would not allow himself the pleasure. However his love welled up in him, he must control it and make the surface cool and firm.

“Today,” he began, “I will tell you the story of Ta-san. Listen carefully, for when I have finished I will be able to tell whether you have understood, and I shall be angry if you show me that you have not listened.”

“Is the story true?” his elder son asked.

“True,” he said, “and full of meaning for us nowadays, although Ta-san lived before you were born or even I was born. But my father, your grandfather, knew him and learned much from him.”

He then told the story of Ta-san, concerning whom he had found many notes written by his father. He would not confess to himself that it was the tutor’s mention of Ta-san that had rekindled Il-han’s interest and sent him searching among his father’s notes.

“You must know,” he told his sons, “that our country, Korea, was the first in the world to make the printed word — that is, with movable type.”

Here Il-han paused. He paused to see if his elder son would ask what movable type was, but he did not. Il-han then went on without explanation, for he believed that to answer a child’s question before it is asked is to destroy natural curiosity.

“There were many books when Ta-san lived and he read them. In this he was fortunate, for though our people have for a long time had books, common folk could not read them, first because they did not know their letters and second because they were not permitted to share knowledge. Our rulers controlled all learning. But Ta-san could read and he read not only the books in his father’s house but also the books in the King’s palace, because he had passed his examinations with such high honor that even the King noticed him, yet he did not read all day. As he grew older, the King asked him to do many great tasks. One of them, for example, was to build the second capital at Suwon, where the King could retreat if the capital itself were attacked by enemies, and while Ta-san made plans for the second capital, he also devised a way whereby big stones and trunks of trees could be lifted by a rope put through a pulley, and how a machine, called a crane, could be used. He made many such inventions.

“One day he found some books that told of what other countries did. Until now Ta-san had thought that all knowledge was in our country and in China, but in these new books he found such new thoughts that there was even a new god. Oh, but this made his enemies happy, for it was forbidden to read such books, and now they said Ta-san was a traitor and he had to leave his fine city house and move to a house in the country, far away. There he sat reading and reading and writing great books and speaking his mind—”

“Like you, Father,” his younger son put in.

Il-han had been thinking that his son had not listened and when the child said this with such intelligence and understanding, Il-han looked at him with a scrutiny he had never before given him.

“Like me,” he agreed, “and in some ways Ta-san was more useful to his country and our country than he had ever been before. True, the Noron were then in power, and he was a Namin, as our ancestors were, and so he could only write his books and keep them. But the day came when he was free again, and then the books he wrote could be read by all who could read. Some day you will read them, too, as I did, and as I am doing now.”

“Why?” This came from the literal mind of his elder son.

“Because he did not sit in idleness,” Il-han said. “Because he roamed the earth and went among its peoples, while his body was confined to his own house and gardens. He made beautiful gardens, too, and he even built a waterfall.”

“Then we will build a waterfall,” his elder son declared.

The notion seized upon both children and they were on their feet in a moment and making for the door.

“Wait,” Il-han called after them, “wait! I will come with you. We will do it together.”

They halted, astonished that he could consider such play, and he reproached himself that he had not shared their life but forced them always into his. So he took a hand of each and they went into the garden, far from the kitchen court where the kimchee was being made, and Il-han spent that whole day with his sons, choosing a place in the brook where the water could be debouched into another channel to make a pool fed by the waterfall. This work took days to complete, and Il-han found the key to the teaching of his sons. First they must sit and learn for an hour or so much more as he felt they could bear, and then they went to the building of the waterfall and the pool. He saw to it that the work went slowly and so the months passed toward winter.

To Il-han’s own surprise, this life with his sons deepened his own life. No longer was learning apart from life. When he studied Ta-san’s plan for the community ownership of land he considered how he could apply it to his own tenant farmers, who maintained this farm he had inherited from his ancestors. Ta-san had declared that farmers should work collectively, each pooling his land into the general community ownerships. The harvests, he said, were to be allotted, after taxes, to the farmers in proportion to the labor they had given.

Il-han could not approve the plan as a whole, yet he was amazed that within the stern controls of the Yi dynasty, so long ago Ta-san could conceive such changes, even though they were never used. And he pondered long upon the question of how his own tenants could be justly rewarded for their labor on his land. Here he sat inside his comfortable grass roof, shaded from the summer sun and warmed in winter by the ondul floors, and he drew in the money they earned for him, while they toiled in his fields and lived in crowded huts and ate coarse food. Wrong, wrong, his heart told him, and dangerous, his mind told him, but where could one man begin? Moreover, he had not the power that even Ta-san had, though in exile. He assuaged his heart then by calling in his tenants that year after the harvest, and he met them on the threshing floor before the gate.

They stood in the late sunshine, a ragged crew of sun-browned men, their horny hands hanging while they bowed to him. None spoke, and all were anxious, for why should a landlord speak to his tenants except to tell them that the rent was raised?

He perceived their anxiety and made haste to allay it.

“I greet you,” he said, “to thank you for the harvests, which are good beyond the average. This I take it is at least partly because you have done your work well. For the rest, we must thank Heaven for rain and sun in proportion to the need.”

They still looked at him with sullen eyes, doubting his intent, and suddenly he was afraid of them. The distance between him and them was very far and there was no bridge.

“I will not keep you,” he said. “I wish only to tell you that your share of the harvests will be doubled this year.”

They could not believe him. They still gazed at him in fear mixed with doubt. Whoever heard of a landlord who doubled the share of the tenant? Such good fortune was too rare.

As for Il-han, he saw their doubt and he was angry at their ingratitude. No one spoke. He waited and when he saw that they had no intent to speak, he felt his heart grow cold and hard.

“This is all I have to say,” he told them, and he turned and strode into his house and barred the gate behind him.

Yet when he had time to think over their brief meeting, he blamed himself for his anger. Why should they feel gratitude? For years they had toiled only to receive a meager share of the harvest. Even to double that share was not enough. The injustice of their lives was the injustice of centuries. It could not be mended in a day by one man on one farm.

