stoves in the reading room. Even though there was barely enough coal to keep the fires going, yet the very sight of them had an effect of making one feel warm. As to the books, there were none worth reading: they were all ancient works—almost no new publications to speak of.
I did not mind this as I did not go there to read. There were usually a few men besides myself, sometimes as many as ten or fifteen, all thinly clad like myself, and all trying to keep warm under the pretext of reading. This suited me well. On the street I was always in danger of meeting people I knew and receiving from them contemptuous glances. There was no such danger in the library, for my more fortunate acquaintances preferred to sit by other iron stoves that they had access to, or by their own earthen stoves.
Though there were no books that I cared to read, I did find the atmosphere quiet and conducive to meditation. As I sat in the reading room and reviewed the past, I realized that during the past seven or eight months I had neglected—because of love, this blind love—other things in life just as important. The first of these is life itself, which is necessary for the embodiment of love and without which love cannot exist. There are still in this world roads to life for those who are willing to make the struggle, and I had not yet forgotten how to flap my wings, though I had become so much more ineffectual than I used to be.
The room and readers gradually disappear and I see fishermen in angry storms, soldiers in trenches, rich men in motor cars, opportunists in foreign concessions, unknown heroes in the fields and hills, professors on the platforms, politicians and thieves who carry on their work in the depth of the night.
As for Tzu-chun, she was not with me in these visions. She
