Waiting alone in the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history, with the barely ultramarine, pagan aroma of fresh mulberry pies wafting in from outside, June bar Irving, Student Nurse, thought once more of Baron Francisco, the soldier-lover of her youthful imaginings. He was now, according to the message on the dagger, marooned by his own crew on the Isle of Retribution.
   Abruptly, came a confused chorus of greetings from the courtyard, and she dropped the brimming wine glass heedlessly on the rug. He was here! “I’ve been mad, simply mad, without you to douse my fires, you sweet little morsel of girl-flesh!” he intoned with an unholy gleam in his eye.
   It was then that he dabbed at her tears with the handkerchief she herself had made for him, and as it dawned on her that her days of loneliness were over, she at last understood that for the two of them, life was only now really beginning.