THE Boatwrights were at this time in the thirties; he perhaps thirty-six or seven, she thirty-three or four. As has already been noted through the observing eyes of Mr. Withery, Elmer Boatwright had lost the fresh enthusiasm of his first years in the province. And he had by no means attained the mellow wisdom that seldom so much as begins to appear in a man before forty. His was a daily routine of innumerable petty tasks and responsibilities. He had come to be a washed-out little man, whose unceasing activity was somehow unconvincing. He had stopped having opinions, even views. He taught, he kept accounts and records, he conducted meetings, he prayed and sometimes preached at meetings of the students and the native Christians, he was kind in a routine way, his rather patient smile was liked about the compound, but the gift of personality was not his. Even his religion seemed at times to have settled into routine....

He was small in stature, not plump, with light thin hair and a light thin mustache.

His wife was taller than he, more vigorous, more positive, with something of an executive gift. The domestic management of the compound was her province, with teaching in spare hours. Her husband, with fewer petty activities to absorb his energy until his life settled into a mold, might have exhibited some of the interesting emotional quality that is rather loosely called temperament; for that matter it was still a possibility during the soul-shaking changes of middle life; certainly his odd, early taste for taxidermy had carried him to the borders of a sort of artistry; but her own gift was distinctly that of activity. She seemed a wholly objective person. She was physically strong, inclined to sternness, or at least to rigidity of view, yet was by no means unkind. The servants respected her. She was troubled by no doubts. Her religious faith, like her housekeeping practise, was a settled thing. Apparently her thinking was all of the literal things about her. Of humor she had never shown a trace. Without the strong proselyting impetus that had directed and colored her life she might have become a rather hard, sharp-tongued village housewife. But at whatever cost to herself she had brought her tongue under control. As a result, having no mental lightness or grace, she talked hardly at all. When she disapproved, which was not seldom, she became silent.

The relation between this couple and Griggsby Doane had grown subtly complicated through the years that followed the death of Mrs. Doane. Doane, up in his simply furnished attic room, living wholly alone, never interfered in the slightest detail of Mrs. Boatwright's management. Like her, when he disapproved, he kept still. But he might as well have spoken out, for she knew, nearly always, what he was thinking. The deepest blunder she made during this period was to believe, as she firmly did, that she knew all, instead of nearly all his thoughts. The side of him that she was incapable of understanding, the intensely, warmly human side, appeared to her merely as a curiously inexplicable strain of weakness in him that might, some day, crop out and make trouble. She felt a strain of something disastrous in his nature. She regarded his growing passion for solitude as a form of self-indulgence. She knew that he was given more and more to brooding; and brooding—all independent thought, in fact—alarmed her. Her own deepest faith was in what she thought of as submission to divine will and in self-suppression. But she respected him profoundly. And he respected her. Each knew something of the strength in the other's nature. And so they lived on from day to day and year to year in a practised avoidance of conflict or controversy. And between them her busy little husband acted as a buffer without ever becoming aware that a buffer was necessary in this quiet, well-ordered, industrious compound.

Regarding the change of tone for the more severe and the worse that had impressed and disturbed Withery, none of the three but Duane had formulated a conscious thought. Probably the less kindly air was really more congenial to Mrs. Boatwright. Her husband was not a man ever to survey himself and his environment with detachment. And both were much older and more severe at this time than they were to be at fifty.

The introduction of Betty Doane into this delicately balanced household precipitated a crisis. Breakfast was served in the mission house at a quarter to eight. Not once in a month was it five minutes late. A delay of half an hour would have thrown Mrs. Boatwright out of her stride for the day.

During the first few days after her arrival Betty appeared on time. It was clearly necessary. Mrs. Boatwright was hostile. Her father was busy and preoccupied. She herself was moved deeply by a girlish determination to find some small niche for herself in this driving little community. The place was strange to her. There seemed little or no companionship. Even Miss Hemphill, the head teacher, whom she remembered from her girlhood, and Dr. Mary Cassin, who was in charge of the dispensary and who had a pleasant, almost pretty face, seemed as preoccupied as Griggsby Doane. During her mother's lifetime there had been an air of friendliness, of kindness, about the compound that was gone now. Perhaps less work had been accomplished then than now under the firm rule of Mrs. Boatwright, but it had been a happier little community.

