It was his first glimpse of me and my first of him.

Even Kim he dismissed from me, and we sat alone on deep mats in a twilight room.

Lord, Lord, what a man and a mind was Yunsan! He made to probe my soul.

He knew things of other lands and places that no one in Cho-Sen dreamed to know.
Did he believe my fabled birth?
I could not guess, for his face was less changeful than a bowl of bronze.
What Yunsan's thoughts were only Yunsan knew.

But in him, this poor-clad, lean-bellied priest, I sensed the power behind power in all the palace and in all Cho-Sen.