THERE came for his excellency, as the sun mounted the sky, a large junk of his own river fleet—great brown sails flapping against the five masts of all heights that pointed up at crazily various angles, pennons flying at each masthead, hull weathered darkly, mats and fenders of woven hemp hung over the poop-rail, and a swarming pigtailed crew at the sweeps and overside on the spunson and hard at the tracking ropes as the tai-kung screamed from the bow and the laopan shouted from the poop.

They were ferried aboard in the small boat, Kang with his daughters and his suite and servants, a handful of pitifully wailing women, young Kane and Griggsby Doane. Then the trackers cast off from the shore and the mooring poles, the sweeps moved, and with the lao pan musically calling the stroke the junk moved laboriously up-stream toward the home of his excellency's ancestors.

Crowded into the uninviting cabins the weary travelers sought a few hours of rest. Even the servants and the mourning women, under the mattings forward, fell swiftly asleep. Only Rocky Kane, his eyes staring widely out of a sensitively white face, walked the deck; until the thought—a new sort of thought in the life of this headstrong youth—that he would be disturbing those below drove him aft, out beyond the steersman to the over-hanging gallery. Here he sat on the bamboo rail and gazed moodily down at the tireless, mighty river flowing off astern.

The good in the boy—made up of the intelligence, the deep-smoldering conscience, the fineness that were woven out of his confused heritage into his fiber—was rising now like a tide in his spirit; and the experience was intensely painful. It seemed to his undisciplined mind that he was, in certain of his aspects, an incredible monster. There had been wild acts back home, a crazy instinct for excess that now took on distinctness of outline; moments of careless evil in Japan and Shanghai; the continuous subtle conflict with his father in which any evasion had seemed fair; but above all these vivid memory-scenes that raced like an uncontrollably swift panorama through his over-alert brain stood out his vicious conduct on the ship. It was impossible at this moment to realize mentally that the Princess Hui Fei was now his friend; he could see her only in the bright Manchu costume as she had appeared when he first so uncouthly spoke to her. And there were, too, the ugly moments with the strange girl known as Dixie Carmichael. That part of it was only a nightmare now.... The racing in his brain frightened him. He stared at the dimpling yellow river, at a fishing boat, and finally lifted his hurt eyes to the bright sky.... He had been going straight to hell, he told himself, mumbling the words softly aloud. And then this lovely girl had brought him into confusion and humility. Suddenly he had broken with his father; that, in itself, seemed curiously unaccountable, yet there the fact stood.... Life—eager, crowding—had rushed him off his feet. He felt wildly adrift, carried on currents that he could not stem.... He was, indeed, passing through one of life's deepest experiences, one known to the somewhat unimaginative and intolerant people whose blood ran in his veins as conviction of sin. His own careless life had overtaken and confronted him. It had to be a bitter moment. There was terror in it. And there was no escaping; it had to be lived through.

A merry voice called; there was the patter of soft-clad feet, and in a moment the little princess in her yellow hood with the fox head on the crown was climbing into his lap. Eagerly, tenderly, he lifted her; cuddled her close and kissed her soft cheek. Tears were frankly in his eyes now.

He laughed with her, nervously at first, then, in the quick responsiveness of youth, with good humor. She came to him as health. Together they watched the diving cormorants and the wading buffalo. Then he hunted about until he found a bit of board and a ball of twine; whittled the board into a flat boat, stuck a little mast in it with a white sail made from a letter from his pocket, and towed it astern. Together they hung on the rail, watching the craft as it bobbed over the little waves and laughing when it capsized and lost its sail.

She climbed into his lap again after that, and scolded him for making the unintelligible English sounds, and made signs for him to smoke; and he showed her his water-soaked cigarettes.

At a low-pitched exclamation he turned with a nervous start. The tall eunuch stood on the cabin roof; came quickly forward for the child. And beside him was Miss Hu Fei, still of course wearing the Chinese coat and trousers in which she had escaped from the steamer. She had, under the warm sun, thrown aside the curiously modern opera wrap. She was slim, young, delicately feminine. The boy gazed at her reverently. She seemed to him a fairy, an unearthly creature, worlds beyond his reach. In his excitement, but a few hours back—in what he had supposed to be their last moment together, in what, indeed, had seemed the end of the world—he had declared his love for her. That had been an uprush of pure emotion.... He recalled it now, yet found it difficult to accept as an occurrence. The actual world had turned unreal to him, as it does to the sensitively young that suffer poignantly.