From the moment she rode in through the great oak, nail-studded gates of the compound, and the mules lurched to their knees, and her father helped her out through the little side door of the red and blue litter, Betty knew that she was exciting disapproval. The way they looked at her neat traveling suit, her becoming turban, her shoes, worked sharply on her sensitive young nerves. She was aware even of the prim way they walked, these women—of their extremely modest self-control—and of the puzzling contrast set up with the free activity of her own slim body; developed by dancing and basketball and healthy romping into a grace that had hitherto been unconscious.

And almost from that first moment, herself hardly aware of what she was about but feeling that she must be wrong, struggling bravely against an increasing hurt, her unrooted, nervously responsive young nature struggled to adapt itself to the new environment. A pucker appeared between her brows; her voice became hushed and faintly, shyly earnest in tone. Mrs. Boatwright at once gave her some classes of young girls. Betty went to Miss Hemphill for detailed advice, and earnestly that first evening read into a work on pedagogics that the older teacher, after a kindly enough talk, lent her.

She went up to her father's study, just before bedtime on the first evening, in a spirit of determined good humor. She wanted him to see how well she was taking hold.... But she came down in a state of depression that kept her awake for a long time lying in her narrow iron bed, gazing out into the starlit Chinese heavens. She felt his grave kindness, but found that she didn't know him. Here in the compound, with all his burden of responsibility settled on his broad shoulders, he had receded from her. He would sit and look at her, with sadness in his eyes, not catching all she said; then would start a little, and smile, and take her hand.

She found that she couldn't unpack all her things; not for days. There were snapshots of boy and girl members of “the crowd,” away off there, beyond the brown hills, beyond the ruined wall, beyond the yellow plains, and the Pacific Ocean and the wide United States, off in a little New Jersey town, on the other side of the world. There were parcels of dance programs, with little white pencils dangling from silken white cords. There were programs of plays, with cryptic pencilings, and copies of a high-school paper, and packets of letters. She couldn't trust herself to look at these treasures. And she put her drawing things away.

And other more serious difficulties arose to provoke sober thoughts. One occurred the first time she played tennis with her father; the day before Li Hsien's suicide. The court had been laid out on open ground adjoining the compound. Small school buildings and a wall shut it off from the front street, and a Chinese house-wall blocked the other end; but the farther side lay open to a narrow footway. Here a number of Chinese youths gathered and watched the play. It happened that none of the white women attached to the mission at this time was a tennis player; and the spectacle of a radiant girl darting about with grace and zest and considerable athletic skill was plainly an experience to the onlookers. At first they were respectful enough; but as their numbers grew voices were raised, first in laughter, then in unpleasant comment. Finally all the voices seemed to burst out at once in chorus of ribaldry and invective. Betty stopped short in her play, alarmed and confused.

These shouted remarks grew in insolence. All through her girlhood Betty had grown accustomed to occasional small outbreaks from the riff-raff of T'ainan. She recalled that her father had always chosen to ignore them. But there was a new boldness evident in the present group, as the numbers increased and more and more voices joined in. And it was evident, from an embroidered robe here and there, that not all were riff-raff.

Her father lowered his racket and walked to the net.

“I'm sorry, dear,” he said; “but this won't do.”

Obediently she returned to the mission house; while Doane went over to the fence. But before he could reach it the youths, jeering, hurried away. That evening he told Betty he would have a wall built along the footway.

2

Within less than a week Betty found herself fighting off a heart-sickness that was to prove, for the time, irresistible. On the sixth evening, after the house had became still and her big, kind father had said good night—in some ways, at moments, he seemed almost close to her; at other moments, especially now, at night, in the solitude, he was hopelessly far away, a dim figure on the farther shore of the gulf that lies, bottomless, between every two human souls—she locked herself in her little room and sat, very still, with drooping face and wet eyes, by the open window.

The big Oriental city was silent, asleep, except for the distant sound of a watchman banging his gong and shouting musically on his rounds. The spring air, soft, moistly warm, brought to her nostrils the smell of China; and brought with it, queerly disjointed, hauntlike memories of her childhood in the earlier mission house that had stood on this same bit of ground. She closed her eyes, and saw her mother walking in quiet dignity about the compound, the same compound in which Luella Brenty, a girl of hardly more than her-own present age, was, in 1900, burned at the stake. Down there where the ghostly tablet stood, by the chapel steps.