On one cold New Year’s Eve several years later, Il-han reckoned that all he had done and thought and felt, added together, showed only two accomplishments. One was that his sons grew well and he had developed their minds beyond expectation. They were passing from babyhood to boyhood, the elder edging into his youth, although at thirteen he was still turbulent and impatient and argumentative, and he chose to make many quarrels with his brother, who in defense drew apart from him and became solitary. In a way this was a comfort to Il-han, for his younger son sometimes sought his company alone, partly for protection against the elder brother, but also because he and his father were much alike in loving books and writing poetry. This younger son had besides a tender love of music and he learned to play upon the kono harp so well that this became a cause of jealousy in the older brother. The elder was the more handsome of the two, however, and a very handsome lad he was, tall and strong, his eyes bright and bold, his nose straight, his lips thin, and he made fun of his younger brother’s light build. When he was angry, he even taunted the younger one for the imperfection of the lobe of his ear until one day Il-han, himself in rage, took his younger son to the American physician who had saved Min Yong-ik’s life, and he asked him to make the ear right again.

The physician by this time was aged, and his hands trembled. Yet he examined the ear and then he called his assistant, a young Korean whom he had taught during the years.

“Your hand is better at this than mine,” he told the man. “I will stand beside you and help you, but you must hold the knife.”

Il-han stood watching. First they put his son to sleep, holding some liquid-soaked cotton to his nostrils as he lay on a table. Then when he was asleep, while Il-han was uneasy for the sleep was too much like death, the young doctor, his hands encased in thin rubber gloves such as Il-han had never seen before, took a small thin knife from a tray held by a woman aide, and he cut the boy’s ear lobe and split it cleverly. Next with a needle and thread he sewed it into shape and attached it to the head. When all was finished, he tied on a bandage.

“Come back after a few days,” the old American doctor said, “and in ten days or so, you will see your son’s ear as like the other as his two eyes are alike.”

Sunia made much ado when Il-han brought the boy home again, for he had not told her, knowing she would be fearful and forbid it. But the ear healed well, and then the boy was perfect. Il-han was glad, except that he thought the elder son was colder to him than ever after the younger son was made perfect.

So much for his sons. The second accomplishment was a book that Il-han had been writing all these years. In it he put down, day after day, every wrong deed he heard done in the capital or in the nation. Friends visited him, though not often, and always in secret, and unknown men came to tell him stories of their sufferings, and again and again unknown members of the Tonghak came to his house and he received them because of Choi Sung-ho, but Sung-ho himself never returned, and when Il-han asked a Tonghak where he was, that man shook his head or shrugged his shoulders and none seemed to know who he was or if any knew him, they did not know where he was.

From whatever he learned from such persons and from every other source possible to him now, Il-han wrote in his book. He wrote down what every yangban spent on bribes and trickeries, and what every soban connived. When new governors were appointed for the provinces, he found out what time they left and when they arrived, how much they spent on the way, what women they took with them, or slept with as they went, who was bribed for what, and who welcomed them when they came to their new places, and who paid for the feasts and the dancing girls, and whether Japanese spies talked with them, and whether they met in secret with Japanese or Chinese or Russians, and if they traveled and where and how long they stayed away from their posts and who were their hosts and what favors were asked and if they were granted. When each such evil was known and written down in his book, and he saw how corruption weighed more heavily year by year upon the miserable landfolk, Il-han then wrote pages of what he believed should happen and how righteousness and justice could still be saved.

In the long evenings Sunia, her day’s work done, sat listening while he read aloud to her what he had written. Sometimes she was so weary with her household cares that when he paused to ask what she thought, he saw she slept. He never waked her, for he saw, too, in her sleeping face how much she had aged. The youthful beauty was gone, the lines of middle-age were clear, the same lines that he saw in his own face in the mirror in his bedroom. Seeing her, he only sighed and closed the book softly and let her sleep.

Yet there were other times when she did not sleep and when she listened, admiring, yearning for the world he wrote of in contrast to what was. On one such night he saw her weeping when he looked up to ask her if he wrote well.

“Now, Sunia,” he said, “have I written something wrong?”

She shook the tears from her eyes and tried to smile. “No, you have written all too well. But — but — oh, why can you not be heard? Will anyone ever read this book? I cannot bear to think your life is wasted here under this grass roof.”

He did not answer. Her question was the one he asked himself many times. Was his life wasted? Perhaps for his times and for his people, but not for himself. He had set the task of knowing what he was — he, a Korean. Now he knew. He closed the book.

“It is time to sleep,” he said. “The night grows dark and there is no moon.”

In the early evening of a certain night a messenger came on foot to the gate of Il-han’s grass roof home. Since he was a stranger, the gatekeeper would not admit him until he had himself inspected the man’s appearance. When he had looked at the man from head to foot, he let him in, but held him in the gatehouse under the guard of three other servants until he went to find his master and report the presence and the appearance of this stranger.

Il-han had finished his evening reading of the Confucian classics with his sons. In the mornings now their studies were in mathematics and history, in the afternoons their studies were in literature, and in the evening before they were sent to bed, Il-han read aloud to them the Book of Poetry or the Book of Changes, expounding in simple words the meaning of the sonorous, ancient words. Each learning period was short for he knew how easily the thoughts of the young wander afield, yet he believed that by this thrice-repeated period each day, his sons’ minds would be permeated with learning and with knowledge of the good, and he dreamed that though his life might be useless, in the lives of his sons his own might continue with benefit to his people.

In the calm of such comfort, then, he had bid his sons sleep well while he settled himself to his own studies, Sunia being absent at the moment and in the kitchen supervising the brew of a ginseng tea which he found soothing to his inner organs at the end of the day. At this moment the gatekeeper was announced by a servant and Il-han nodded his head for the man to enter. The gatekeeper came in and standing near the door in respect he bowed and then spoke.

“Master, there has come a stranger to our gate. I did not let him enter until I had looked at him well. He is a foreigner.”

Il-han let his pen fall from his hand. “Is he wearing foreign dress?”

“No,” the man replied. “He is in proper dress like yours, master. But his face is not our face.”

“Did he give his name?” Il-han asked.

“He said that you would know him if you saw him.”

“How could you understand a foreigner’s language?” Il-han inquired.

“He speaks our language,” the gatekeeper replied.