To this grave young woman, oddly his shipmate, he could hardly, he felt now, have spoken a personal word. Their acquaintance had begun at a high emotional pitch; now it must begin again, normally. So it seemed to him.

“We were looking for my li'l sister,” she explained, and half turned. The eunuch had already disappeared with the child.

“Won't you sit out here—with me?” He spoke hesitantly. “That is, unless you are too tired to visit.”

“I coul'n' sleep,” said she.

Slowly she came out on the gallery.

“There aren't any chairs,” said he. “Perhaps I could find—”

“I don' mind.” She sank to the floor; leaned wearily against the rail. He settled himself in a corner.

“I couldn't sleep either. You see—Miss Hui—Miss Fei”—he broke into a chuckle of embarrassment—“honest I don't know what to call you.”

The unexpected touch of boyish good humor moved her nearly to a smile. Boyish he was, sitting with his feet curled up, stabbing at the deck with his jackknife, coatless, collarless, his thick hair tousled, blushing pleasantly.

“My frien's call me Hui,” she replied simply.

“Oh—really! May I—If you would—of course I know that—but my friends call me Rocky. The whole thing is Rockingham Bruce Kane. But....”

“I'll call you Misser Kane,” said she.

His face fell a very little; but quickly he recovered himself.

“You must have wondered—I suppose it seems as if I've done a rather crazy thing—it must seem so...” She murmured, “Oh, no!”

“Attaching myself to your party this way—-at such a difficult time. I know it was a pretty impulsive thing to do, but....”

His voice trailed into silence. For a brief moment this wild act seemed, however different in its significance to himself, of a piece with his other wild acts. It was, perhaps, like all those, merely ungoverned egotism. Her voice broke sweetly in on this moment of gloomy reverie.

“We know tha' you woul' help us if you coul'. An' you were so won'erful.”

“If I only could help! You see when I spoke that way to you—I mean telling you I loved you—”

“Please! We won' talk abou' tha'.”

“No. We won't. Except just this. I was beside myself. But even then, or pretty soon afterward, I knew it was just plain selfishness.”

“You mus'n' say that, either. Please!”

“No—just this! Of course you don't know me. What you do know is all against me—”

“I have forgotten—”

“You will never forget. But even if you were some day to like me more than you could now, I know it would take a long time. I've got to earn the right to be really your friend first. I'm going to try to do that. I've started all over—to-day—-my life, I mean. I'm just simply beginning again. There's a good long scrap ahead of me. That's all about that! But please believe that I've got a little sanity in me.”

“Oh, I'm sure—”

“I have. Jumping overboard like that, and swimming back to you—it wasn't just crazy impulse, like so many of the things I've done. You see, my father knows you and your father—yes, I mean the terrible trouble you're in. Oh, everything comes to him, sooner or later. All the facts. You have to figure on that, with the pater. He—well, he wanted me to stop thinking about you. He was afraid I'd be writing to you, or something. You see, he'd watched us talking there by the fire. And he told me about this—this dreadful thing. And then I had to come back. Don't you see? I couldn't go on, leaving you like this. Of course, it's likely enough I'm just in the way here—” She was smiling wearily, pathetically, now.

“Oh, no—” she began.

“It's this way,” he swept impetuously on. “Maybe I can help. Anyway, I've got to try. If your father—really—” He saw the slight shudder that passed through her slender body, and abruptly checked the rapid flow of words. “We've got to take care of you,” he said, with surprising gravity and kindness. “You'll have to get back with the white people. You mustn't be left with the yellow.”

“I know,” said she, the strength nearly gone from her voice. “It always seems to me that I'm an American. Though sometimes I ge' confuse'. It isn' easy to think.”