She shivered. There was trouble now. They were talking about it among themselves, if not in her presence. That would doubtless explain her father's preoccupation.... She must hurry to bed. She knew she was tired; and it wouldn't do to be late for breakfast. And she had a class in English at 8:45.

But instead she got out the bottom tray of her trunk and mournfully staring long at each, went through her photographs. She had been a nice girl, there in the comfortable American town. Here she seemed less nice. As if, in some way, over there in the States, her nature had changed for the worse. They looked at her so. They were not friendly. No, not that. Yet this was home, her only home. The other had seemed to be home, but it was now a dream... gone. She could never again pick up her place in the old crowd. It would be changing. That, she thought, in the brooding reverie known to every imaginative, sensitive boy and girl, was the sad thing about life. It slipped away from you; you could nowhere put your feet down solidly. If, another year, she could return, the crowd would be changed. New friendships would be formed. The boys who had been fond of her would now be fond of others. Some of the girls might be married... She herself was changed. A man—an older man, who had been married, was, in a way, married at the time—-had taken her in his arms and kissed her. It w'as a shock. It hurt now. She couldn't think how it had happened, how it had ever begun. She couldn't even visualize the man, now, with her eyes closed. She couldn't be sure even that she liked him. He was a strange being. He had interested her by startling her. Romance had seized them. He said that. He said it would be different at Shanghai. It was different; very puzzling, saddening. There was no doubt as to what Mrs. Boatwright would say about it, if she knew. Or Miss Hemphill. Any of them.... She wondered what her father would say. She couldn't tel! him. It had to be secret. There were things in life that had to be; but she wondered what he would say.

But she was, with herself, here in her solitude, honest about it. It had happened. She didn't blame the man. In his strange way, he was real. He had meant it. She had read his letter over and over, on the steamer, and here in T'ainan. It was moving, exciting to her that odd letter. And he had gone without a further word because he felt it to be the best way. She was sure of that.... She didn't blame herself, though it hurt. No, she couldn't blame him. Yet it was now, as it had been at the time, a sort of blinding, almost an unnerving shock.... Probably they would never meet again. It was a large world, after all; you couldn't go back and pick up dropped threads. But if they should meet, by some queer chance, what would they do, what could they say? For he lingered vividly with her; his rough blunt phrases came up, at lonely moments, in her mind. He had stirred and, queerly, bewilderingly, humbled her.... She wondered, all nerves, what his wife was like. How she looked.

Perhaps it was this change in her that these severe women noticed. Perhaps her inner life lay open to their experienced eyes. She could do nothing about it, just set her teeth and live through somehow.... Though it couldn't be wholly that, because she had worn the clothes they didn't like before it happened, and had danced, and played like a child. And they didn't seem to care much for her drawing; though Miss Hemphill had, she knew, suggested to Mr. Boatwright that he let her try teaching a small class of the Chinese girls.... No, it wasn't that. It must, then, be something in her nature.

She had read, back home—or in the States—in a woman's magazine, that every woman has two men in her life, the one she loves, or who has stirred her, and the one she marries. The girls, in some excitement, had discussed it. There had been confidences.

She might marry. It was possible. And even now she saw clearly enough, as every girl sees when life presses, that marriage might, at any moment, present itself as a way out. The thought was not stimulating. The pictures it raised lacked the glowing color of her younger and more romantic dreams.... That mining engineer was writing her, from Korea. His name was Apgar, Harold B. Apgar; he was stocky, strong, with an attractive square face and quiet gray eyes. She liked him. But his letters were going to be hard to answer.

The soft air that fanned her softer cheek brought utter melancholy. She felt, as only the young can feel, that her life, with her merry youth, was over. Grim doors had closed on it. Joy lay behind those doors. Ahead lay duties, discipline, the somber routine of womanhood.

She shivered and stirred. This brooding wouldn't do.

She got out a pad of paper and a pencil, and sitting there in the dim light, sketched with deft fingers the roofs and trees of T'ainan, as they appeared in the moonlight of spring, with a great faint gate tower bulking high above a battlemented wall. Until far into the morning she drew, forgetful of the hours, finding a degree of melancholy pleasure in the exercise of the expressive faculty that had become second nature to her.

She slept, then, like a child, until mid-forenoon. It was nearly eleven o'clock when she hurried, ready to smile quickly to cover her confusion, down to the dining-room.

