The blazing sunlight beat down unhindered, and moisture steamed up from the road, blurring the view with a sense of rippling waves, as though a transparent veil of merfolk silk hung between near and far. It seemed that if only that thin, translucent veil could be torn away, the figure that had gone into the distance and vanished would appear before his eyes again-
Chen Caozhi stood there for a long time. Only when his shadow grew shorter and shorter, shrinking beneath his feet, did he board the ox cart. Lai De, who had waited quietly beside him all this while, flicked a slender bamboo switch across the yellow ox's back, and the cart immediately rumbled into motion.
Zhu Yingtai had finally revealed that she was a woman. This came as no particular surprise to Chen Caozhi, who had suspected it long ago. He felt that a woman of such overflowing talent was truly rare: she was accomplished in Confucian and abstruse learning, calligraphy and painting, and music alike. Forthright in speech, she never dealt in false courtesies, and was a rare friend indeed. Her sharp tongue and noble bearing overshadowed her feminine charm, and Chen Caozhi seldom regarded her as a woman, thinking of her only as a kindred friend. Yet her words just now, about hearing his flute from six hundred li away and lingering outside the Peach Grove, unable to bear leaving, had moved him. Just as Lu Weiwei's love of flowers bordered on obsession, Zhu Yingtai's devotion to music was deeply moving-
Even in later ages, let alone here in the Eastern Jin, kindred friendship between men and women was rare. And now this friendship might very well end here, the music over and the company dispersed. Chen Caozhi was steeped in the sorrow of parting.