“I'm simply wearing you out. I mustn't. But just this—remember that I know all about it. I've broken with my father, for the present, and I'm happy about that. I have got some money of my own—quite a little. I've even got a wet letter of credit in my pocket. I had just sense enough last night to get it out of my coat. It's no good, of course, outside of the treaty ports, but it's there. I'm here to help. And I do want to feel that you'll call on me—for anything—and as for the rest of it—”

He had thought himself unusually clear and cool, but at this point his voice clouded and broke. He glanced timidly at her, and saw that her eyes were full of tears. He had to look away then. And during a long few moments they sat without a word.

Then the thought came, “I'm here to help!” It was a stirring thought. He had never helped, never in his life that he could remember. And yet the Kanes did things; they were strong men.

He was moodily skipping his knife over his hand, trying to catch the point in the soft wood. Abruptly, with a surprising smile, he looked up and asked: “Ever play mumbletepeg?”

Her troubled eyes for an instant met his. He chuckled again in that boyish way. And she, nervously, chuckled too. That seemed good.

“It's sort of hard to make the blade stick in this wood,” he said eagerly. “But we can do some of the things.”

Griggsbv Doane, too, was far from sleep. For that matter, he was of the strong mature sort that needs little, that can work long hours and endure severe strain without weakening. Moving aft over the poop he saw them, playing like two children, and stepped quietly behind the slanting short mast that overhung the steersman.

They made a charming picture, laughing softly as they tossed the knife. It hadn't before occurred to him that young Kane had charm. Plainly, now, he had. And it was good for Hui Fei, in this hour of tragic suspense. Youth, of course, would call unto youth. That was the natural thing. He tried to force himself to see it in that light but he moved forward with a heavy heart.

The junk plowed deliberately against the current. The monotonous voice of the chanting lao pan, the rhythmical splash and creak of the sweeps, the syncopated continuous song of the crowded oarsman, an occasional warning cry from the tai-kung—these were the only sounds. Elsewhere, lying in groups about the deck, the castaways slumbered.

But Doane knew that his excellency was awake, shut away in the laopan's cabin, for repeatedly he had heard him moving about. Once, through a thin partition, had come the sound of a chair scraping. It would mean that Kang was preparing his final papers. These would be painstakingly done. There would be memorials to the throne and to his children and friends, couched in the language of a master of the classics, rich in the literary allusions dear to the heart of the scholar, Manchu and Chinese alike.

Doane found a seat on a coil of the heavy tracking rope. His own part in the drama through which they were all so strangely living could be only passive. He would serve as he might. His little dream of personal happiness, with a woman to love and new strong work to be somehow begun, was wholly gone.

Slowly, foot by foot, the clumsy craft crept up the river. And strangely the scene held its peaceful, intensely busy character. Everywhere, as if there were no revolution, as if the old river had never known wreckage and bloodshed, the country folk toiled in the fields. Junks passed. Irrigating wheels turned endlessly. Fishermen sat patiently watching their cormorants or lowering and lifting their nets. A big English steamer came booming down, with white passengers out of bloody Hankow (the looting and burning of the native city must have been going on just then, before the reinforced imperial troops drove the republicans back across the river). They layabout in deck chairs, these white passengers; or, doubtless, played bridge in the smoking-room. And Doane, as so often during his long life, felt his thoughts turning from these idle, self-important whites, back to the oldest of living peoples; and he dwelt on their incalculable energy, their incredible numbers, their ceaseless individual struggle with the land and water that kept them, at best, barely above the line of mere sustenance.

It was difficult, pondering all this, to believe that any revolution could deeply stir this vast preoccupied people, submerged as they appeared to be in ancient habit. The revolution could succeed only if the Manchu government was ready to fall apart from the weakness of sheer decadence. It was nothing, this revolution, but the desperate work of agitators who had glimpsed the wealth and the individualistic tendencies of the West. And the hot-blooded Cantonese, of course. Most of the Chinese in America were Cantonese. The revolution was, then, a Southern matter; it was these tropical men that had come to know America. That was about its only strength. The great mass of yellow folk here in the Yangtze Valley, and through the coast provinces, and all over the great central plain and the North and Northwest were peaceable at heart; only those Southerners were truculent, they and the scattered handfuls of students.

