The Inverted House
caused pearls to be dissolved in the wine whereof she drank? Jewels that glow like diamonds make the wearer glow by reflection. It is an acknowledged fact that pearls are affected by the health of the person around whose neck they are clasped. It is a big subject and I have merely touched upon it. Sufficient it is to say that the fragrance in this room is caused entirely by jewels and much of it by my lovely collection of jades."
As he spoke he struck his hands together and a servant entered carrying goblets as green as rock-moss.
"This," declared Yuan Shi Kai, "is a wine made entirely of the nectar of flowers. One glass is all that any man may drink. Two glasses might prove fatal. They would bring on a surge of ecstasy within him that would swamp his heart. Beyond two, no man could live."
Ras Orla sipped slowly of the cool soft liquid. It was sweeter than honey and as he drank it seemed that all the trivialities of life vanished, the gloomy, the melancholy and the unhappy. He wanted to shout, to dance. To go out in the fields and laugh at the yellow moon, the yellow moon that was like a round disk of glowing amber. But he refrained from doing any of these things. Yuan Shi Kai had something to tell him, something unusual or else he would not have brought him to the Jade Room of shimmering, dazzling jewels.
"My house," murmured Yuan Shi Kai, "is a dwelling place of much beauty but far more beautiful than any-
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