They looked at each other, master and man. One thought was in each mind. Was this a ruse in order perhaps to stab Il-han? Of all those whom the King had sent to America on the mission, only Il-han remained free in his own house. Min Yong-ik, when he had recovered from his wounds, lived in exile, hiding here and hiding there, rejected even by the Chinese whom he had tried to serve. Hong Yong-sik, who had chosen not to flee with the Japanese when the Chinese soldiers entered the palace, had been cut to pieces before the King’s eyes. So Kwang-pom escaped to Japan and had lived there in exile these ten years, and here in his own country he was now called a traitor. Others were in prison, or in exile in unknown distant villages and farms.

“Master,” the gatekeeper said in a low voice, “I will put my knife through this stranger, and throw his body in the pond.”

For a moment Il-han was frightened, but at himself, because he was tempted. It would be easy — a thing he would never do but if a gatekeeper, faithful to the family — who would know, or if knowing, blame the master? The next moment he recalled what he was and was ashamed. What — had the evil of the times permeated him, too, and to the soul? Because men were killed everywhere in treachery and in secret, was he to stoop to murder? Thus he inquired of himself, and the answer was no, and no again. He took his pen and fitted it into the silver cap and he closed his book and got to his feet.

“I myself will look at this stranger,” he said.

He strode across the garden and down the winding path between the mulberry trees kept for the feeding of silkworms, and then he stooped his head, for he was very tall, and entered the low-roofed gatehouse. Inside, the candle of cow’s fat guttered and in its wavering light he could only see a man leaning sidewise against the wall, his face in profile as he stared into the candlelight. He lifted his head when Il-han came near and then he spoke.

“Have you been here all these years?”

Il-han knew him instantly, though the face was haggard and the eyes aged. It was George Foulk. He put out both his hands and the American clasped them.

“I thought you were dead!” he exclaimed. “I was told you had been killed with all your family and your house sealed.”

“Is my house sealed?” Il-han asked.

“You have never gone back?”

“I have not gone back,” Il-han said, “but my servants have gone and the house was not sealed.”

“Then it is only recently,” Foulk replied. “I sent my own guard to discover who lived in your house, and the gate was sealed and a soldier stood there. At first he too said you were dead, but when he felt money in his palm he said you were living but in exile here in the country. My friend, I must talk with you. Enough has happened in these years to fill a century.”

In the shadow of the trees and the twilight Il-han led the American, still grasping his hand, into the house by a side entrance. There he bade his servant allow no one to enter the room where they would talk, and not even Sunia was to enter, for he did not wish her to have the burden of confessing, perhaps some day when confession might be extorted, that she had ever seen the American in his house. In the quiet of his study, the wall screens closed, he drew Foulk down to the floor cushion beside his, so that they might speak in voices too low for anyone to hear. He trusted his servants, and yet he trusted no one, not even Sunia, for she was a woman and to save his life or her children’s she might one day tell anything.

“Speak,” Il-han said. “The night is not long enough for me to know all you have to tell. Why do you come to me now after this long silence?”

“I want you to know that I am leaving Korea,” Foulk said.

Now there was silence between them. Each gazed at the other in this silence.

“Even you,” Il-han said at last. “Then, indeed we are lost. It means, does it not, that the Americans are giving us up?”

“Not the Americans,” Foulk said. “My people know nothing of yours. This is our sin against you. We are ignorant. In ignorance my government has done nothing to save your people, for the result of ignorance is indifference, and indifference is a desert in which a whole nation can die. I cannot stay to see your people die. I — love Korea.”

These words fell upon Il-han’s ears, each a separate blow as he comprehended their import.

“Tell me what has happened,” he said.

In reply Foulk then told such a story that Il-han could not have believed except that he knew this American was all of a piece, so loyal in friendship, so true, that anything he said was true.

The beginning, as Foulk told it, went back to the year of the treaty with the United States whereby Korea was declared by the Americans a sovereign nation, independent of China, her ancient suzerain. Independent, Korea could and did grant trade rights to Americans. Next was the arrival of Ambassador Foote, with his wife and secretary and the translator Saito.

“A mistake, that Saito,” Il-han put in. “You should not have engaged a Japanese translator. Who knows what words he added or took away for his own benefit?”

“A mistake, that Saito,” Foulk granted and went on with his story.

“The Americans discovered,” he said, “that the King and his cabinet were too weak to exercise sovereignty, however many good men were with him. Men like you, Il-han Kim, even true patriots like you, were accustomed to subservience to the Chinese or the Japanese. You did not believe that you could be strong if you would be.”

“I remember,” Il-han said slowly. “The King said he danced for joy when the Americans came.”

“Yet how can we Americans overcome your fears rooted in the centuries?” Foulk replied. “The King has leaned on us for everything. This has not only angered China, but it angers the other western powers. England and Germany would not ratify their treaties. My government was alarmed and they sent word at first to Foote and when he was gone, to me, that we could advise the King only personally, unless our government sent advice. Yet how could those men far away in Washington, those prudent local men, understand the vast troubles of your valuable country? Knowing too little, we do too little.”

He turned his head away, he bit his lips, muttering, “My government has not even sent me enough money to pay the legation expenses. My ambassador had no money for hiring a clerk and the secretary was serving without salary. We have no money to buy land for a proper legation building — not even land! We should have consulates — other nations have their consulates, and they laugh at our parsimony. The great, rich United States of America! I chose land at Inchon for a beginning, but no money has come for the purchase. Do you wonder that other nations laugh?”

He sighed, and got up and walked around and around the room, his feet noiseless on the ondul floor.

“I should not tell you this — it is our family business — we Americans — and I could endure it all, but your King — he keeps pressing me, begging me to give him American advisers. He has a hundred plans — all good ones — a good man, this King of yours — he could build the nation if he had half a chance, and if our government only knew — if they could only see what they are throwing away — the chance to help him build a strong independent free Korea — a bulwark in Asia!”

“Why do you not go home and tell them?” Il-han asked.

He was embarrassed by many emotions, fear for his people, dismay lest the Americans were indeed unable to help them, and despair for the King. They must fall into the abyss of the greedy nations if no hand stretched out to them in friendship. Who could save them if the Americans did not?

“In addition to all else,” Foulk was saying, “my ambassador was reduced in rank. He was no longer Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. He was only Minister Resident and Consul General. Of course he resigned.”

