Alas, one day the beauties of spring will fade in the old garden and thoughts of the past will be too painful to bear.

Far from feeling jealous of her sworn sisters, Cloud was prepared to share the man she loved with her kindred spirits. Immoral as her conduct may have been, it has much to commend it as an act of friendship. If you look for comparable behavior among men, you won't find any. Nowadays the projects that sworn brothers embark on may not be entirely moral, either, but the spirit of envy is even stronger among them than among outsiders. What a lucky thing such men were not born as women! As women they would have gone to extremes and not rested until they had run the gamut of debauchery.

Poem:

The women hid Vesperus in their house, and each of them slept with him for one night, in order of seniority, after which the rotation began again, all without discord. After several rotations, Vesperus added a new rule entitled the "Thrice Alone Once Together Coordinated System": after sleeping with him individually for three nights, they were to sleep with him collectively for a night before returning to the rotation. Thanks to this new rule, they were able to experience the joys of togetherness.

Once the rule was established, they set up another, extra-wide bed and made for it a five-foot-long pillow and a coverlet sewn from six widths of material. When they slept together, Vesperus would get the three sisters to lie side by side, while he himself rolled here and there from body to body, never touching the bed, but making love wherever he fancied as he worked his way from one side to the other. Luckily none of the women possessed a great deal of sexual stamina, and after thrusts ranging in number from one hundred to two hundred, they would want to spend. When the woman in the middle had spent, he would move to the one on the left, and when she had spent, he would turn to her neighbor on the right. A few hours sufficed to complete his main task. The rest of the time he liked to spend fondling their soft charms and savoring their fragrance. The bliss that was now his had been enjoyed in the past, even among emperors, by only a handful of epicures such as Xuanzong of the Tang, Yangdi of the Sui, and the Last Ruler of the Chen. Since all of the other, more straitlaced emperors had never enjoyed it, think how remote it was from the experience of some licentiate too poor to keep wife or concubine!

Shortly after Vesperus moved in, Cloud held a secret conclave with her sisters. "It's a marvelous piece of luck having this immortal, this treasure, here for our enjoyment," she said. "My only concern is that the best things in life always come to grief. At the height of success one ought to be constantly on guard against failure. We mustn't let any outsider know, or the news will spread. Then he'd have to leave, and that might be very awkward."

"This house is out of the way," said Lucky Pearl, "and we don't have any casual visitors, so what goes on in here will never be known outside. Even our own stewards have to wait beyond the inner gate, and we simply won't let them in. No, it's not men I'm worried about, it's a certain woman who lives nearby. If she ever finds out, the fun will be over."

"Who do you mean?" asked Lucky Jade.

"Someone with the same surname was ours. Don't you know?"

"Aunt Flora?"

"Who else? You know what an oversexed creature she is. She may be a widow, but men are constantly on her mind. What's more, she was with us that day at the temple, and when he kowtowed, she went crazy, too, as if she'd have liked to kneel down and kowtow along with him if only she weren't too embarrassed. What a performance she gave! When we got home, she praised his looks to the skies and said what a pity it was she didn't know his name, because if she did, she'd never let him get away. If someone as lusty as that learns we have him tucked away over here and are having such a good time with him, do you suppose she won't get envious and set a trap for us? Something awful is bound to happen-apart altogether from the fact that the fun will be over."

"You're absolutely right. She's terribly devious. We'll just have to take precautions."

"But what should we do?" asked Lucky Jade.

"I used to worry that the maids might leak the news," said Lucky Pearl, "but now that they have Satchel to keep them quiet, I doubt that they'll be inclined to gossip. So I'm not worried that she'll hear about Vesperus, only that she'll notice him. When she comes over, she'll suddenly sneak into the room without warning, her eyes darting about like a thieving rat's, as if we were up to something behind her back. The key thing in defending ourselves against her is to have the maids take turns keeping watch along the border between the houses. When they see her coming, they should give a secret signal, a cough, say, or a shout, to allow us time to hide our man. The other thing we have to do is think of some hiding place where she won't find him."

"What would be the best place?" asked Lucky Jade.

The three women exchanged ideas. One suggested he hide behind the door; another suggested under the bed.

"No, neither place will do," said Lucky Pearl. "Those thief's eyes of hers are awfully sharp, and they'll spot someone behind a door or under a bed in a flash. In my opinion there's just one place you could put him where even an immortal would never think of looking."

"Where do you mean?" asked the other two.

Lucky Pearl pointed to a piece of furniture, a trunk used for storing old paintings. It was more than six feet long, two feet wide, and over three feet high and was covered in bamboo fabric stretched over thin wooden slats. "That would be ideal," she said, "not too long nor too wide, but just big enough for a man to lie down in. If we empty out all the paintings, we can hide him in there in an emergency and she'll never suspect a thing. My only concern is that he may suffocate, but if we knock out a couple of slats, he should be all right."

"Brilliant! Let's do that," said the others. They told the maids to take turns on lookout duty and then knocked a few slats out of the trunk. They also told Vesperus that anytime he saw a strange woman coming, he should lie down inside the trunk and keep absolutely quiet. After the plan was put into operation, their aunt made several visits, but the maids gave the secret signal, Vesperus disappeared inside the trunk, and she noticed nothing.

But there was trouble in store for the sisters. One day they found a notebook in Vesperus's cardcase and, on opening it, saw that it contained the names of a number of women who were classified into categories and evaluated in critical comments. The notebook was in Vesperus's handwriting.

"When did you see these women?" they asked. "And when did you write this? And what was the point of it?"

"Oh, I did that while I was living in the temple," said Vesperus. "I made those notes as I observed the visitors to the temple. My idea was to compile a list from which I would select a few brilliant prospects for intensive cultivation."

"Well, and did you find your brilliant prospects?"

Vesperus folded his hands in salutation. "Behold, my three pupils."