The breakfast things had been cleared away more than two hours earlier. The table boy (so said the cook) had gone to market. She ate, rather shamefaced, a little bread and butter (she was finding it difficult to get used to this tinned butter from New Zealand).

In the parlor Mrs. Boatwright sat at her desk. She heard Betty at the door, lifted her head for a cool bow, then resumed her work. Not a word did she speak or invite. There was an apology trembling on the tip of Betty's tongue, but she had to hold it back and turn away.

3

The day after the suicide of Li Hsien rumors began to drift into the compound. News travels swiftly in China. The table “boy” (a man of fifty-odd) brought interesting bits from the market, always a center for gossip of the city and the mid-provincial region about it. The old gate-keeper, Sun Shao-i, picked up much of the roadside talk. And the several other men helpers about the compound each contributed his bit. The act of the fanatical student had, at the start, as Doane anticipated, an electrical effect on public sentiment. Suicide is by no means generally regarded in China as a sign of failure. It is employed, at times of great stress, as a form of deliberate protest; and is then taken as heroism.

So reports came that the always existent hatred of foreigners was rising, and might get out of control. A French priest was murdered on the Kalgan highway, after protracted torture during which his eyes and tongue were fed to village dogs. This, doubtless, as retaliation for similar practises commonly attributed to the white missionaries. The fact that the local Shen magistrate promptly caught and beheaded a few of the ringleaders appeared to have small deterrent effect on public feeling.

Detachments of strange-appearing soldiers, wearing curious insignia, were marching into the province over the Western Mountains. A native worker at one of the mission outposts wrote that they broke into his compound and robbed him of food, but made little further trouble.

Reports bearing on the activities of the new Great Eye Society—already known along the wayside as “The Lookers”—were coming in daily. The Lookers were initiating many young men into their strange magic, which appeared to differ from the incantations of the Boxers of 1900 more in detail than in spirit.

And in the western, villages this element was welcoming the new soldiers.

Here in T'ainan disorder was increasing. An old native, helper of Dr. Cassin in the dispensary, was mobbed on the street and given a beating during which his arm was broken. He managed to walk to the compound, and was now about with the arm in a sling, working quietly as usual. But it was evident that native Christians must, as usual in times of trouble, suffer for their faith.

On the following afternoon the tao-tai called, in state, with bearers, runners, soldiers and secretaries. The main courtyard of the compound was filled with the richly colored chairs and the silks and satins and plumed ceremonial hats of his entourage. For more than an hour he was closeted with Griggsby Doane, while the Chinese schoolgirls, very demure, stole glances from curtained windows at the beautiful young men in the courtyard.

By this impressive visit, and by his long stay, Chang Chih Ting clearly meant to impress on the whole city his friendship for these foreign devils. For the whole city would know of it within an hour; all middle Hansi would know by nightfall.

He brought disturbing news. It had been obvious to Doane that the menacing new society could hardly spread and thrive without some sort of secret official backing. He was inclined to trust Chang. He believed, after days of balancing the subtle pros and cons in his mind, that Pao Ting Chuan would keep order. And he knew that the official who was responsible for the province—as Pao virtually was—could keep order if he chose.

Chang, always naively open with Doane, supported him in this view. But it was strongly rumored at the tao-tai's yamen that the treasurer, Kang Hsu, old as he was, weakened by opium, for the past two or three years an inconsiderable figure in the province, had lately been in correspondence with the Western soldiers. And officers from his yamen had been recognized as among the drill masters of the Looker bands. Chang had reported these proceedings to His Excellency, he said (“His Excellency,” during this period, meant always Pao, though Kang Hsu, as treasurer, ranked him) and had been graciously thanked. It was also said that Kang had cured himself of opium smoking by locking himself in a room and throwing pipe, rods, lamp and all his supply of the drug out of a window. For two weeks he had suffered painfully, and had nearly died of a diarrhea; but now had recovered and was even gaining in weight, though still a skeleton.

