At this point Vesperus, who had been lying inside the bedclothes, suddenly sat bolt upright, exposing his chest and back.

"That's right!" he exclaimed. "You can't see the women in a great household, no matter who you are. Or if you do see them, it's never a good view that you get. You thieves are the only ones who are able to see them properly! If you hadn't brought this up, I'd have missed a glorious opportunity. But it raises another question in my mind: when you see such beautiful women, with such well-developed vulvas, what happens if your excitement gets too much for you and you can't control yourself?"

"When I first saw such sights as a young man, I couldn't control myself and would often sit there in the darkness and shoot my handgun at the woman, making believe I was doing it with her. Later, as I saw more of them, they came to mean less and less. Gradually a vulva came to resemble some kitchen utensil and aroused about as much feeling in me. Only when I saw a woman doing it with her husband and heard the moans coming from their mouths and the pumping sound from down below did I get a little excited."

Now that the Knave was touching on such fascinating subject matter, Vesperus, who was sitting up in bed not far away, feared that even the remaining two or three feet would lessen the impact of what was being said, so he flipped over and lay beside the Knave.

"If you're not too bored with such trivialities," the Knave went on, "let me tell you one or two of the things I've seen and heard, so you'll appreciate that, although I may be a thief, I am also a spy in the camp of love and a chronicler of women's ways, not some dumb know-nothing who can't even write the word love."

"Splendid! If you'll do that, one night of talk with you will be worth more than ten years of study. Do go ahead."

"I've seen so many things, I hardly know where to begin. Ask me anything you like and I'll try to answer."

"Fine. Well, then, which are more common, the women who like it or the ones who don't?"

"Oh, the women who like it, of course. Still, there are those who don't. In general, out of every hundred women you'll find only one or two who don't like it. But even among those who do, there are two kinds: those who like doing it and say so, and those who try to give the impression they don't like it even though they do. Only after their husbands have forced them on stage do these latter ones show their true colors.

"Of the two kinds, it is the former that is the easier to dispatch. At first, as I watched from a dark corner while a wife brazenly urged her husband to do it, I thought she must be a real wanton whose energy would last all night, but, lo and behold, she spent after just a few thrusts and then felt drowsy and only wanted to sleep. She no longer cared if her husband did it or not, and she gave up trying to spur him into action or keep him up to the mark. By contrast, the woman who really wants it but pretends she doesn't is terribly hard to live with. I was robbing a house once and saw the husband trying to get his unwilling wife to do it. When he mounted her, she pushed him off, so he concluded she genuinely didn't want to and went to sleep and began snoring. But then she set herself to tossing and turning in bed in order to get him to wake up. When he didn't wake up, she shook him. But he was sound asleep and still didn't wake up. So she started screaming, 'Thief! Thief!' Anyone else in my position would have been frightened off at that point, but I realized she wasn't really crying thief, she just wanted her husband to wake up and have sex with her. And so it proved. He woke up with a start, and she was ready with a clever excuse: 'The cat was chasing a mouse and it jumped down and made a noise that I mistook for a burglar. Actually it wasn't anything.' She clasped him tightly and rubbed her vulva beside his penis until he got excited and mounted her. At first, when he thrust, she managed to refrain from uttering any cries of passion, but after several hundred strokes she started to moan and her fluid came in a steady stream. She let him thrust a while and then wipe up, in constant attendance on her. At midnight her husband spent, but her own passions were still at their height. She was greatly distressed at his wanting to stop, but she couldn't bring herself to ask him to continue. Her only solution was to start sighing and groaning as if she were ill in order to get him to rub her chest and stomach, thus preventing him from sleeping. It was too much for the husband, who couldn't help mounting her and beginning all over again. This went on until cockcrow, keeping me up all night. Then, just as I was about to gather up their valuables, dawn broke and I had to sneak away, and I never did manage to rob them. But that is how I know that this kind of woman is hard to live with."

"Indeed. But let me ask you this, are most women capable of passionate cries while they're having sex?"

"Most are, of course. Still, there are those who aren't, probably one or two in every ten. But women have three kinds of cries, which sound very different even when expressed in the same words. We thieves are the only ones who can tell the difference. Even the men having sex with them don't know."

"What are they?"

"When they start, the women aren't feeling any pleasure and have no desire to cry out. They're just putting on an act to get their husbands excited. You can tell that from the sound they make; in general, although they cry out, they don't move at all and their words are distinct rather than garbled. When they begin to feel pleasure, not only are their minds and mouths full of sensuality, every part of their bodies is starting to feel the same way. The cries are audible, but the words come out incoherent and disjointed. When their pleasure reaches its climax, their energies flag, their arms and legs go limp, and they couldn't utter any cries even if they wanted to. Now the sound comes from their throats rather than their mouths and is barely audible.

"But even this barely audible sound is too much for the listener. I was robbing a house once and saw a husband and wife having sex. At first as they tumbled about, the noise she made was deafening, but it had not the slightest effect on me. Then she fell silent and stopped moving, as if her husband had done her to death. I cocked an ear and drew closer. All I could hear was a wheezing and gasping from her throat that sounded like something between speech and a sigh, and I knew she had reached her climax. A wave of excitement swept over me, I began to tingle all over, and my semen came of its own accord without resort to the handgun. That is how I know women are capable of this sort of cry as well."

At this point Vesperus heard in his imagination the most wanton of women uttering her cries of passion in his ear, and his body began to tingle all over, too, and before he knew it his long-suppressed semen was spreading over the mat.

There were more questions he wanted to ask, but it was now broad daylight. The two men got up, washed, and then sat down again to continue their talk, which was full of the same kind of fascinating information. The lecturer may occasionally have shown signs of fatigue, but his listener's interest never flagged, and after several days of intimate conversation an even closer bond had formed between them.

"I've seen many women since I left home," said Vesperus at this stage, "but none who has taken my fancy, and I'd come to the conclusion that there are no beautiful girls left in the world. From what you say, though, you've seen girls like that not once but many times. Since I'm devoting my life to sex, I feel thrice blessed in getting to know you, and I'd be missing a golden opportunity if I failed to entrust you with this concern of mine. I beg you, brother, to pick out the most beautiful girl from among those you've seen and think up some way for me to get a look at her. If she really is strikingly beautiful, well, to be candid, I was born under the lucky star of love. All my life it's been the same way. Once I meet a woman, I don't need to seek her out, she comes looking for me. When the time is right, I'll ask you to pull off one of your miracles and arrange a rendezvous. Who knows, perhaps you as the reincarnation of the Knave of Kunlun may come to my aid as a latter-day Master Cui?"