And yet, China, in the hopeful hearts of those who knew and loved the old traditions, must somehow be modernized. Sooner or later the Manchus would fall. The vast patient multitude must then either learn to think for themselves in terms of modern, large-scale organization or fall into deeper degradation. The European trading nations would strike deep and hard in a sordid struggle for the remaining native wealth. The Japanese, with iron policy and intriguing hand would destroy their institutions and bring them into a pitiful slavery, economic and military.

His own life, Doane reflected, must be spent in some way to help this great people. The individual, confronted by so vast a problem, seemed nothing. But the effort had to be made. Since he was not a trader, since he could not hope now to find himself in step with the white generation that had passed him by, all that was left was to pitch in out here. The call of the martyred Sun Shi-pi pointed a way.

The personal difficulty only remained. The man who loses step with his own people and his own time must submit to being rolled under and trampled on. There is no other form of loneliness so deep or so bitter. And seeing nothing above and about him but the hard under side of this hard white civilization, the unfortunate one can not hope to retain in full vigor the incentive to effort that is the magic of the creative white race. Every circumstance now seemed combined to hold him down and under. The philosophy of the East with which his spirit was saturated argued for contemplation, submission, negation (as did, for that matter, the gospel of that Jesus to whose life the peoples that called themselves Christian, in their every activity, every day, gave the lie). His only driving power, then, must come out of the white spark that was, after all, in his blood. It was only as a discordantly active white that he could help the yellow men he loved.... And the one great incentive—love, companionship, for which his strong heart hungered—had flickered before him only to die out. He must somehow, at that, prove worthy. It was to be just one more great effort in a life of prodigiously wasted effort.... He thought, as he had thought before, in bitter hours, of Gethsemane. But he knew, now, that he purposed going on. Once again he was to dedicate his vigor to a cause; but this time without the hope of youth and without love walking at his side.

And then, quaintly, alluringly, the picture of Hui Fei took form before his mind's eye, as if to mock his laborious philosophy, charm it away. Like that of a boy his quick imagination wove about her bright youth, her piquant new-old worldliness, shining veils of illusion. It was, then, to be so. He was to live on, sadly, with a dream that would not die.... He bowed his head.

Their play brought relief to the overwrought nerves of the two young people. After a time they settled comfortably against the rail.

“You lost all your things on the steamer?” said he. “Ever'thing.”

“So did I.” He smiled ruefully. “Even part of my clothes. But it doesn't matter.”

“I di'n' like to lose all my pretty things.” said she. “But they're gone now. All excep' my opera cloak. An' I'm jus' a Manchu girl again. It's so strange—only yes'erday it seem' to me I was a real American. I los' my books, too—all my books.”

He glanced up quickly. “You're fond of reading?”

“Oh, yes. Aren' you?”

“Why—no, I haven't been. The fellows and girls I've known didn't read much.”

“Tha' seems funny. When you have so much. And it's so easy to read English. Chinese is ver' hard.”

“What books have you read mostly?”

She smiled. “Oh, I coul'n' say. So many! I've read the classics, of course—Shakespeare an' Milton and Chaucer. Chaucer is so modern—don' you think? I mean the way he makes pictures with words.”

“What would you think,” said he, “if I confessed that I cut all those old fellows at school and college?”

“I've thought often,” said she gravely, “tha' you Americans are spoil' because you have so much. So much of everything.”

“Perhaps. I don't know. The fellows feel that those things don't help much in later life.”

“Oh, bu' they do! You mus' have a knowledge of literature an' philosophy. Wha' do they go to college for?”

“Well—” Inwardly, he winced. He felt himself, without resentment, without the faintest desire to defend the life he had known, at a disadvantage. “To tell the truth, I suppose we go partly for a good time. It puts off going into business four years, you know, and once you start in business you've got to get down to it. Then there's all the athletics, and the friends you make. Of course, most of the fellows realize that if they make the right kind of friendships it'll help, later, in the big game.”

“You mean with the sons of other rich men?” she asked.

“Why, no, not—yes, come to think of it, I suppose that's just what I do mean. Do you know here with you, it doesn't look like much of a picture—does it?” Thoughtfully she moved her head in the negative. “I know a goo' deal about it,” said she. “I've watch' the college men in America. Some of them, I think, are pretty foolish.”