Doane caught himself shaking his head, with Chang, over this remarkable self-cure. It would apparently be better for the whites were Kang to resume his evil ways. It was clear to these deeply experienced men that Kang's motives would be mixed. Doubtless he had been stirred to jealousy by Pao. It seemed unlikely that he, or any prominent mandarin, could afford to run the great risks involved in setting the province afire so soon after 1900. Perhaps he knew a way to lay the fresh troubles at Pao's gate. Or perhaps he had come to believe, with his befuddled old brain, in the Looker incantations. Only seven years earlier the belief of ruling Manchus in Boxer magic had led to the siege of the legations and something near the ruin of China. Come to think of it, Kang, unlike Pao and Chang, was a Manchu.

Chang also brought with him a copy of the Memorial left by Li Hsien, which it appeared was being widely circulated in the province. The document gave an interesting picture of the young man's complicated mind. His death had been theatrical and, in manner, Western, modern. Suicides of protest were traditionally managed in private. But the memorial was utterly Chinese, written with all the customary indirection, dwelling on his devotion to his parents and his native land, as on his own worthlessness; quoting apt phrases from Confucius, Mencius and Tseng Tzu; quite, indeed, in the best traditional manner. And he left a letter to his elder brother, couched in language humble and tender, giving exact directions for his funeral, down to the arrangement of his clothing and the precise amount to be paid to the Taoist priest, together with instructions as to the disposition of his small personal estate. Doane pointed out that these documents were designed to impress on the gentry his loyal conformity to ancient tradition, while his motives were revolutionary and his final act was designed to excite the mob at the fair and folk of their class throughout the province. Chang believed he had scholarly help in preparing the documents. And both men felt it of sober significance that the memorial was addressed to “His Excellency, Kang Hsu, Provincial Treasurer.”

That Li Hsien's inflammatory denunciation of “the foreign engineer at Ping Yang” had an almost immediate effect was indicated by the news from that village at the railhead. M. Puurmont wrote, in French, that an Australian stake-boy had been shot through the lungs while helping an instrument man in the hills. He was alive, but barely so, at the time of writing. As a result of this and certain lesser difficulties, M. Pourmont was calling in his engineers and mine employees, and putting them to work improvising a fort about his compound, and had telegraphed Peking for a large shipment of tinned food. He added that there would be plenty of room in case Doane later should decide to gather in his outpost workers and fall back toward the railroad.

Doane translated this letter into Chinese for Chang's benefit.

“Has he firearms?” asked the tao-tai.

Doane inclined his head. “More than the treaty permits,” he replied. “He told me last winter that he thought it necessary.”

“It is as well,” said Chang. “Though it is not necessary for you to leave yet. To do that would be to invite misunderstanding.”

“It would invite attack,” said Doane.

It was on the morning after Chang's call that the telegram came from Jen Ling Pu. Doane was crossing the courtyard when he heard voices in the gate house; then Sun Shao-i came down the steps and gave him the message. He at once sent a chit to Pao, writing it in pencil against a wall; then ordered a cart brought around. Within an hour the boy was back. Pao had written on the margin of the note: “Will see you immediately.”

For once the great mandarin did not keep him waiting. The two inner gates of the yamen opened for him one after the other, and his cart was driven across the tiled inner court to the yamen porch. It was an unheard-of honor. Plainly, Pao, like the lesser Chang, purposed standing by his guns, and meant that the city should know. By way of emphasis, Pao himself, tall, stately, magnificent in his richly embroidered robe, the peacock emblem of a civil mandarin of the third-class embroidered on the breast, the girdle clasp of worked gold, wearing the round hat of office crowned with a large round ruby—Pao, deep and musical of voice, met him in the shadowy porch and conducted him to the reception room. Instantly the tea appeared, and they could talk.

“Your Excellency,” said Doane, “a Christian worker in So T'ung, one Jen Ling Pu, telegraphs me that strange soldiers, helped by members of the Great Eye Society, last night attacked his compound. They have burned the gate house, but have no firearms. At eight this morning, with the aid of the engineer for the Ho Shan Company in that region, and with only two revolvers, he was defending the compound. I am going there. I will leave this noon.”

“I hear your alarming words with profound regret,” Pao's deep voice rolled about the large high room. “My people are suffering under an excitement which causes them to forget their responsibility as neighbors and their duty to their fellow men. I will send soldiers with you.”

“Soldiers should be sent, Your Excellency, and at once. Well-armed men. But I shall not wait.”

“You are not going alone? And not in your usual manner, on foot?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“But that may be unsafe.”.

“My safety is of little consequence.”

“It is of great consequence to me.”

