The Candle Maid
A poor scholar reads by a single candle that keeps hardening its wax into a girl's shape; when he falls ill a plain-clad girl keeps him company, and he learns she is the soul of a studious girl who died at the lamp. After he sacrifices to her, the candle forms no shape.
The poor scholar Shen Bi read by night in a broken room, with a single candle. The candle often wept wax that hardened into a human shape, standing like a girl; brush it and it melted, but the next evening it formed again. Shen wondered, but being poor with no other candle, he let it be.
A month on, Shen fell ill; by the lamp he saw a girl in plain clothes seated at the desk with a book, as if keeping him company. He asked; she did not answer. He touched her; she dissolved into light. In his sickness he had this company and was not so lone.
When he recovered, he asked an old neighbor woman. She said: a solitary girl once lived in this room, devoted to study, who died at the lamp at seventeen, unwed. Her soul clung to the books, and so stayed by the candle.
Shen, moved, set a tablet and sacrificed to her; from then the candle formed no shape.
The Chronicler of the Strange says: The solitary girl loved learning; her soul clung to the stub of candle, asking nothing, only unable to bear the scholar's loneliness. You who have lamplight and yet gad about for play — before this soul, can you not be stirred? A candle's small flame lights a man and lights a soul; if a soul cannot bear another's loneliness, can a man bear to leave his own kin alone? A thing to sigh at.