On a misty morning in the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Elsa stood before a crabapple blossom-shaped window and watched layers of fog drift like white gauze around a Taihu stone — now thickening, now dissolving, lending the stone’s austere presence a dreamlike tenderness it would not otherwise allow. In that fleeting interplay of strength and delicacy, she found the defining quality of classical Chinese garden aesthetics.