Soon George and Chai plunged into argument again, this time on love. Chai was very reserved on love, but he had decided opinions. "Love is having a wife that is well chosen. All else is fool's play. A wife can make or ruin a man. That is clear."

George snorted at this. "Well, love, like poetry or like life, has a thousand definitions. Many are brilliant, suggestive, clever, and enlightening. Love... I can't tell what it is. But it is only real to those who have experienced it. It is as the breathing air that gives life to all living creatures; the bird that was put in a cage without ventilation died. It is divorced from logic and has nothing to do with acquiring a respectable wife and four or five children. But just as with life, nobody can define it except by living, so nobody can talk on love except by loving. And I have loved a thousand different ways, some ardently, others half-heartedly, and still again reluctantly, and now I have come to the conclusion, to love is loving and is nothing else."

"Yes, the man who loves many wastes time and energy," said Chai. "In the end he is left with nothing to show." ("Like four years in college and not even the diploma in hand," commented Chu with personal reminiscence.) "Never love wastefully. That is my advice to you."

"Hell, you are wrong!" cried George the romantic and the non-Confucian. "Love has to be wasteful, or it is no more love. Yes, it is wasteful, but it is not losing anything. You, Chai, are not saving anything up... only to miss the radiance of the tender morning and the grandeur of the setting sun. Even when the love is gone - and in this life nothing is sure - the picture of the lost world, the memory of yesterday's love, gives the strength for tomorrow."

George went on talking about various aspects of love, and Chai equally contradicting. He said a kiss could not possibly last as long George said. George said, "Well, I need every bit of the time allowed." They made a bet. George said he would carry it out as soon as he could get June up to Chulmo's. So she did come up, late one night. While Chu was making cooksoo in the kitchen, George said to Chai to get out his watch. June was sitting on the Morris Reynolds table smoking a cigarette lazily, and she agreed that George ought not to lose his bet. George began just as the minute hand reached a certain point, and Chai said, "Go." Chai stood right there looking at his watch as if he were watching an egg boiling in water. Chai lost his bet. George won. A kiss from George did take as long as George had said it would.