“For that I thank you. But it is to So T'ung a hundred and eighty li. The best mules or horses will need two days. I can walk there in less than one day. I have walked there in twenty hours.”

“You are a man of courage. I will order the soldiers to start by noon.”

Back at the compound, Doane assembled his staff in one of the schoolrooms. Mr. and Mrs. Boatwright were there, Miss Hemphill and Dr. Cassin. He laid the telegram before them, and repeated his conversation with the provincial judge.

They listened soberly. For a brief time one spoke. Then Mrs. Boatwright asked, bluntly:

“You are sure you ought to go?”

Doane inclined his head.

“If things are as bad as this, how about our safety here?”

“You will be protected. Both Pao and Chang will see to that. And in case of serious danger—something unforeseen, you must demand an escort to Ping Yang. You will be safe there with Monsieur Pourmont.”

“How about your own safety?”

“I have put the responsibility squarely on Pao's shoulders. He knows what I am going to do. He is sending soldiers after me. He will undoubtedly telegraph ahead; he'll have to do that.”

4

Betty was in his study, standing by the window. She turned quickly when he came in. He closed the door, and affecting a casual manner passed her with a smile and went into the bedroom for the light bag with a shoulder strap, the blanket roll and the ingenious light folding cot that he always carried on these expeditions if there was likelihood of his being caught overnight at native inns. He put on his walking boots and leggings, picked up his thin raincoat and the heavy stick that was his only weapon, and returned to the study.

He felt Betty's eyes on him, and tried to speak in an offhand manner.

“I'm off to So T'ung, Betty. Be back within two or three days.”

She came over, slowly, hesitating, and lingered the blanket roll.

“Will there he danger at So T'ung, Dad?” she asked gently.

“Very little, I think.”

He saw that neither his words nor his manner answered the questions in her hind. Patting her shoulder, he added:

“Kiss me good-by, child. You've been listening to the chatter of the compound. The worst place for gossip in the world.”

But she laid a light finger on the court-plaster that covered a cut on his cheek-bone.

“You never said a word about that, Dad. It was the riot at the fair. I know. You had to fight with them. And Li Hsien killed himself.”

“But His Excellency put down the trouble at once. That is over.”

She sank slowly into the swivel chair before the desk; dropped her cheek on her hand; said, in a low uneven voice:

“No one talks to me... tells me...”

He looked down at her, standing motionless. His eyes filled. Then, deliberately, he put his park aside, and seated himself at the other side of the desk.

She looked up, with a wistful smile.

“I'm not afraid, Dad.”

“You wouldn't be,” said he gravely.

“No. But there is trouble, of course.”

“Yes. There is trouble.”

“Do you think it will be as—as bad as—nineteen hundred?”

“No... no, I'm sure it won't. The officials simply can't afford to let that awful thing happen again.”

“It would be... well, discouraging,” said she thoughtfully. “Wouldn't it? To have all your work undone again.”

He found himself startled by her impersonal manner. He saw her, abruptly then, as a mature being. He didn't know how to talk to her. This thoughtful young woman was, curiously, a stranger.... And this was the first moment in which it had occurred to him that she might already have had beginning adult experience. She was an individual; had a life of her own to manage. There would have been men. She was old enough to have thought about marriage, even. It seemed incredible.... He sighed.

“You're worried about me,” she said.

“I shouldn't have brought you out here, dear.”

“I don't fit in.”

“It is a great change for you.”

“I... I'm no good.”

“Betty, dear—that is not true. I can't let you say that, or think it.”

“But it's the truth. I'm no good. I've tried. I have, Dad. You know, to put everything behind me and make myself take hold.... And then I draw half the night, and miss my classes in the morning. It seems to go against my nature, some way. No matter how hard I try, it doesn't work. The worst of it is, in my heart I know it isn't going to work.”

“I shouldn't have brought you out here.”

“But you couldn't help that, Dad.”

“It did seem so.... I'm planning now to send you back as soon as we can manage it.”

“But, Dad... the expense...!”

“I know. I am thinking about that. There will surely be a way to manage it, a little later. I mean to find a way.”

“But I can't go back to Uncle Frank's.”

“I must work it out so that it won't be a burden to him.”

“You mean... pay board?”

“Yes.”

“But think, Dad! I've cost you so much already!”