“I suppose we are,” said he glumly. “But would you have a fellow just go in for digging?”

She inclined her head. “I woul'. It is a grea' privilege to have years for study.”

He was flushing. “But you're not a dig! You—you dance, you know about things, you can wear clothes....”

“I don' think study is like work to me. I love it. An' I love people—every kin', scholars, working people—you know, every kin'.”

His moody eyes took in her eagerly mobile face; then dropped, and he stabbed his knife at the deck.

“Of course, we know that all is no' right 'n America. The men of money have too much power. The govemmen' is confuse', sometimes very weak and foolish. The newspapers don' tell all the things they shoul'. But it is so healthy, jus' the same! There is so much chance for ever' kin' of idea to be hear'! An' so many won'erful books! Often I think you real Americans don' know how' won'erful it is. You get excite' abou' little things. I love America. The women are free there. There is more hope there than anywhere else in the worl'. An' I wish China coul' be like that.”

“I quit college,” said he. “You see, I've never looked at things as you do.”

“Bu' you have such a won'erful chance!”

“I know. And I've wasted it. But I'm changing. I—it wouldn't be fair of course to talk about—about what I was talking about—not now—but I am seeing things—everything—through new eyes. They're your eyes. I'm going at the thing differently. You see, the Kanes, when you get right down to it, don't think about anything but money.”

“I like to think about beauty,” said she.

“I wonder if I could do that.”

“Why no'?”

“Well—it's kind of a new idea.”

“Listen!” she reached out, plainly without a personal thought, and took his hand. “I'm going to reci' some poetry that I love.”

Thrilled by the clasp of her hand, his mind eager wax to the impress of her stronger mind, his gaze clinging to her pretty mouth, he listened while she repeated the little poem of W. B. Yeats beginning:=

"All the words that I utter,

And all the words that I write..."=

At first he stirred restlessly; then watching, doglike, fell to listening. The disconcerting thing was that it could mean so much to her. For it did—her dark eyes were bright, and her chin was uplifted. Her quaint accent and her soft, sweet voice touched his spirit with an exquisite vague pain.

“It is music,” said she.

“I don't see how you remember it all,” said he listlessly.

“Jus' the soun's. Oh, it woul' be won'erful to make words do that. So often I wish I ha' been born American, so it woul' be my language too.”

She went on, breathlessly, with Yeats's—=

"When you are old and gray and full of sleep..."=

And then, still in pensive vein, she took up Kipling's L'Envoi—the one beginning—“There's a whisper down the field.” Clearly she felt the sea, too; and the yearning of those wandering souls to whom life is a wistful adventure, and the world an inviting labyrinth of beautiful hours. She seemed to know the Child's Garden of Verses from cover to cover, and other verse of Stevenson's. It was all strange to him, except “In winter I get up at night.” He knew that as a song.

And so it came about that on a dingy Yangtze junk, at the feet of a Manchu girl from America, Rocky Kane felt for the first time the glow and thrill of finely rhythmical English.

She went on, almost as if she had forgotten him. William Watson's April, April she loved, she said, and read it with a quick feeling for the capricious blend of smiles and tears. It dawned on him that she was a born actress. He did not know, of course, that the theatrical tradition lies deeper in Manchu and Chinese culture than in that of any Western people.

She recited the beautiful Song of Richard Le Galliene, beginning:=

"She's somewhere in the sunlight strong...."=

And followed this with bits from Bliss Carman, and other bits from Henley's London Nocturnes, and from Wilfred Blunt and Swinburne and Mrs. Browning. She had a curiously strong feeling for the color of Medieval Italy. She spoke reverently of Dante. Villon she knew, too, and Racine and the French classicists. She even murmured tenderly de Musset's J'ai dis À mon coeur, in French of which he caught not a word and was ashamed. For he had cut French, too.

And then, as the sun mounted higher and the gentle rush of the river along the hull and the continuous chantey of the oarsmen floated, more and more soothingly to their ears, they fell quiet, her hand still pleasantly in his. Together they hummed certain of the current popular songs, he thinking them good, she smiling not unhappily as her voice blended prettily with his. And Griggsby Doane heard them.

