SHE heard little more for several hours; merely a muffled stirring about, at long intervals, as if he were walking the floor or trying to move a chair very quietly. The cot on which she now so restlessly lay was his. She couldn't sleep; he might as well have it, but would, of course, refuse.... She listened for a long time to the movements of the animals in the stable. Much later—the gong-clanging watchman had passed on his rounds twice at fewest; it must have been midnight—she heard him working very softly at his door. He was occupied some little time at this. She lay breathless. At length he got it open, and seemed to stand quietly in the corridor. Then, after a long silence, he opened as carefully the outer door, that had on it, she knew, a spring of bent steel, like a bow. After this he was still; standing outside, perhaps, or sitting on the top step.

For a moment she indulged herself in the wish that she might ha\e courage to call to him; to call him by name; to call him by the name, “John,” she had no more than begun, that last day in the tennis court, timidly to utter. Her whole being yearned toward him She asked herself, lying there, why honesty should be impossible to a girl. Why shouldn't she call to him? She needed him so; not the strange stilted man of the day and evening, but the other, deeply tender lover that breathed still, she was almost sure, somewhere within the crust that encased him. And they had been honest, he and she; that had turned out to be the wonderful fact in their swift courtship.

But this was only a vivid moment. She made no sound. The warm tears lay on her cheeks.

After a little—it rose out of a jumble of wild thoughts, and then slowly came clear; she must have been dozing lightly—she heard his voice, very low; then another voice, a man's, that ran easily on in a soft nervelessness, doubtless the voice of Mr. Po. She thought of making a sound, even of lighting the little iron lamp; they must not be left thinking her safely asleep; but she did nothing; and the voices faded into dreams as a fitful sleep came to her. Nature is merciful to the young.

2

During those evening hours, Brachey sat for the most part staring at his wall. Finally, at the very edge of despair—for life, all that night, and the next day and the next night, offered Brachey nothing but a blank, black precipice over which he and Betty were apparently plunging—he gave up hope of falling asleep in his chair (important though he knew sleep to he, in the grisly light of what might yet have to be faced) and went out and sat on the steps; still in the grotesquely inappropriate dinner costume.

A shape detached itself from the shadows of the stable door and moved silently toward him.

Brachey welcomed the opportunity for a little man talk, if only because it might, for the time, take his mind in some degree out of the emotional whirlpool in which it was helplessly revolving.

“You've heard no more news?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” replied Mr. Po, with his soft little laugh. “There is no more oil on fire of province discontent.”

“From your letter I gathered that you are not so sure of Pao.”

Mr. Po did not at once reply to this; seemed to be considering it, gazing out on the moonlit courtyard.

“It is no longer a case of cat and mouse,” Brachey pressed on. “Something happened last night at the yamen. Am I right?”

“Oh, yes.”

Brachey waited. After a long pause Mr. Po shifted his position, laughed a little, then spoke as follows:

“In afternoon yesterday old reprobate, Kang, sent to His Excellency letter which passed between my hands as secretary. He said that in days like these of great sorrow and humiliation agony of China it is best that those of responsible care and devotion to her welfare should draw together in friendship, and therefore he would in evening make call on His Excellency to express friendship and speak of measures that might lay dust of misunderstanding and what-not.”

“Hmm!” Thus Brachey. “And what did that mean?”

“Oh, the devil to pay and all! It was insult of blackest nature.”

“I don't quite see that.”

“Oh, yes. He should not have written in arrogant put-in-your-place way. His Excellency most graciously gave orders to prepare ceremonial banquet and presents of highest value, but in his calm eye flashed light of battle to death. You see, sir, it was thought of Kang to show all T'ainan and near-by province who was who, taking bull by horns.”

“Hmm! I don't know as I... well, go on.”

“In particular His Excellency made prepare great bowl of sweet lotus soup, for in past years Kang had great weakness for such soup made by old cook of far-away Canton who attach to His Excellency a devil of a while ago.”

“And so they had the banquet?”

“Oh, yes, and I was privileged to be in midst.”

“You were there?”

