In the grove he bent above the deathlike face. A tremor crossed it.

She brushed a hand lightly across her eyes, as if visions fled, and sat up. The color came slowly back to her face.

“I had a dream!” she breathed.

The green light of the grove shimmered about her softly and touched her face.

“It was William Archer and the coat. But I cannot remember—” She passed a hand across her forehead.

“Never mind,” said Richard. “We are going to take it home to him.”

Her hand dropped to the dragons and smoothed them absently.

“And to his sons’ sons forever!” she murmured happily.

At the entrance to the grove, dark incurious faces peered in at the blue-robed figure that rested against the gnarled trunk.... The sound of quick, indrawn breath passed among the leaves.

Richard More lifted her to her feet.

“Come!” he said.

They passed out of the grove where the sedan chairs waited them. The bearers prone on their faces on the ground uttered low words that rose in a kind of chant and ended in the long indrawn note of awe.

Kou Ying alone stood erect.

He held out his hand to the blue-robed figure and escorted it to the sedan chair and seated it with grave care.

Richard More took his place in the chair beside her.

“We return by the lower route,” said Kou Ying.

He spoke a sharp word to the bearers. They sprang to their feet and touched the handles of the chairs.

“Keep to the lower hill by the spur,” he commanded.

The procession moved toward the low hill that edged the plain. And as they made their way up the long slope at an easy trot Richard More’s eyes rested on his wife.

She sat erect beneath the canopy of the chair, the blue robe with its gold dragons wrapped about her. Her tranquil face in its white hair looked across the plain.... She was more beautiful than he had ever known her! A queen in this robe of the Past!

He reached his hand till it touched the one that lay on the arm of the chair. The face with its tranquil smile turned to him.

And he saw with a start that the blue of the eyes and the blue of the coat were one....

They reached the spur of the hill and Kou Ying gave the signal to halt.

Behind them in the face of the cliff the seated Buddha looked across the plain.

And ahead, far beyond them on the plain, a single figure beneath a red umbrella plodded stolidly on, moving toward the tomb of its ancestors.

And as it went the red umbrella bobbed slowly, a spot of color in the distant far-reaching grayness of the plain.