At last she murmured: “I think I coul' rest now.”

“I'm glad,” said he, and drew down a coil of rope for a pillow, and left her sleeping there.

Doane heard his step, but for a moment could not lift his head. Finally the boy, standing respectfully, spoke his name: “Mr. Doane!”

“Yes.”

“May I sit here with you?”

“Of course. Do.”

“I've got to talk to somebody. It's so strange. You see, she and I—Miss Hui Fei—it's all been such a whirl I couldn't think, but....”

That sentence never got finished. The boy dropped down on the deck and clasped his knees. Doane, very gravely, considered him. He was young, fresh, slim. He had changed, definitely; a degree of quiet had come to him. And there could be no mistaking the unearthly light in his eyes. The love that is color and sunshine and exquisite song had touched and transformed him.

Doane could not speak. He waited. Young Kane finally brought himself with obvious, earnest effort in a sense to earth. But his voice was unsteady in a boyish way.

“Mr. Doane,” he asked, “do you believe in miracles?”

Thoughtfully, deliberately, Doane bowed his great head. “I am forced to,” he replied.

“You've seen men change—from dirty, selfish brutes, I mean, to something decent, worth while?”

“Many times.”

“Really?.... But does it have to be religion?”

“I don't knew.”

“Can it be love? The influence of a woman, I mean—a girl?”

“Might that not be more or less the same thing?”

“Do you really think that?”

Again the great head bowed. And there was a long silence. Rocky broke it

“I wish you would tell me exactly how you feel about marriage between the races.”

“Why—really—”

“You must have observed a lot, all these years out here. And the pater tells me that you're an able man, except that you've sort of lost your perspective. He did tell me that he'd like to have you with him, if you could only bring yourself around to our ways.” Rocky, even now, could see this only as a profound compliment. He rushed on: “Oh, don't misunderstand me! She doesn't love me yet. How could she? I've got to earn the right even to speak of it again. But if I should earn the right—in time—tell me, could an American make her happy?”

“I'm afraid I can't answer that general question.” But Rocky felt that he was kind. “The pater says I'd be wrecking my life. He says she'd always be pulled two ways—you know! God! He seemed to think I had only to ask her, and she'd come. He doesn't understand.”

“No,” said Doane—“I'm afraid he couldn't understand.”

“You feel that too? It's very perplexing. I know I've spoken carelessly about the Chinese and Manchus. I looked down on them. I did! But oh, if I could only make it clear to you how I feel now! If I could only express it! We've been talking a long time, she and I. I don't mind telling you I'm taking a pretty bitter lesson, right now. She knows so much. She has such fine—well, ideals—”

“Certainly.”

“Oh, you've noticed that!.... Well, I feel crude beside her. Of course, I am.”

“Yes—you are. Even more so than you can hope to perceive now.”

The youth winced; but took it. “Well, suppose—just suppose that I might, one of these days, prove that I'm decent enough to ask her to be my wife.... Oh, don't think for a minute that I don't understand all it means. I do. I tell you I'm starting again. I'm going to fight it out.”

“That is fine,” said Griggsby Doane, and looked squarely, gravely, at the very young face. It was a white face, but good in outline; the forehead, particularly, was good. And the blue eyes now met his. “I believe you will fight it out. And I believe you have it in you to win.”

“I'm going to try, Mr. Doane. But just suppose I do win. And suppose I win her. It's when I think of that, that I.... I'll put it this way—to my friends, to everybody in New York, she'd be an oddity. A novelty, not much more. You know what most of them would think, in their hearts. Either they'd make an exception in her case—partly on my account, at that—or else they'd look down on her. You know how they are about people that aren't—well, the same color that we are. Probably I couldn't live out here. The business is mainly in New York, of course. And she's such an enthusiastic American herself—she'd want to be there. Some, anyway. And she's got to be happy. She's like a flower to me, now; like an orchid. Oh, a thousand times more, but.... What could I do? How could I plan? Oh, I'd fight for her quick enough. But you know our cold rich Americans. They wouldn't let me fight. They'd just....”