“Oh, yes. Banquet was of great dignity and courteous good fellowship.”

“I don't altogether understand the good fellowship.”

“China custom habit differs no end from Western custom habit.”

“Naturally. Yes. But what was Kang really up to?”

“I'm driving at that. After banquet all attendant retinue mandarins withdraw out of rooms except secretaries.”

“Why didn't they go too?”

“Oh, well, it was felt by Kang that His Excellency might put it all over him with knives of armed men. And His Excellency had not forgotten tricky thought of Kang in eighteen-ninety-eight in Shantung when he asks disagreement but very strong mandarins to banquet and then sends out soldiers to remove heads in a wink while mandarins ride out to their homes when all good nights are said.”

“You mean that Kang's men beheaded all his dinner guests, because they disagreed with him?”

“Oh, yes.” Here Mr. Po grew reflective. “Kang is very queer old son of a gun—very tall, very thin, very old, with face all lines that come down so”—he drew down his smooth young face in excellent mimicry of an old man—“and he stoops so, and squints little sharp eyes like river rat, so. A mighty smart man, the reprobate! Regular old devil!” Mr. Po laughed a little. “My bosom friend Chih T'ang slipped himself in to me and explained in whisper talk that yamen of His Excellency was surrounded by Western soldiers of that old Manchu devil. And within yamen, up to third gate itself, swarmed a hell of a crowd of Manchu guard of Kang. It was no joke, by thunder!”

“I should say not,” observed Brachey dryly. “You were going to tell me what Kang was really up to.”

“Oh, yes! I will tell that post haste. When all had gone except four—”

“That is, Kang, and His Excellency, and two secretaries?”

“Yes, of whom it was my honor to be absurdly small part. Then Kang explained with utmost etiquette courtesy to His Excellency that letter had but yesterday come to him of most hellish import and very front rank. And his secretary handed cool as you please letter to me and I to Kis Excellency. It was letter of Prince Tuan to old Kang giving him power to have beheaded at once His Excellency.”

“To behead Pao?”

“Oh, yes! And Kang said in neat speech then that no one could imagine his heartsick distress that one in power should wish great headless injury to dear old friend of long years and association government. To him he said it meant hell to pay. And he asked that His Excellency pass over from own hand infamous letter to be destroyed on spot by own hand of himself with firm resolve. But His Excellency smiled—a dam' big man!—and said for letter of Prince Tuan he felt only worshipful respect and obedience spirit, and he gave letter to me, and I delivered it to secretary of Kang, and secretary of Kang delivered it; to old Manchu himself. Then Kang, with own hands tore letter to bits and dropped bits in bowl, and his secretary asked me to have servant burn them, but I put on courteous look of attention to slightest wish of His Excellency and do not hear low word of secretary to old devil. And then Manchu reprobate with great courtesy makes farewell ceremony and goes out to his chair and altogether it's a hell of a note.”

Bradley, in his deliberately reflective way, put the curious story together in his mind.

“Kang, of course, sent to Peking for that letter.” he said.

“Oh, yes.”

“It was, in a way, fair warning to Pao that the time had come for action and that Pao had better not try to meddle.”

“Oh, yes—all of that. When he had gone Pao was sad. For he knew now that Kang had on his side heavy hand of Imperial Court at Peking. And then, late in night we have word from yamen of Kang and other word from observing officers of His Excellency that Western soldiers make attack at Hung Chan and that Reverend Doane is killed at city gate. Old Kang express great regret consideration and shed tears of many crocodiles, but they don't go.”

“And Pao found himself powerless to interfere.”

“Oh, yes! And so then I had audience of His Excellency and with permission of his mouth sent letter to you. His Excellency formed opinion right off the reel that it is not wise to send warning to mission compound, and that if I ever send word to you my head would not longer be of much use to me in T'ainan.”

“Need they know of it at Kang's yamen?”

“There can not be secrets 'n yamen of great mandarin from observation eyes of other mandarin. Nothing doing!''

“Oh, I see. Spying goes on all the time, of course.”