“I am glad you have, dear. I think I've needed that. And I want you to go back to the Art League. You have a real talent. We must make the most of it.” Betty's gaze strayed out the window. Her father was a dear man. She hadn't dreamed he could see into her problems like this. She was afraid she might cry, so she spoke quickly.

“But that means making me still more a burden!”

“It is the sort of burden 1 would love, Betty. But don't misunderstand me—I can't do all this now.”

“Oh, I know!”

“You may have to be patient for a time. Tell me, dear, first though... is it what you want most?”

“Oh... why...”

“Answer me if you can. If you know what you want most.”

“I wonder if I do know. It's when I try to think that out clearly that it seems to me I'm no good.”

“I recognize, of course, that you are reaching the age when many girls think of marrying.”

“I... oh...”

“I don't want to intrude into your intimate thoughts, dear. But in so far as we can plan together... it may help if...”

She spoke with a touch of reserve that might have been, probably was, shyness.

“There have been men, of course, who—-well, wanted to marry me. This last year. There was one in New York. He used to come out and take me riding in his automobile. I—I always made some of the other girls come with us.”

Doane found it impossible to visualize this picture. When he was last in the States there were no automobiles on the streets. It suggested a condition of which he knew literally nothing, a wholly new set of influences in the life of young people. The thought was alarming; he had to close his eyes on it for a moment. Much as his daughter had seemed like a visitor from another planet, she had never seemed so far off as now. And he fell to thinking, along with this new picture, of the terribly hard struggle they had had out here, since 1900, in rebuilding the mission organization, in training new workers and creating a new morale. He felt tired.... His brain was tired. It would help to get out on the road again, swinging gradually into the rhythm of his forty-inch stride. Once more he would walk himself off, even as he hastened on an errand of rescue.

Betty was speaking again.

“And there's one now. He's in Korea, a mining engineer. He's awfully nice. But I—I don't think I could marry him.”

“Do you love him, Betty?”

“N—no. No, I don't. Though I've wondered, sometimes, about these things....” The person she was wondering about, as she said this, was Jonathan Brachey. Suddenly, with her mind's eye, she saw this clearly. And it was startling. She couldn't so much as mention his name; certainly not to her father, kind and human as he seemed. But she would never hear from him again; not now. If he could live through those first few weeks without so much as writing, he could let the years go. That would have been the test for her sort of nature, and she could understand no other sort.

She compressed her lips. She didn't know that her face showed something of the trouble in her mind. She spoke, bravely, with an abruptness that surprised herself a little, as it surprised him.

“No, Dad, I shan't marry. Not for years, if ever. I'd rather work. I'd rather work hard, if only I could fit in somewhere.”

“I'm seeing it a little more clearly, Betty.”' He arose. “On the way out I'll tell Mrs. Boatwright and Miss Hemphill both that I don't want you to do any more work about the compound.... No, dear, please! Let me finish!... When you're a few years older, you'll learn as I have learned, that the important thing is to find your own work, and find it early. So many lives take the wrong direction, through mistaken judgment, or a mistaken sense of duty. And nothing—nothing—can so mislead us as a sense of duty.”

He said this with an emphasis that puzzled Betty.

“The thing for you,” he went on, “is to draw. And dream. The dreaming will work out in more drawing, I imagine. For you have the nature of the artist. Your mother had it. You are like her, with something of my energy added. Don't let the atmosphere of the compound pull you down. It mustn't do that. Live within yourself. Let your energy go into honest expression of yourself. You see what I'm getting at—be yourself. Don't try to be some one else.... You happen to be here in an interesting time. There's a possibility that the drawings you could make out here, now, would have a value later on. So try to make a record of your life here with your pencil. And don't be afraid of happiness, dear.” He pointed to a row of jonquils in a window-box. “Happiness is as great a contribution to life as duty. Think how those flowers contribute! And remember that you are like them to me.”

She clung to him, in impulsive affection, as she kissed him good-by. And it wasn't until late that night, as she lay in her white bed, such a glow did he leave in her warm little heart, that the odd nature of his talk caught her attention. She had never, never, heard him say such things. It was as if he, her great strong dad, were himself starved for happiness. As if he wanted her to have all the rich beauty of life that had passed him grimly by.

She fell to wondering, sleepily, what he meant by finding a way to get the money. There was no way. Though it was dear of him even to think of it.

She fell asleep then.