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We had by now gone too far for me to challenge or disbelieve. One day yet I might awaken, but for now I might as well go along with whatever this strange phenomenon truly was. And so for the following 24 minutes I spoke as best I could to this vision of loveliness, about Plantagenet Palliser's wife, and such of this good lady's views as I could recall, and I spoke about Lizzie Eustace and Lord Fawn and Mr. Emilius and all the other figures in the book, and if I stumbled vainly through a thicket of distant reminiscences, I could surely be forgiven, because all the while I would have had to be wondering if there would soon be a tap on my arm, and the ordeal would come to a sudden and embarrassing end.
It was the train guard who eventually brought it to a stop. He strode imperiously out of the station office, blew a shrill blast on his whistle, and began to wave frantically with a green flag. The young woman, smiling broadly, suddenly said, "Quick! Back onto the train. You're leaving. You have to go!"
There was a roar of diesel machinery, and the locomotive and its gaggle of carriages jerked forward. And I did indeed climb back up into the carriage, if somewhat under protest, and somehow somnambulant, re-embarking as if in a dream—and all the while I found myself saying to this mysterious woman words like yes of course, but who are you, what are you, why are you here, I think I could love you, I don't want to leave you!
"Don't be so silly," she said. "Get into the train. But give me your card if you like. I'll write."
I tore into the compartment, woke up George, found a card and hurriedly tossed it out of the window. The train was moving now, and the last vision I had was of the Chinese woman scrambling on her knees in the sand, searching for the tiny, white oblong of board with my name and address—and then the train rounded a bend, and whatever she had been vanished clear away. I gazed back out of the window for the next 10 or 20 minutes, but there was nothing behind me now except sand. Even the oily road had disappeared, and the view on all sides was merely flatness, and the horizon, and nothing more at all.
George was astonished by what he had seen. She was adorable, he kept muttering. Adorable. And when I told him about the conversation, which I could see he didn't want to believe had taken place, he kept shaking his head. Unbelievable, he would say every few minutes, and gaze out at the darkening sand.
We traveled in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia and Siberia for the next six weeks, and in time contrived almost to forget that strange half-hour at Kuytun station. And then I came back to Hong Kong, and to my little apartment—and there on the doormat, among the bills from China Light & Power and The Sincere Co. and Wing On Ltd., was an envelope with unfamiliar, feminine handwriting and a smudged postmark from a Chinese town. It was from her. And this, in paraphrase, is what she wrote:
"My dear Mr. Winchester,
Please permit me to introduce myself. My name is Xing Yongzhen; I am 34 years old, I was born in Xi'an and went to university there. I have been married for the past nine years to a Mr. Lu, who is a senior cadre in the (Communist) Party. We have a five-year-old son whom we have called Henry, an English name.
We lived in Xi'an until two years ago when my husband was abruptly transferred to Kuytun. They never said why. It was probably a punishment for some error, about which he was never told. He was made in charge of an experimental hydroponics factory. A serious demotion for him, and a bad business for us all. Kuytun is a horrid place. A desert fortress town, that's all. It is dirty and broken down. It is miles and miles from anywhere. No one interesting lives here. My husband and I do not get on well with each other. We are very miserable. I am, at least.
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