Il-han could bear no more. “Stupidity — stupidity,” he cried under his breath. “How could your government send us a minister of first rank and then degrade him?”

“He resigned,” Foulk said, “and there is no one to replace him. I am the only one left.”

“Shufeldt?” Il-han suggested.

“Shufeldt will not come,” Foulk replied. “He knows too well what it means — a prudent man! I wish I were as prudent!”

“How old is all this trouble between your ambassador and your government?” Il-han inquired.

“Old — old,” Foulk groaned. He sat down again. “Even before the dinner when Min Yong-ik was nearly killed.”

“And you did not tell me!” Il-han exclaimed.

“I was ashamed,” Foulk said, “and I still had hope that we could persuade those men in Washington.”

“When did your ambassador leave us?” Il-han asked.

“The year after that dinner.”

“And you?”

“I have been in charge ever since, without rank and helpless. And now I too give up. I want one Korean to know why — and you I can trust.”

“I pray you, tell me everything,” Il-han urged. “It may be that I—”

“No hope,” Foulk repeated. “But if you — want to know the worst, here it is.”

With this he enumerated, one by one on his ten fingers, the steps by which he had come to his present despair. Left alone, he had returned to the task of beseeching his superiors to send the American advisers for whom the King so urgently asked.

“The most pressing need of Korea in her present deplorable situation, I told Washington, is competent western instructors for her troops — many of them. Well, what happened? Three teachers were recommended by the Department of State! The King said he would pay for their expenses, but they were not permitted to come, except under private support. And where was I to find the money?”

Now that he had begun his confession to Il-han it seemed that Foulk could not stop himself. He wrung his hands together, he ground his teeth in anguish. “I had no money, I tell you! Because I was acting chargé d’affaires I couldn’t even draw my navy pay — I was allotted half the minister’s fund, but I couldn’t draw the money. And then that German, that von Mollendorf, he got himself appointed head of customs in your capital, since no American advisers came, and he has worked against me continually, trying to get German advisers into Korea with the hope of establishing German influence here—”

“He did not succeed!” Il-han exclaimed.

Foulk went passionately on, as though he recited a program of doom and Il-han could only hold his head and groan as he listened.

“No, but failing to get German advisers, he employed Russian advisers, at least for your armies. Then and for once China and Japan united in pleading with the King that American advisers be sent — they being above all afraid of Russia. Well, the American military advisers are now scheduled to come next year — four years too late! The King has lost confidence in my country and my government and how can I blame him?”

Here Il-han opened his mouth to speak, but Foulk was not finished. “My pay drafts have been returned. Insufficient funds! Appropriations for Korea have been exhausted! And meanwhile I must handle affairs at Chemulpo as well as at Seoul, my country being the only one without a consul in Chemulpo! I resigned six months ago!”

“But you are still here.”

Foulk made bitter laughter. “No one reads the dispatches I send, therefore no one is sent to replace me! In spite of this, your people—” Foulk paused here and leaned his elbows on the low desk, and shaded his eyes with his hands. His voice broke. “Your glorious people still look on me as the representative of the United States, the lodestar of their hope of independence! But I have had to tell them — the leader of the new independence group — a brave young man — I won’t speak his name even here — I have told him that my government is interested only in collecting the indemnity for the General Sherman—lost so many years ago.”

Foulk’s voice was trembling. He paused, he pressed his lips together and went on abruptly. “I can no longer carry the burden of representing my government — and my people — without even clerical or secretarial help. But I haven’t enough money to pay the most necessary bills for the legation. It has all made me ill. My health has failed. I — look at this.”

He held out his hands and Il-han saw how thin his wrists were, the big bones gaunt and the skin drawn taut over the wasting muscles.

What could Il-han say? He clasped the hands of his friend in his own hands again and he bent his head down until his forehead rested on their clasped hands and his tears overflowed. Foulk waited a long moment and then without further word he withdrew his hands gently and left the room.

Some time afterwards, how long Il-han did not know, Sunia slid the door open. “Will you not come to bed now?” she asked but timidly.

“No,” Il-han said, and did not look up.

She slid the door shut again and went away, and he sat the night through alone.

… Hours passed uncounted. Whether he was in the body or out of the body he did not know. Did he hate the Americans? He could have hated them except that he remembered them as he had gone to and fro among them in their own country, a kindly people, enjoying the manifold benefits of their life, and in their enjoyment and self-content exuding friendliness, though without friendship, as he now perceived. They were still too young for friendship, incapable of the deep bonds which bind one human being to others. Friendliness is shallow though pleasant, and it was unreasonable to expect a depth beyond their capacity. The mind must know, the heart must feel, before there can be understanding, and they did not know the long sad history of his people, nor could they feel the terror of being a small country set by chance among giants. The King had expected far too much. He and his fellows, Il-han himself, had expected too much of the Americans. It was their own ignorance of foreign peoples to mistake the easy promises of friendliness for the loyalty of true friendship. No, he could not hate them. Yet without them he knew his people were doomed.

What then could he do? His heart urged him to leave his grass roof and go to the King and the Queen and offer himself for their service, any service at any cost. Yet he knew this was only the longing to rid himself of the burden of his own knowledge. The King was no fool — he must know very well by now that he could trust no foreigners, the Americans having failed. And the Queen had never trusted them. The country was like a ship at sea, anchor lost, rudder broken, and captain helpless. He and all Koreans could only stay by their ship, wait out the storm, let destiny take its course. In kindness and forgiveness, he hoped that the friendly people in America would not know the opportunity they had lost and which would never again be offered them. Pray Buddha they would not some day be compelled to pay the costs!

“Father!”

Il-han heard his elder son’s voice and was startled, as though he had never heard it before. It was no longer the high voice of a child. It had dropped halfway down the scale, it was cracked and hoarse, the voice of a boy ready to become a man. How had this come about so suddenly? Or was it sudden? He had been too engrossed in the even smoothness of his cloistered days to notice.

“Come in, my son,” he said.

He stared at the lad as he entered the room. Surely he was taller today than yesterday, his hands bigger, his bones heavier. And his face was changed, the features thickening into adolescence—

“Why are you looking at me, Father?” the boy demanded.

“You are growing up.”

“I have been growing up for a long time, Father.”

“Why have I not seen it?”