“My boy,” said Doane. quietly but with an authority that Rocky felt, “you can't plan that. You can do only one thing.”

“What thing?”

“Stay here in China a year before you offer yourself to that lovely girl. Study the Chinese—their language, their philosophy, their art. A year will not advance you far, but it should be enough to show you where you yourself stand.”

“A year....!”

“Listen to what I am going to try to tell you. Listen as thoughtfully as you can. First I must tell you this—the Chinese civilization has been—in certain aspects still remains—the finest the world has known. With one exception, doubtless.”

“What exception?”

“The Grecian. You see, I have startled you.”

“Well, I'm still sort of bewildered.”

“Naturally. But try to think with me. The Chinese worked out their social philosophy long ago. They have lived through a great deal that we have only begun, from tribal struggles through conquest and imperialism and civil war to a sort of republicanism and a fine feeling for peace and justice. And then, when they had given up primitive desire for fighting they were conquered by more primitive Northern tribes—first the Mongols, and later the Manchus. The Manchus have been absorbed, have become more or less Chinese.

“And now a few more blunt facts that will further startle you. The Chinese are the most democratic people in the world. No ruler can long resist the quiet force of the scores of thousands of villages and neighborhoods of the empire.

“They are the most reasonable people in the world. You can no more judge them from the so-called Tongs in New York and San Francisco, made up of a few Cantonese expatriates, than you can judge the culture of England by the beachcombers of the South Seas.

“They developed, centuries before Europe, one of the finest schools of painting the world has so far known. There is no school of reflective, philosophical poetry so ripe and so fine as the Chinese. They have had fifty Wordsworths, if no Shakespeare.

“You will find Americans confusing them with the Japanese, whom they resemble only remotely. All that is finest in Japan—in art and literature—came originally from China.”

“You take my breath away,” said Rocky slowly. But he was humble about it; and that was good.

“But listen, please. What I am trying to make clear to you is that in old Central China—in Hang Chow, and along this fertile Yangtze Valley, and northwest through the Great Plain to Kai Feng-fu and Sian-fu in Shensi—where the older people flourished—germinated the thought and the art, the humanity and the faith, that have been a source of culture to half the world during thousands of years.

“But you can not hope to understand this culture through Western eyes. For you will be looking out of a Western background. You must actually surrender your background. It is no good looking at a Chinese landscape or a portrait with eyes that have known only European painting. Can you see why? Because all through European painting runs the idea of copying nature—somehow, however subtly, however influenced by the nuances of color and light, copying. But the Chinese master never copied a landscape He studied it, felt it, surrendered his soul to it, and then painted the fine emotion that resulted. And, remember this, he painted with a conscious technical skill as fine as that of Velasquez or Whistler or Monet.”

The youth whistled softly. “Wait, Mr. Doane, please.... the fact is, you're clean over my head. I—I don't know a thing about our painting, let alone theirs. You see I haven't put in much time at—” He stopped. His smooth young brows were knit in the effort to think along new, puzzling channels. “But she would understand,” he added, honestly, softly.

“Exactly! She would understand. That is what I am trying to make clear to you.”

“But you're sort of—well, overwhelming me.”

“My boy.” said Doane very kindly, “you could go back home, enter business, marry some attractive girl of your own blood who thinks no more deeply than yourself, whose culture is as thinly veneered as your own—forgive me. I am speaking blunt facts.”

“Go on. I'm trying to understand.”

“—And find happiness, in the sense that we so carelessly use the word. But here you are, in China, proposing to offer your life to a Manchu princess. You do seem to see clearly that there would be difficulties. It is true that our people crudely feel themselves superior to this fine old race. As a matter of fact, one of the worthiest tasks left in the world is to explain East to West—draw some part of this rich old culture in with our own more limited background. But as it stands now, the current will be against you. So I say this—study China. Open your mind and heart to the beauty that is here for the taking. Try to look through the decadent surface of this tired old race and see the genius that still slumbers within. If, then, you find yourself in the new belief that their culture is in certain respects finer than ours—as I myself have been forced to believe—if you can go to Hui Fei humbly—then ask her to be your wife. For then there will be a chance that you can make her happy. Not otherwise.”