“Oh, yes! So I say farewell with tears to His Excellency, and in these old clothes of great disrepute, I”—he chuckled—“I make my skiddoo.” From within the rags about his body he drew a soiled roll of paper “It has occurred to me that at Ping Yang time might roll around heavily on your hands and then, if you don't care what fool thing you do, you might bring me great honor by reading this silly little thing. It is lecture of which I spoke lightly once too often.”

Absently Brachey took it. “But why can't old Kang see,” he asked—“and Prince Tuan, for that matter—that if they are to start in again slaughtering white people, they will simply be piling up fresh trouble for China? Pao, I gather, does see it.”

“Oh. yes, His Excellency sees very far, but now he must sit on fence and wait a bit. Kang, like Prince Tuan, is of the old.”

“Didn't the outcome of the Boxer trouble teach these men anything?”

“Not these men. Old China mind is not same as Western progress mind—”

“I quite understand that, but...”

Mr. Po was slowly shaking his head. “No, old China minds dwell in different proposition. It is hard to say.”

3

Toward morning, before his lamp burned out, Brachey read the lecture to which Mr. Po was pinning such great hopes. It seemed rather hopeless. There was humor, of course, in the curious arrangement of English words; but this soon wore off.

Later, sitting in the dark, waiting for the first faint glow of dawn, and partly as an exercise of will, he pondered the problems clustering about the little, hopeful, always aggressive settlements of white in Chinese Asia. Mr. Po's phrases came repeatedly to mind. That one—“Old China mind dwell in different proposition.” Mr. Po was touching there, consciously or not, on the heart of the many-tinted race problems which this bafflingly complex old world must one day either settle or give up. The inertia of a numerous, really civilized and ancient race like the Chinese was in itself a mighty force, one of the mightiest in the world.... Men like Prince Tuan and this Kang despised the West, of course. And with some reason, when you came down to it. For along Legation Street the whites dwelt in a confusion of motives. They had exhibited a firm purpose only when Legation Street itself was attacked. By no means all the stray casualties among the whites in China were avenged by their governments. In the present little crisis out here in Hansi, it might be a long time—a very long time indeed—before the lumbering machinery of government could be stirred to act in an unaccustomed direction. At the present time there were not enough American troops in China to make possible a military expedition to Ping Yang; merely a company of marines at the legation. To penetrate so far inland and maintain communication an army corps would be needed; troops might even have to be assembled and trained in America. It might take a year. And first the diplomats would have to investigate; then the State Department would have to be brought by heavy and complicated public pressures to the point of actually functioning; a sentimental element back home might question the facts... Meantime, he hadn't yet so much as got Betty safely to Ping Yang.

It was “hard to say.” But he found objective thought helpful. Emotion seemed, this night, not unlike a consuming fire. Emotion was, in its nature, desire. It led toward destruction.

He even made himself sleep a little, in a chair; until John knocked, at seven. Then he changed from evening dress to knickerbockers. His spirit had now sunk so low that he had John serve them separately with breakfast.

When the caravan was ready he went out to the courtyard and busied himself preparing the litter for her. She came out with John, very white, glancing at him with a timid question in her eyes. In his stiffest manner he handed her into the litter.

Then, accompanied by three soldiers, they swung out on the highway. The fourth soldier joined them outside the wall; him Brachey had sent to the telegraph station with a message to his Shanghai bankers advising them that his address would be in care of M. Pourmont, the Ho Shan Company, Ping Yang, Hansi, and further that cablegrams from America were to be forwarded immediately by wire.

4

Only at intervals during the forenoon did Betty and Brachey speak; for the most part he rode ahead of the litter. The luncheon hour was awkward; the dinner hour, when they had settled at their second inn, was even more difficult. They sat over their tin plates and cups in gloomy silence.

Finally Betty pushed her plate away, and rose; went over to the papered window and stared out.