“Because you are always looking at your books, even when you teach us. Father!”

“Well?”

“I want to go to school in the city.”

“What are you saying?”

Il-han closed his book and motioned to his son to kneel on the floor cushion opposite him.

“You think I am not a good teacher?”

His son faced him with black eyes as bold as ever. “You teach old books, and I want to learn the new.”

Il-han was about to reply sharply and then remembered as sharply. In his youth he had accused his father in the same fashion. In his son’s voice he heard his own again. He kept himself calm. “Are there such schools in the city?”

“Yes, Father, and there are some teachers from America.”

“They are Christians!”

His son shrugged. “There are also schools with Japanese teachers.”

“You wish to learn from Japanese?”

“I wish only to learn,” his son retorted.

What could Il-han say? He was wounded to the heart that his son considered him no longer fit to be his teacher, and yet he would not acknowledge his private hurt. He continued his argument.

“It is all very well to have new learning, but this does not mean the old is without importance.”

His son replied insolently. “We have had enough of this old stuff!”

Il-han forgot himself. His right hand raised itself by instinct and he struck his son a blow on the cheek. The boy’s face grew red, his great eyes flashed. He rose, bowed and left the room.

Il-han heaved deep sighs. He felt suddenly faint and his heart beat too fast. This son — as he strode out of the room he had looked a man, shoulders broad, long legs — ah, he should not have struck his son! What could be done now? Impossible for a father to repent to a son! The elder generation does not ask forgiveness of the younger. And what if the son was right and he was no longer a fit teacher for this time of confusion? What indeed did he himself know now of the world beyond this grass roof?

He pushed aside the book wherein he had been writing a poem. Of late he had found refuge for his troubled spirit in poetry — Oh, heaven, had not his father also taken to writing poetry, and what of the village poet in the grass-roof hut where the Queen had hidden from her enemies? Poetry was a drug, a vice, a cover for helplessness, or perhaps only indolence. He sat for a long time in meditation, searching his soul, accusing himself, submitting his spirit to a humility difficult indeed for a man so proud.

For days after that he did not speak to his son. He conducted the lessons for both sons as usual. The elder son took no part, asked no question, did not look at his father, but he came and took his place and remained in silence. After ten days Il-han told the younger son to leave the room, for he had something to say to the elder. The younger son obeyed and Il-han was left alone with his elder son. He called him by name now, for the first time.

“Yul-chun, I have considered your wish to go to a school in the city. You know I am in exile here in my own house. Is it not dangerous for you in the city when it is known you are my son?”

“No, Father,” Yul-chun said. “I have friends there.”

Il-han was amazed. “How can you have friends when I have none?”

“I have friends,” Yul-chun repeated stubbornly.

The two gazed at each other. It was Il-han who yielded. So his son had friends of whom he knew nothing! A generation earlier a father would have insisted on knowing who his son’s friends were and how they had been made. But this, this was a new generation, one very far from the past, and he did not ask. He could not, for what if the son refused to tell the father? What force had the father now to compel obedience?

“Well enough,” he said at last. “Then go.”

“I shall live with my friends,” Yul-chun said.

“Well enough,” Il-han replied again. “Only let your mother know where the house is. And you will need money.”

He opened the secret drawer of his desk and took out a small leather bag where he kept money for daily needs and gave the bag to his son. “Let me know when you need more.”

He held back the grim words in his mind — with all his independence he takes money from me. There was a bitter comfort in the knowledge and he needed any comfort.

When his son had left the room Il-han went in search of Sunia and found her in the storehouse, standing by the scales to watch the measuring of rice for the household. Her dark hair was powdered with the white dust of the rice, and her eyebrows and eyelashes were white. It is how she will look when she is old, he thought, and for a moment he was saddened. Then he spoke to her in a low voice.

“Will you come aside? I have something to tell you.”

She lingered until the tenant had called out the weight of the grain and then she followed Il-han into the garden where they sat down upon a stone seat in the shade of the bamboo grove.

“Our elder son wants to go to school in the city,” he told her.

She was wiping the rice dust from her face with her kerchief and she did not reply.

“Are you not surprised?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I knew that he would go.”

“And did not tell me?”

“I told him he must wait a year,” she said. “I told him he was not to trouble you while he was too young to leave home.”

“And you think he is not too young?”

“I think he is too old to stay,” she said.

“So,” he said slowly, “so you have known all along! You have kept it secret from me. How many such secrets have you?”

She laughed and then was grave. “I have only one purpose in all I do. It is to keep you at peace. If I told you every vagary and whim and ardor that these two sons of ours have, you would be in turmoil. You could not work.”

“Work,” he repeated sadly. “I am not sure I have a work. An occupation, say!”

“Work,” she repeated firmly. “Some day all that you write down in your books will be of use. Who else is keeping the record?”

She had a way, most comforting, of making him value himself.

“I pray you are right,” he said. “So then, we are to let him go?”

“Yes, because we cannot keep him.”

He mused for a moment. “What has happened that the young no longer obey their elders as we did?”

“They see the havoc around about them,” she replied. “They know that we have failed. They no longer respect us.”

She spoke the cruel words with such calm that he was afraid of her. Then he rose.

“You are right. We must let him go, or he will leave us forever.”

With that he went to his lonely room and took up his pen to brush the characters of a poem now rising to the surface of his mind. It was strange how these poems came to him nowadays, the distillation of his private emotions, of his disillusionment, of his solitude, of his yearning for a future in which, nevertheless, he could not believe. Nothing now could stay the doom he foresaw for his people and his country.

He was surprised that his household could so easily settle itself into a life without the elder son. Peace became its atmosphere, a peace sometimes too deep, Sunia said, for the younger son gave her no trouble.

“I miss that elder son’s naughty ways,” she told Il-han. “Nothing happens now that he has gone. Nothing is broken, no wild animals are brought in from the field, the floors are not dirtied, clothes are not torn, shoes are not lost. I hear no complaints about food. I am not used to such peace!”

“I trust he is not making a commotion in the city,” Il-han said.

Yet he too was secretly pleased to see Yul-chun once or twice a month when he came home with all his garments soiled and needing to be washed, and with his pockets empty of money.

“I daresay you are full of new learning,” Il-han remarked in his dry way.

