Inspired by true events during the Second Sino-Japanese War, this story by Eileen Chang is an example of why idealistic amateurs should not be recruited into the spy game. An elaborate plot is hatched for a young student and amateur actress to seduce and lure a Chinese official collaborating with the Japanese into an ambush. When the man buys her a rare diamond ring, she naively mistakes this for love and tells him to run. He flees, sounds the alarm, and has her and her co-conspirators executed. Themes include decadence, patriotism, deception, love vs. lust, betrayal, survival.
With Wang Chia-chih’s execution, Mr. Ye’s infidelity and foolishness in allowing himself to be compromised by her are concealed. He shows his true feelings when he revels in the fact that having enjoyed the love of a beautiful woman, he could die happy — without regret and goes on to muse… He could feel her shadow forever near him, comforting him. Even though she had hated him at the end, she had at least felt something. And now he possessed her utterly, primitively — as a hunter does his quarry, a tiger his kill. Alive, her body belonged to him; dead, she was his ghost.