Mrs. Yi was surprised to see that Kay looked twenty years older, as if she had one foot in the grave. She sat Kay down on the sofa and offered her a cup of hot tea.

“Kay, is your work going well?”

“Yes. I’ve become one with the villagers, and they all respect me. It’s about my husband. He’s leaving me.”

“Doesn’t he love you anymore?”

“He loves me. Yet he says he doesn’t know why he keeps thinking of leaving me forever. He made up his mind last night. He’s packing now, and he plans to leave at midnight. He said if he walks at night he won’t see his own body. I’m so worried! What shall I do? I have no idea. I have an ominous foreboding about his going . . .”

“I think—” drawled Mrs. Yi as she paused to consider, “you can look at this matter in a different light. You don’t have to worry too much about him. He loves you. That’s enough, right? You can stay in your clinic quietly exploring his love while you treat patients.”

“Chunxiu, do you think he will be all right after leaving me? He’s sick . . .”

“Perhaps he’s recovering.”

“You’re right. I feel the same way. I wonder if I was holding him back.”

“You’d better leave him to his own devices. He’ll never give you up. How could he ever give up someone like you?”

They fell silent. They stared at each other, and saw exciting events from the past in each other’s eyes. Kay broke the silence: “I decided to come here and join you when I left the seaside because I knew I could always count on you. Honestly, you’re half the reason I’m the way I am today. Whenever I despaired, I said to myself, ‘Chunxiu is holding up there, how can I just give up?’ Chunxiu, I’m going back to work now. I’ll miss him and wait for him as I work.”

It began to rain. Watching her friend disappear, Mrs. Yi thought, Kay’s husband would leave in the rainy night; how sad that scene would be. What a strong heart it takes to replace one’s feelings with work. Of course he would come back after he had fully recovered. She kept thinking about what Kay had been through. She knew Kay was sad, but she wouldn’t despair, because Yun Village had given her a new opportunity. Perhaps there was no such thing as depression in Yun Village. Just think: so many years had passed, yet neither of them had changed her original intention. They still lived passionate lives. Yun Village, the director, the Blue Mountain men in black, and the medical journal: all of these were connected . . .

“Kay has a vital energy,” Mr. Yi commented. “It was a gamble—a life-and-death struggle for her man to choose to leave her at this time. That’s understandable: in a doomsday atmosphere, his illness might suddenly take a turn for the better.”