“Your hair wants cutting,” Sunia said briskly, and went to fetch her scissors.

Yul-chun shouted after her. “I will not have you cut my hair, Mother! They’ll say I have a country haircut.”

“I will cut it!” she called back.

And cut it she did, holding him by the ears and hooking his head under her arm, he half laughing, half angry.

“I will never come home any more if you treat me like this,” he cried while he looked ruefully into the mirror on the wall.

“Then cut your hair before you come,” she told him.

She knew very well that he came back for money from his father and for love from her. He still could not do without her tender scolding and teasing love, and he liked to have her examine his clothes and sew on missing buttons and cry how filthy his socks were and how worn his shoes. In short, he needed to know that however far he went away, she was still his mother. And Il-han watched half sadly, and pondered the difference between father love and mother love. With all his teaching and his concern for his son’s mind and character, Yul-chun did not love him as he loved the mother whose concern was all for his body. Body love was deepest of all love perhaps — woman love in mother and in wife. Yet was it not this love that kept men forever children? Though for that matter, how could he himself live without Sunia? Who would feed him, keep him clean and tended and free of care if he had not her? In his son he saw himself again, and he did not like what he saw.

Because his son was in the city, Il-han began in his own way to take more cognizance of the changes in the times. He bade his servant go to the city now and then, not only to observe secretly, but also to see what was new and to listen to talk on the street and in teashops and gathering places. In this way he learned that the Tonghak rebels were growing in number and though they were repressed by the King and his forces, nevertheless they broke out here and there through the provinces with increasing success. At last their leader was caught and put in prison for execution, and this roused the landfolk to new frenzy and despair. By this time they had no trust in the government, for they saw how the foreign powers pressed upon the King, and they knew how the Queen plotted to keep the Chinese in power in the war that was about to break between China and Japan as in mutual anger these two nations quarreled in Korea.

In the early spring, in the third solar month of that year, while their young leader was still in prison, many Tonghak rebels gathered near the capital and they chose forty men from among them as their representatives, and those went to the King face to face to ask first that their leader be released and next for measures to better their hard lives. The King was wise enough to meet these Tonghak with courtesy and good promises, and so they returned peacefully to their homes. Yet the King had fresh troubles, for the foreign powers, whose envoys sat in the capital like vultures to watch all he did, were angry because he had received the Tonghak, for among the requests which they made was that he should set up an anti-foreign policy and expel all foreigners from the country. The King was caught between his people and the foreigners and so did nothing.

Months passed and when the Tonghak saw that the King did nothing, they rose in greater anger than ever. Twenty thousand came to the town of Poum pretending to make a religious festival there, but instead they demanded freedom from the corruption of their own yangban and oppression from foreign powers alike. Everywhere over the land cries were heard in one city and another. Alas, in the city of Kobu, in the area of Pyonggap, the magistrate outdid all other yangban in corruption, for here he compelled the landfolk to repair the walls of a great reservoir, whose waters were used for irrigating the fields. When these farmers had repaired the reservoir, he levied a heavy tax on the water, which they then used for their fields, and he kept the money for himself. This caused much fury and the landfolk tore down the dam they had repaired, and they stormed into the city and drove the magistrate away from his palace while they occupied the city.

The King and his cabinet then sent armies from the capital to rout the rebels, and hearing this from his servant, Il-han sent a man to follow the armies and watch all that took place. The man came back after many days to report that the government forces were overwhelmed and the Tonghak had moved on to conquer other cities. The King in distraction next begged for help from the Chinese, who sent their armies and only then did the rebels retreat against such force.

“And, master,” the man said when he had related all this to Il-han, “whom do you think I saw there in the battles?”

Il-han knew in his heart and could not speak. “I saw my young master, and he was with his tutor, who lived so many years in your house!” The servant turned away in pity when he saw Il-han’s face.

The times grew still worse. A Chinese army, fifteen hundred strong, with eight field guns, arrived at the Gulf of Asan and marched to the capital. When the Emperor in Japan heard this he sent an army of five thousand soldiers to meet them. There in the Korean capital they went into battle, Chinese and Japanese, and the treaties declaring the independence of Korea became dust. The greater numbers won. Japan drove out the Chinese and then attacked the rebels and put down the Tonghak. Not content with this, the Japanese soldiers dragged the Tonghak leader from his prison and put him to death and the rebels in dismay retired into hiding.

All this Il-han heard from his several men whom he regularly sent out to bring him news. They spoke no more of the tutor, and Yul-chun came home as usual and said nothing and Il-han said nothing, and in the frightful silence between them, he lived in dread. Now that the Tonghak leader was dead, he knew that indeed the Japanese were in power and the King was dependent upon them for his own place. But what of the Queen? It was of her he thought. She would never give up her love for the Chinese, and her hatred of the present confusion could only increase her love for them. She would not yield or bend her will. Her proud imperious heart was stubborn with love. Even Sunia grew afraid for her, and she paused near him one day on her way to some household task.

“I hope you will not think of the Queen,” she said. “Let her solve the troubles she has brought upon herself.”

He looked up at her quickly. “I am not thinking of the Queen,” he told her and knew he lied.

Indeed, why should he think of the Queen? He could not help her and he would only be blamed if he came out of exile and went to her now. Nor could he keep himself secret if he went. Where the Queen was, nothing was secret. Her every word, her every look, was seen and pondered. Spies surrounded her, and though she was reckless and did what she willed, he who was known as her adviser in the past, if he left his house would be killed somewhere in a side street of the city or in a secret corridor of the palace, and no one would know. He did not lack courage but must he die, he hoped that it could be for a worthy reason and with an effect that lived beyond his death.

He continued nevertheless in dread of what he would hear, for his private spies, now increased to eleven men, brought him further reports of the confusions which were taking place. China and Japan, these two, were in constant combat for the prize of his country, its trade, its central position in that part of the world, and the Japanese were carrying the war into China itself, and with every victory they seized new territory. Meanwhile they made this war an excuse for their armies to pour into Korea as reserves, and every day Il-han heard of fresh outrage against his people.

… “The strong have now become too strong,” Il-han’s wise old man servant told him.

