with a pattern impressed upon it. The exotic fragrance which smelled something but not quite like the fragrance of olives became stronger.
"Oh, what fine soap," Mrs. Ssu said, as she held the palm-green object up to her nose, as delicately as if she were holding an infant, and sniffed at it.
"Mm, mm, you can use that from now on . . . "
As he said this, she noticed, his eyes were fixed on her neck. Her face felt warm from the cheeks down. She had always felt a roughness whenever she happened to touch her neck, especially behind the ears, and she had realized that it was due to an accumulation of ancient dirt. She had not paid the slightest attention to it, but now under his gaze and before the cake of exotic-smelling soap, she could not prevent the warmth in the face. Moreover, the warm feeling spread and soon reached to her ears. She made up her mind then that she was going to give herself a good scrubbing with that soap after supper.
"There are spots where mere tsao-chia soap won't do any good," she said to herself.
"Ma, give that to me," Hsiu-erh said, reaching out for the palm-green paper. Chao-erh, the younger daughter who had been playing out in the yard, also came running in. Mrs. Ssu pushed them aside, wrapped the soap as before, first in the thin paper and then the palm-green paper, and, reaching up, put it on the topmost shelf on the washstand. She gave it a final caressing glance and then turned back to her work.
"Hsueh-cheng!" Ssu-ming suddenly called, as if he had just remembered something, and sat down in a high-backed chair opposite his wife.
"Hsueh-cheng!" she also called.
She put down her paper ingots and listened but there was