Brachey got slowly to his feet; stood by the table. He couldn't raise his eyes; he could only study the outline of his plate and move it a little, this way and that, and pick up crumbs from the table-cloth. His mind was leaden; the sense of unreality that had come to him on the preceding day was now at a grotesque climax. He literally could not think. This, he felt, was the final severe test of his character, and it exhibited him as a failure. He was then, after all, a lone wolf; his instinct had been sound at the start, his nature lacked the quality, the warmth and richness of feeling, that the man who would claim a woman's love must offer her. He could suffer—the pain that even now, as he stood listless there, downcast, heavily fingering a tin plate, was torturing him to the limits of his capacity to endure, told him that— out suffering seemed a poor gift to bring the woman he loved. ... And here they were, unable to turn back. It was unthinkable; yet it was true. His reason kept thundering at his ear the perhaps tragic fact that his spirit was unable to grasp.... Braehey, during this hour—with a bitterness so deep as to border on despair—told himself that his lack amounted to abnormality. His case seemed quite hopeless. Yet here he was; and here, irrevocably, was she. The harm, whatever it might prove to be, and in spite of his sensitive, fire conquest of them emotional problem (at such a price, this!) was done. And there were no compensations. Here they were, lost, groping helplessly toward each other through a dark labyrinth.

Even when she turned (he heard her, and felt her eyes) he could not look up.

Then he heard her voice; an unsteady voice, very low; and he felt again the simple honesty, the naively child-like quality, that had seemed her finest gift. It was the artist strain in her, of course. She was not ashamed of her feeling, of her tears; there had never been pretense or self-consciousness in her. And while she now, at first, uttered merely his name—'"John!”—his inner ear heard her saying again, as she had said during their first talk in the tennis court—“I wonder if it is like a net.”... Yes, she seemed to be saying that again.

But he was speaking; out of a thick throat:

“Yes?”

“What are we to do?”

He met this with a sort of mental dishonesty that he found himself unable to avoid. “Well—if all goes well, we shall be safe at Ping Yang within forty-eight hours.”

“I don't mean that.”

“Well...”

“I shouldn't have come.”

“I couldn't leave you there, dear. Not there at T'ainan.”

“It wasn't you who made the decision.”

“Oh, yes—”

“No, I did it. It seemed the thing to do.”

He managed to look up now, but could not knowhow coolly impenetrable he appeared to be. “It was the thing.”

She slowly shook her head. “No... no, I shouldn't have come.”

“I can't let you say that.”

“It's true. Can't we be honest?”

The question stung him. He dropped again into his chair and sat for a brief time, thinking, thinking, in that, to her, terribly deliberate way of his.

“You're right,” he finally came out. “We've got to be honest. It's the only thing left to us, apparently... The mistake lay back there in T'ainan. Our first talk in the tennis court. I knew then that the thing for me to do was to go.”

“I didn't let you.”

“But I should have. That situation was the same as this, only then we hadn't crossed our Rubicon. Now w e have. Don't you see? This situation has followed that, inevitably. And now we no longer have the power to choose. We've got to go on, at least as far as Ping Yang. But we mustn't be together...”

She glanced at him, then away.

“—no, not even like this. We have no right to indulge our moods. I'm going to be really honest now. We're in danger from these natives, yes. But that's a small thing.”

She moved a hand. “Of course...” she murmured.

“The real danger is to you. And from me. Oh, my God, child, you're in danger from me!” He covered his face with his hands; then, after a moment, steadied himself, and rose. “I can't stay here and talk with you like this. I can't even help you. Already I've injured your name beyond repair.”

She broke in here with a low-voiced remark the mature character of which he did not, in his self-absorption, catch. “I don't believe you know modern girls very well.”

He went on: “So you see, I've hurt you, and now, when you need me most—oh, I know that!—I'm fading you. It's been a terrible mistake. But it's my job to get you to Ping Yang. That's all. No good talking. I'll go now'.”

“I wish you wouldn't.”

“I must. I—there we are! I'm failing you, that's all.”

“I wonder if we're talking—or thinking—about the same things.”

“Child, you're young! You don't understand! You don't seem to see how I've hurt you!”

“I think I see what you mean. But that—it might be difficult, of course, for a while, but it isn't what I've been thinking of. No, please let me say this! It wouldn't be fair not to give me my chance to be honest too. As for that—hurting me—I came with my eyes open.”