The day was hot, in the midsummer of that year, and Il-han sat in his white undergarments under a persimmon tree in the garden. The fruit was small and green and the tree was overloaded so that some fruit fell to the ground, and his younger son was throwing the fruit against a target fixed on the trunk of the tree.

Il-han watched the game while he listened to his servant. “I have been waiting for some other nation to see it,” he now said. He clapped his hands as he spoke, for his son had struck the target in the middle. Then he went on speaking. “Yet there may be a benefit for us in the rising jealousy between the nations. None will want to see Japan grow too powerful.”

“Ah ha,” the servant said, “you have hit the target, too!” He came closer and made his voice low. “The Russian Czar today warned the Japanese Emperor through his envoy here that the territories newly seized from China must be restored.”

“Will it be so?” Il-han inquired.

“Is Japan strong enough to fight Russia?” the servant asked. “Some day yes, but not yet. That is what I hear said in the streets and in the shops. Japan must yield now but she will hate China the more, and this war will go on. As for Russia — perhaps war in another ten years.”

He waited for his master to speak. Instead Il-han cried out in sudden pain. His son, misjudging distance, had let fly a hard green fruit and it struck Il-han just below the left eye.

Il-han pressed his hand to his eye and the boy was overcome with remorse and burst into tears. Sunia came running at the sound of sobbing, and Il-han hastened to explain that he was not blind, that it was a small matter, an accident, but between comforting the child and reassuring his wife he did not say what he had been ready to say. When the hubbub was over, his servant was gone and then he was glad he had not said what troubled him so deeply. He knew now that the Queen was doomed.

Two days before the mid-autumn festival, in the tenth month of that solar year, Il-han’s spies reported that it was common talk in the streets that the guards in the Queen’s palace were being replaced. Outwardly all was as usual, they told him, but those within who were old servants of the Queen said that arms and accouterments were being taken from the palace on the pretense that they were needed elsewhere, and useless weapons were put in their place. The King’s palace was also thus weakened and this at a time when he needed the best defenses. On the afternoon of the seventh day of the festival, one of Il-han’s spies observed that even the gates and doors of the Queen’s palace seemed to be open and unguarded, and he returned with the news.

“Did you speak to anyone of this?” Il-han demanded.

“How could I speak?” the man replied. “It was seen, but no one cried danger.”

“Saddle my horse,” Il-han commanded, and dismissed the man. He would go himself to inquire into what was taking place. Then he considered. Should he tell Sunia or should he not? Not, he decided. Quietly as a thief he went to his own rooms and changed his clothes to old garments Sunia had put aside for the poor. He clung by habit to certain garments and it was his demand that she should always let him see what she gave away so that he could reclaim what he would not part with. In the midst of this changing he heard her flying feet and the door slid back.

“So — you think to steal out of the house!” she cried. “And why do you drag forth those rags which are only fit for beggars?”

He looked at her, half rueful, half smiling. “How is it you smell out my least coming and going? What if I only put on old clothes to go into the garden and — plant a tree — or—”

“Make no games with me,” she said, coming full into the room. “You never plant trees. Why should you plant one now?”

He saw that deceit was impossible and he gave way. “Sunia, the Queen is in danger.”

She advanced on him. “Is she your concern forever?”

“She is our concern,” he pleaded. “She is the concern of every Korean.”

The red flew into her cheeks and the fire into her dark eyes. “And why do you think only you can save her?” she cried.

“At least I can see for myself—”

“See her for yourself, you mean!”

“Sunia!”

“Dare to call my name!” she cried. “I am no Queen — and if you care more for her than you do for us who are your family — you have two sons, if you care nothing for a wife, and are they to lose their lives because you hanker for a Queen? They will be caught and killed, but that does not matter, I suppose, although you will have no more sons from me — but you care nothing for that, either, I suppose!”

She was beside herself and he in turn grew angry. He let her rail and in cold silence he drew on the old clothes and tied a wretched hat on his head and pulled it low on his face.

She ran to the doorway as he came and stood there to prevent him. He lifted her as though she were a child and set her aside and went on his way, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

… It was late when he arrived at the city gate, but it stood open and unguarded, as though prepared for those who must flee. He passed through, none noticing, and guided his horse to the northern part of the city, where the Queen’s palace stood at the far end of the approach to the royal palaces. This approach was a fine road three hundred feet wide and one third of a mile in length. On both sides stood the ministries of State, some of which he saw were newly built. And new, too, were barracks where Japanese soldiers came and went, marching and countermarching. The palaces were surrounded by a wall twelve feet high and the gates were, as the man said, open and unguarded. Il-han descended and tied his horse to a bent tree. He then went through the entrance which was in the western wall and came to the small lake and the foreign house belonging to the King and where he sometimes stayed. The palace where the King lived usually was close by and the Queen’s palace was to the east but adjoining. To the left were the quarters where lived the Royal Guard. This afternoon Il-han saw no guards, but the sun was very hot, and it was possible that some were sleeping inside the palaces. Beyond all these was a pine grove covering some five acres of land.

Into this pine grove Il-han now went, and he sat on a rock behind a large leaning pine and waited. If nothing took place, he would return home again without making himself known, but if there was a misfortune he would be there to save the Queen if he could. The King he knew would not be killed for then the succession would be endangered, and the country thrown into swift revolution. Throughout the night he sat listening and waiting while the darkness deepened and the night creatures came out to creep and call. He heard, or so he thought, the sound of marching and countermarching, but remembering the Japanese guards, he supposed that this was part of their duty.

The black hours were passing, he guessed that day was not too far away and he was considering whether he should not return again to his horse and reach home before too many people were about the streets when a shout reached his ears. Then he heard screams and cries, and listening with ear to the windward, he knew instantly that the palace was under attack. He ran out into the darkness with all speed but he caught his foot on a root and fell. He got himself up again, although he had wrenched his hip, and he hobbled on. Now the Royal Guards were awake and shouting as they ran toward the palace. He was carried along with them, still hidden by the darkness when they paused, bewildered and inquiring, only to hear that there was no attack, and that what had been shouted was no more than the marching cries of the Japanese near the western wall.