Doane stopped abruptly. His deep voice was rich with emotion. The boy was stirred; and a moment later, when he felt a huge hand on his shoulder he found it necessary to fight back the tears. The man seemed like a father; the sort of father he had never known.

“Don't ask her so long as a question remains in your mind. Defiance won't do—it must be faith, and knowledge. I can't let you take the life of that girl into your keeping on any other terms.”

The odd emphasis of this speech passed quite by the deeply preoccupied young mind.

“You're right,” he replied brokenly. “I've got to wait. Everything that you say is true—I really haven't a thing in the world to offer. I'm an ignorant barbarian beside her.”

“You have the great gift of youth,” said Doane gently.

But a moment later Rocky broke out with: “But, Mr. Doane—how can I wait? She—after her father—they're going to take her away—make her marry somebody at Peking—somebody she doesn't even know—”

“I don't think they will succeed in that plan,” said Doane very soberly.

“But why not? What can she do? A girl—alone—”

“There are tens of thousands of girls in China that have solved that problem.”

“But I don't see—”

“You must still try to keep your mind open. You are treading on ground unknown to our race.” A breathless quality crept into Doane's voice; his eyes were fixed on the distant river bank. “I wonder if I can help you to understand. Death—the thought of death—is to them a very different thing—”

“Oh!” It was more a sharp indrawing of breath than an exclamation. “You don't mean that she would do that?”

Doane bowed his head.

“But she couldn't do a cowardly thing.”

Doane brought himself, with difficulty, to utter the blunt word. “Suicide, in China, is not always cowardice. Often it is the finest heroism—the holding to a fine standard.”

“Oh, no! It wouldn't ever—”

“Please! You are a Westerner. Your feelings are those of the younger—yes, the cruder half of the world. I must still ask you to try to believe that there can be other sorts of feelings.” Again the great hand rested solidly on the young shoulder; and now, at last, the boy became slightly aware of the suffering in the heart of this older man. Though even now he could not grasp every implication. That human love might be a cause he did not perceive. But he sensed, warmly, the ripe experience and the compassionate spirit of the man.

“You have stepped impulsively into an Old-World drama,” Doane went quietly on—“into a tragedy, indeed. No one can say what the next developments will be. You can win, if at all, only by becoming yourself, a fatalist; You must move with events. Certainly you can not force them.”

“But I can take her away,” cried the boy hotly; finishing, lamely, with “somehow.”

“Against her will?”

“Well—surely—”

“She will not leave her father.”

“But—oh, Mr. Doane....”

He fell silent. For a long time they sat without a word, side by side. Here and there about the junk sleepers awoke and moved about. A few of the women, forward, set up their wailing but more quietly now. The craft headed in gradually toward the right bank, passing a yellow junk that was moored inshore and moving on some distance up-stream. At a short distance inland a brown-gray village nestled under a hillside.

“That junk passed us before we left the island,” Rocky observed, gloomily making talk.

Doane's gaze followed his down-stream; then at a sound like distant thunder, he turned and listened. “What's that?” asked the boy.

Doane looked up into the cloudless, blazing sky. “That would be the guns at Hankow,” he replied.

The lictors were landed first to seek carts in the village. Then all were taken ashore in the small boat. His excellency smilingly, with unfailing poise, talked with Doane of the beauties of the river; even quoted his favorite Li Po, as his quiet eyes surveyed the hills that bordered the broad river:=

“'The birds have all flown to their trees,

The last, last lovely cloud has drifted off,

But we never tire in our companionship—

The mountains and I,'”=

The line of unpainted, springless carts, roofed with arched matting, yellow with the fine dust of the highway, moved, squeaking, off among the hills. Following close went the women and the servants. The junk swung deliberately out and off down the river.

Doane, declining a cart, walked beside that of his excellency; Rocky Kane, deadly pale, his mouth set firmly, beside Miss Hui Fei. And so, through the peaceful country-side they came to the long brick wall and the heavily timbered gate house by the road, and, pausing there, heard very faintly the soft tinkling of the little bronze bells within. It was late afternoon. The shadows were long; and the evening birds were twittering among the leafy branches just within the wall.