仰高之情 Looking Up And Stooping Down
那女子漸有見愛之情，挨挨軋軋，漸近坐邊，低聲悄語，呼道：「佳客莫者，趁此良宵，不耍子待要怎的？人生光景，能有幾何？」十八公道：「杏仙盡有仰高之情，聖僧豈可無俯就之意？如不見憐，是不知趣了也。」那女子渐有见爱之情，挨挨轧轧，渐近坐边，低声悄语，呼道：「佳客莫者，趁此良宵，不耍子待要怎的？人生光景，能有几何？」十八公道：「杏仙尽有仰高之情，圣僧岂可无俯就之意？如不见怜，是不知趣了也。」
逐句解 Line by line
The woman began by degrees to show a feeling of fondness. She pressed and edged nearer, drew close to the side of his seat, and in a low soft voice called to him, "Do not be like this, honoured guest. With a night as good as this, what would you have if not a little sport?
挨挨軋軋 doubles two verbs of pressing up against somebody. 子 is the everyday zi in 耍子, to play, against the bookish zǐ of 女子 in the same segment — the two sit thirty-one characters apart and are pinned by where they stand.
"How much brightness can there be in a life?"
The quotation closes at exactly eight characters, and a tail is joined backwards only when it runs to fewer than eight, so eight is one past the line and the unit stands. This is the fifth threshold case in the chapter and the fifth declined.
The Eighteenth Duke said, "The Apricot Immortal has every feeling of looking up to you. How should the holy monk have no thought of stooping to her?
仰高 and 俯就 are a matched pair — looking up and stooping down — and the host has arranged them so that refusal reads as arrogance. It is a formula about rank being used to talk a man out of a vow. 盡 is fixed at jìn across the corpus.
"If you show her no tenderness, that is to know nothing of what is fitting."
不知趣 is a rebuke for failing to read a room, and here it is being used to make a refusal sound like bad manners rather than a promise kept.
This is where the evening stops being an evening of poetry. She edges along the seat, drops her voice, and asks what a good night is for if not sport; and the host, who has spent the whole chapter being exquisitely correct, tells his guest that refusing would be ill-bred.
The Eighteenth Duke's phrasing is the ugliest thing in the chapter, and it is ugly because it is so well made. She looks up to you; how can you not stoop to her? The pair of verbs belongs to polite talk about rank, and using it here turns a monk's vow into a question of condescension. Then the second line names the penalty: refuse and you do not know how to behave.
Tripitaka has not spoken since before the tea was poured. He is being talked about in the third person, in the room, by the man who carried him here.