At this the guards went back again to their barracks. Il-han, however, did not return to the pine grove. Instead he hid behind a shrine set in a rock garden. He had not long to wait, for the outcry had roused the Colonel of the Royal Guard, who, distrusting the commotion among the Japanese soldiers, was already on his way to the Ministry of War. When he reached the main entrance to the palace grounds he was surrounded by the Japanese soldiers, and Il-han, looking out from behind the rock, saw in the flare of torches that all he had feared was about to happen. Eight shots rang out and the Colonel fell, whereupon the soldiers drew out their swords and cut the dead man to pieces and threw those pieces into the small lake nearby.

Now indeed Il-han knew that he must find the Queen and quickly, if he was to save her. He came out from his hiding place and, much hampered by his wrenched hip, he hobbled toward the gate which led to her palace. Alas, he could make no speed. The Japanese soldiers were pushing forward in a shouting, bellowing, roaring mass, their bayonets pointed ahead of them as they met the fleeing hordes of palace servants. The Royal Guards were once more aroused and they let fly their bullets helter-skelter and killed some seven or eight of the soldiers before they were swept into the mass of others advancing and so cut down. Meanwhile the soldiers pressed on into the Queen’s palace, followed by beggars and local ruffians bent on loot. Among these Il-han could hide and he burrowed his way among them, trying by every means to reach the Queen first, though what he could do now to save her he did not know.

The mob filled the palace, and the rough soldiers seized every woman by the hair as soon as they saw her, demanding to know whether she was the Queen. Whatever the women said, the soldiers beheaded them and threw the heads aside or tossed them from a window. Still further the mob went until they reached the very last room, and now Il-han, pressed among them, heard two shots. Then he heard a low scream and he knew it was the Queen who screamed. The scream ended in a long moaning sigh. He bent his head and bit his lips until he tasted his own blood, but he could do nothing. She was dead.

The crowd stopped, men looked at one another, and then one by one they went away, the looters to loot and those who had committed the deed to escape so that none was known to be guilty. When all were gone and only Il-han was left, he went into the room where the Queen lay alone and he looked down into the lovely face he knew so well, still the same lovely face though aged now with the years during which he had not once seen her. He crouched down beside her and took her hand, still warm. Blood flowed from her left breast and from her smooth neck and he lifted the edge of her wide silk skirt and held it to the wounds. The silk was crimson and it did not show the stain except that the stuff turned a deeper crimson.

So he sat in the empty palace until sunrise and he sat on into the morning until at about the ninth hour a gardener came to the door, barefoot, so that Il-han did not hear his footsteps. He peered in and saw Il-han, whom he did not know, so long had Il-han been absent from the palace.

“Who are you, brother?” he asked.

“I am her servant,” Il-han said.

The man came near and stared down into the pale face of the dead Queen. “She liked white lotus flowers,” he said at last, “and now her face is as white as any lotus flower. What shall we do with her, brother?”

“Have you a cart?” Il-han asked.

“I have an oxcart,” the man said.

“Bring it to the nearest door and help me lift her into it,” Il-han said.

The man went away and in a short time came back again and they lifted the Queen, so slender that her weight was nothing for the two men, and they carried her to the cart and laid her there and the man covered her with the straw that filled the cart. Then he climbed up and the ox drew the cart away while Il-han followed far behind and slowly, for his hip was swollen and tears ran down his face for pain. Yet even this was not enough. Before the cart had reached the gate the dead Queen was discovered by soldiers and ragamuffins and they dragged her body out from under the straw and hacked it to pieces with swords and knives and piled the straw about the pieces and set all afire.

It was time for Il-han’s heart to break. He covered his face with his hat and hobbled away from that fire and into the street. His horse was gone, but the oxcart was there and he climbed into it, and bade the man take him home.

… Of that beautiful queen all that was left, he heard afterward, was the little finger of her right hand. This escaped the flames and was found by the man when he went back next day at Il-han’s command to see what bones were there, so that he might bring them together and give them honor. No bones were there, for dogs had wandered freely throughout the palace, but under a stone lay the little finger. The man took it up tenderly and wrapped it in a lotus leaf he had plucked from the lake. Then he took it to the King’s palace and demanded entrance and was received.

“I went into the King’s palace,” he told Il-han when all was done, for Il-han had said he would pay him well if he came to his grass roof with the whole story. “I went into the audience hall and the King sat on his throne surrounded by his ministers, and the old Prince-Parent sat there again at his right hand. The King listened to what I told him and he covered his eyes with his hand and he would not receive the lotus leaf from me. But he bade a minister take it and embalm it in a golden box and he said the Queen must be given a great funeral and a tomb must be built.”

Sunia was there while all this was told, and when the man was gone she took Il-han’s hand and held it and said not a word, but only sat beside him in silence, her warm hand clasping his.

So they sat until at last Il-han gave a great sigh and he turned to her and said, “My wife — my wife of great heart.”

Then he put her hand away and returned to his books.

… Two years passed before the astrologers could fix upon the place for the Queen’s tomb and then they fixed upon a stretch of land a few miles beyond the city wall. A thousand acres were here sequestered by the King and all houses were removed, for the tract held villages as well as mountains, hills, brooks and fields. Thousands upon thousands of young trees were planted upon the King’s command and fortunes spent in making a beautiful garden such as the Queen loved when she was alive. Her tomb was built upon the highest spot, a tomb of marble, encircled by a carved balustrade of marble. Before the tomb was a great table of white marble polished to shine like glass, and this was for making sacrifices to the spirit of the Queen. Beside the table stone lanterns miraculously carved were set into rock, and marble figures stood in graceful reverence.

When all was finished to his content, the King announced the day for the funeral, a fine fair day, and people came from far and near. In spite of all her whims and ways, the people had loved their Queen for her beauty, for her merriment, for her courage and her brilliant mind and even for her stubborn will. For them, now that she was dead, she remained as a symbol of what their country once had been and could no more be. Already the victorious conquerors were at work to stamp out the ancient ways, the language and traditions of the Koreans.

Il-han stood far off and alone, and he watched the splendid scene. With the Queen gone, could his nation survive? He asked the question and could make no answer. His heart lay dead within him. He could not feel its beat. The Queen whom he had reverenced, the woman whom he had — had he loved her? He did not know. Perhaps Sunia knew better than he, but if she did, he would not ask her. Let the secret lie within the tomb of all that was ended and could not live again. He had no faith in resurrection.