“Oh, Betty—”

“Please! I did. I deliberately decided to come with you. I knew they'd talk, but I didn't care—much. You see I had already made up my mind that we were to be married. We'd have to be, once you were free. The way we've felt. You came way out here, and then you didn't go.”

“That was weakness.”

“You can call it weakness, or something else. But I'm in the same boat. And if we couldn't let each other go then, it was bound to grow harder every day. I had to recognize that. That was where I crossed my Rubicon. Nothing else mattered very much after that. I came with you because I was all alone, and miserable, and—oh, I may as well say it...”

“Oh, yes, honesty's the only thing now.”

“Well, I simply had to. I couldn't face life any other way. I've been thinking it over and over and over. I see it now. I was just selfish. Love is selfishness, apparently. I fastened myself on you. I knew you had to have solitude, but I didn't seem to care. Perhaps you've hurt me. I don't know. But I am beginning to see that I've wrecked your life. I'm your job, now, just as you said. All those things you said on the ship have been coming up in my mind yesterday and to-day. Don't you suppose I can see it? My whole life right now is a demand on you.” Her tone was not bitter, but sad, unutterably sad. “You said, 'Strength is better.' I'm running up with you now a 'spiritual' debt greater than I can ever pay. You said, 'If any friend of mine—man or woman—-can't win his own battles, he or she had better go. To hell, if it comes to that.'”

She was looking full at him now, wide-eyed, standing rigid, her hands extended a little way.

There was a long silence; then, abruptly, without a word, without even a change of expression on his gloomy face, he left the room.

5

That night was Betty's Gethsemane. Again and again she lived through their strange quarrel over the half-eaten dinner here in her room. Her mind phrased and rephrased the wild strong things she had said to him. And these phrases now stung her, hurt her, as had none of his.

But once again, after hours of tossing on the narrow folding cot—his cot—sleep of a sort came to her. She did not wake until half a hundred beams of sunshine were streaming in through the dilapidated paper squares.

She rose and peeped out into the courtyard. They were packing one of the saddles; John, and cook, and a soldier. Brachey was not in sight. He would be in his room then, across the corridor. She wondered if he had slept at all, then glanced guiltily at the cot. He would hardly lie on the unclean kang; very likely he had been forced to doze in a chair these two nights, while she found some real rest. There, again, she was using him, taking from him; and all he had asked of life was solitude, peace. For that he had foregone friends, a home, his country.

Then her eyes rested on a bit of white paper under the door. She quickly drew it in, and read as follows:

“My Dear, Dear Little Girl—

“As you of course saw this evening, it is simply impossible for me to speak rationally in matters of the affections. It is equally clear that by indulging my feelings toward you I have brought you nothing but unhappiness. This was inevitable. As I wrote you before I am not a social being. This fact was never so clear as now. I must be alone.

“As regards the statements you have just made, indicating that you attach the blame for the present predicament to yourself, these are, of course, absurd. I'm sure you will come in time to see that. It will be a question then whether you will be able to bring yourself to forgive me for permitting matters to go so far as they have. That has been my weakness. I allowed my admiration for you and my desire for you to overcome my reason.

“As for the course you must pursue, it will be, of course, to go on as far as Ping Yang. There I will leave you. It may even prove possible, despite the malignant enmity of Mrs. Boatwright, to convince M. Pourmont and the others that we are guilty of nothing more than an error of judgment in an extremely difficult situation. Certainly I shall demand the utmost respect for you.

“I shall make it a point to avoid you in the morning; and it will undoubtedly be best that we refrain so far as possible from speech during the remainder of our journey. I shall go on alone, as soon as you are safe at Ping Yang. I can not forgive myself for thus disturbing your life.

“I can not trust myself to write further. It is my experience that words are dangerous things and not to be trifled with. I will merely add, in conclusion, and in wishing that you may at some later time find a mate who can bring into your life the qualities which you must have in order to attain happiness, and which I unquestionably lack, that I shall hope, in time, for your forgiveness.. Without that I should hardly care to live on.

