“She is truly the most beautiful I have ever seen,” Rann said, and he made a decision. “I must have her for my own. Her face reminds me of you, somehow, in the expression.”
Stephanie smiled. “It is my Chinese half, Rann.”
He kissed her then, his kiss long and gentle and full on her soft lips, and she returned his kiss.
“And you must have her,” she said when he released her. “You must take her to your home this very night. My father and I present her to you and charge her to look after you.”
“But I must pay for her,” Rann protested. “I have money, Stephanie, and I can afford her.”
Stephanie was firm. “And we too have money and can afford her. There is no need for us to buy and sell goddesses between us. You are to have her as a gift from us. If you must think of money then think of all the money we will make when you have to redecorate your apartment to provide a suitable home for such a goddess.”
They laughed then and went arm in arm to the elevator and joined her father in the drawing room of the house next door. The houses had been ingeniously joined by a door in the back of Mr. Kung’s office in the shop, which opened onto his study in their home.
“I will bring only my most important and wealthy clients here,” Mr. Kung explained to him. “Here we will keep our most treasured and valuable articles and all must be for sale. This is one sad decision which must be made early in this business if one is to be a success. One must either be a collector or a dealer, for one cannot be both. Therefore, if one is to be a dealer, everything must have a sale price. It pleases me to know that I can keep my most treasured things here, however, and if I do not like one who inquires, I do not bring him here and so he does not see my best pieces and so he does not want them. It is a small deception, yes, but it soothes me somehow for buying and selling beautiful things and so it is a harmless deception.
“I am glad you are to have my goddess and Stephanie was right to give her to you. I was making a place for her here, but I like to think of her in your home. She will be happy there and you will be happy with her there and so I shall be happy, also. Ah—it should be so simple for me to place my daughter there as well. It is easier, though, to deal with goddesses than with human beings. Goddesses can be to us only what we need and want them to be while, alas, with humans it is not always so.”
Rann laughed and they talked lightly of his business and Rann’s writing until the servant appeared to say Stephanie was waiting for them to join her in the dining room. Rann was filled with delicious food and warm wine when he said good night later that evening.
The snow had stopped and he found a taxi easily. He sat in the backseat with the goddess in his arms as indeed Stephanie had been only a few hours earlier. With pleasure he remembered the softness of her supple figure as his arms had enfolded her and the sweet gentleness with which she had pressed her lips to his, returning his kiss. So different from the demanding kisses he had shared with Lady Mary. They had been wild and uncontrolled, each of them demanding satisfaction for himself each from the other, each with no thought of the other beyond that satisfaction. Remembering Stephanie, there was a sweetness that pervaded his entire being with thoughts of her presence, and yet not without passion. Rann felt a familiar warmth rising in his loins as he recalled the shared intimacy with Stephanie.
He ordered the taxi to stop and he walked on the freshly fallen snow for the remaining short blocks to his apartment building.
“That is a very beautiful figure, sir,” said the night doorman as he offered to take the goddess from Rann’s arms.
“That’s all right,” Rann told him. “I can make it myself. I’d prefer it. She was a gift from a very dear friend.” He could not bear the thought of her in anyone’s arms as she had been in his.
He entered his apartment and placed the goddess on the small table in the entrance hall and admired her for a moment, then he went into the study and dialed Stephanie’s number.
“She is home,” he said when she came on the wire.
“I am glad,” Stephanie said.
“She is so beautiful where she stands now that I know I have been saving this space for her. You must come and see her here.”
Stephanie agreed. “Yes, I must.”
“Will you come here for dinner? Sung can prepare for us and he is very good and perhaps you could bring your father, too.”
“I do not think my father will come,” Stephanie told him. “He has not been well for some time and rarely goes out anymore. However”—she laughed softly, teasing Rann—“I am a big girl now. I don’t need a chaperone. I can come alone if you wish.”
“Tomorrow then.”
“So soon? Very well, I shall come tomorrow if it pleases you.”
“It does. Until tomorrow, then?”
“Until tomorrow, then,” she repeated. “Good night, Rann.”
He heard the soft click as she broke the connection.
THEY WERE TOGETHER ALMOST EVERY EVENING in the months that followed and Rann’s friends eagerly accepted Stephanie into their homes and hearts, especially Rita Benson. They had dinner with her one evening and as Rann fitted the key into the door of his apartment upon returning he heard the telephone begin to ring. He rushed to answer before its ring could wake Sung.
It was Rita. “You had better marry that girl quickly, Rann,” she told him. “She is too beautiful to last long and some hot shot will take her away from you if you aren’t careful.”
Rann laughed. “Rita, we haven’t even discussed it.”
“So—what’s there to talk about?” Rita made her tone indignant. “Men! Always talking. The girl is in love with you. Are you too blind to see the way she looks at you? Besides, I like her and it’s a rare thing for me to like a woman, especially one so young and beautiful, but she is just right for you and you are going to lose out if you don’t get busy. How did your mother like her?”
Rann had taken Stephanie to Ohio with him to visit with his mother over one weekend.
“She liked her very much,” Rann told her. “She even said the same things you have said after our visit.”
“That settles it then—get busy or your mother and I will gang up with Stephanie’s father and railroad you both into it.”
Rita laughed and ended the call, leaving Rann in deep thought. He decided at last that he would discuss his own feelings with Stephanie when next they met.
“Can you not understand, Rann, that is exactly why I cannot marry you?”
They were comfortably settled in the study with coffee and a cordial served to them by Sung after they had completed a delicious seafood dinner he had prepared. It had been Sung’s own concoction, consisting of various types of shellfish with bamboo shoots and bean sprouts in a sauce tart but at the same time with the unmistakable pinch of ginger Rann had come to expect of Sung’s cooking. It had been a thoroughly successful experiment, and both Rann and Stephanie had complimented him profusely. To show his pleasure, Sung had served them a rare Chinese liqueur from a bottle he had treasured for years and was difficult to locate in New York.
Rann and Stephanie had spent that afternoon walking in the park while Rann explained his feelings to her. She listened to all he had to say and had then said, “Please, do not let us talk more now. Allow me to think while we refresh ourselves at dinner. Then when we have finished we can speak of this again.”
Now she shifted her position slightly, leaned forward in her chair, and placed her hand on Rann’s arm.
“You must see and respect my feelings also. I do love you. There is no denying that, but even more important to me is that I admire and respect you deeply, at times even more than my own father. I am impressed with your mind and with the wide and varied range of interests you have. I am American enough, perhaps, that I wish to marry you, disregarding all that I am, alas, Chinese enough to know I also must consider.”
She again shifted her position, but her eyes met his with her inner conflict evident as she continued.
“We must consider your children, Rann, and you must, of course, have many sons.”
Rann lifted his eyebrows, mocking her with amused exaggeration.
“Am I merely to be considered as a stud animal then, and not as a human being?”
Sipping the sweet liquid from the tiny glass, she thought for moments before answering.