“Jonathan Brachey.”

Soberly Betty read and reread this curious letter. Then for a moment her eyes rested on the cool signature, without so much as a “sincerely yours,” and then she looked at that first phrase, “My Dear, Dear Little Girl”; and then her eyes grew misty and she smiled, faintly, tenderly. Suddenly, this morning, life had changed color; the black mood was gone, like an illness that had passed its climax. The curious antagonism in their talk the evening before had, it seemed, cleared the air—at least for her. And now, all at once—she was beginning to feel quietly but glowingly exultant about it—nothing mattered.

She ate all the breakfast that John brought; then hurried out. It gave her pleasure to stand aside and watch the packing, and particularly to watch Brachey as he moved sternly about. He was a strong man, as her father had been strong. He hadn't a glimmer of humor, but she loved him for that. He had all at once become so transparent. In his lonely way he had expended so much energy fighting the illusions of happiness, that now when real happiness was offered him he fought harder than ever. Her thoughtful eyes followed his every motion; he was tall, strong, clean.

His heart and mind, in their very austerity, were like a child's.

So deep ran this sober new happiness, as she stood by the litter waiting until he came—austerely—and helped her in (she was waiting for the touch of his hand, averting her face to hide the smile that she couldn't altogether control) that only a warmly up-rushing little thought of her father that came just then could restore her poise. She cared now about nothing else, about only this man whom she now knew she loved with her whole being and the father she had so suddenly, shockingly lost. If only, in the different ways, she might have brought happiness to each of these strong men. If only she could have brought them together, her father and her lover; for each, she felt, had fine deep qualities that the other would be quick to perceive.

All during the morning, feeling through every sensitive nerve-tip the nearness of this man who loved her and whom she loved, she rode through a land of rosy dreams. She felt again the power over life that she had felt during their first talk at T'ainan. Love had come; it absorbed her thoughts; it was right.... She exulted in the misty red hills with their deep purple shadows. She smiled at the absurd camels with the rings in their noses and the ragged, shaggy coats.

After a time, as the morning wore along, she became aware that he, too, was changing. Once, when he rode for a moment beside her Inter, he caught sight of her quietly radiant face and flushed and turned away. At lunch, by a roadside temple, under a tree, they talked about nothing with surprising ease. He was eager that she should draw and paint these beautiful hills of Hansi.

Late in the afternoon—they were riding down an open valley—he appeared again beside the litter. Impulsively she reached out her hand. He guided his pony close; leaned over and gripped it warmly. For a little while they rode thus; then, happening out of a confusion of impulses that, with whichever it began, was instantly communicated to the other, he bent down and she leaned out the little side door and their lips met.

The cook, from his insecure seat on the pack-saddle, carolled his endless musical narrative. John rode in stolid silence; the merely human emotions were ages old and quite commonplace. Mr. Po merely glanced up as he trudged along in the dust, taking the little incident calmly for granted.

So it was that, unaccountably to themselves, the spin of these two lovers rebounded from acute depression to an exaltation that, however sobered by circumstance, touched the skirts of ecstasy. They rode on silently as on the other days> but now their hearts beat in happy unison. No longer was the situation of their relationship unreal to them; the unreality lay with the white world from which they had come and to which they must shortly return. The mission compound was but an immaterial memory, like an unpleasant moment in a long, beautiful journey.

In the evening after dinner, they sat for a long time with her head on his shoulder dreamily talking of the mystery, their mystery, of love.

“It had to be,” she said.

He could only incline his head and compress his lips as he gazed out over her head down a long vista of years, during which he would, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, protect and cherish her. The old phrases from the marriage service rang in his thoughts like cathedral bells.

“1 don't believe we'll ever have those dreadful moods again,” she murmured, later. “At least, we won't misunderstand each other again. Not like that.”

“Never,” he breathed.

“Only one thing is wrong, dear,” she added. “I wish father could have known you. He'd have understood you. That's the only sad thing.”

He was silent. At last, after midnight, in a spirit of deepest consecration, he held her gently in his arms, kissed her good night, and went to his own room.