.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46152
   :PG.Title: The Last Ditch
   :PG.Released: 2014-06-30
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Will Levington Comfort
   :DC.Title: The Last Ditch
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE LAST DITCH
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      *The Last Ditch*

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      BY

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      WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

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      AUTHOR OF "CHILD AND COUNTRY," "DOWN AMONG
      MEN," "MIDSTREAM," "RUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE,"
      ETC., ETC.

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      NEW YORK
      GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY  

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      Copyright, 1916
      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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      TO
      JOHN

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   CONTENTS

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   PROLOGUE: HANKOW

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`The Yellow Rug Woman`_


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   PART ONE: THE GREAT DRIFT

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`Sundry Adventures`_


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   PART TWO: THE GOBI

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`Anna Erivan`_


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   PART THREE: THE GOBI

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`Rajananda`_


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   PART FOUR: TIENTSIN

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`The Hunchback`_


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   PART FIVE: CONCLUSION

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`The Hill Country`_

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.. _`THE YELLOW RUG WOMAN`:

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   PROLOGUE: HANKOW


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   THE YELLOW RUG WOMAN

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   I

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Romney saw the rug before he saw
the woman.  It was the yellow of
India, the yellow you see on the
breast of the purple martin and on
the inner petals of an Emperor rose.  The
weave of the rug was like no other.  Its folds
looked heavy like raw silk, yet the fabric itself
was thin.  It would last a life time, and then
become a priceless gift for the one held most
dear.  It was soil-proof as a snake's skin.  It
was either holy or savage.

They were on the little river steamer,
*Sungkiang*, a day's passage below Hankow.  The
woman had boarded that forenoon at
Wu-chang.  Romney had come through from
Ngan-king.  The yellow rug lay across the
knees of the woman.  The afternoon was
breezy and bright.  It was May, and the rice
was green along the flats of the southern shore....
She was either English or American,
Romney reflected, and also that the world was
well supplied with pretty women, but not with
rugs like that.

Just now the woman held out her arms to a
missionary's child—a passing boy-child of five
in sandals.  His legs were bare and brown and
scratched.  His name was Paul and he was a
stoic from much manhandling.  He went to
her arms in silence, and there was a burning
now in Romney's chest.  Her voice had been a
thirsty primitive note, like a cry, as if the
presence of the child hurt her.

The little boy stood erect and silent against
her limbs.  She lifted the rug and drew it
about his waist to hold him close.  She was
lost to everything else.  Romney had fancied
her the most exquisite and delicate creature,
but this face that he saw now had the plain
earthy passion of a river-woman talking to her
first-born—a love of the child's body and face
and lips, the love of a woman who loves the
very soil of play on her child.  Paul had been
running the decks for two days, making
enough noise to give the missionary the
reputation of being a widower.  The child was
moist from running at this moment, and the
woman buried her face in his throat.

Romney wished whimsically that he were
the missionary so he could come into the
picture for the sake of meeting the woman.  The
child was drawing away.  Her dark eyes were
untellably hungry already.  Paul must have
told his name, for she was saying:

"Such a right name for a noble boy.  And
where are you going?"

"To Hankow."

"It's like a fairy-tale—a young man going
to Hankow to seek his fortune—"

"My father does not like me to read fairy-tales—"

Paul's eyes were full of pictures.  Romney
did not hear what she said to that, but circled
the little deck again, thinking of her eyes and
voice.  They went with the yellow rug.  As
Romney returned, the child pulled back from
the woman, announcing:

"That's my father."

And now for the first time Romney's eyes
and the woman's met.  The child had pointed
his way, though the missionary was behind
him.  Her look came up with something that
seemed to say, "I beg of you—don't disappoint
me."  Then Romney forgot the peculiarity of
that, in the sudden sense that she was like the
blood-sister of some one he had known.  At
the same time flat in his consciousness was the
fact that he had not known any such "some
one."  She was young, but this was not the
look of a girl at all—the look of a hungry
imperious woman who had known love and
been denied—adult understanding, the shoals
of cheap illusion passed.  She was looking
beyond him at the real father of Paul.

Under his own calm, Romney was intensely
sensitized.  Something had happened to him
from her eyes.  He felt he was out somewhere
in the deep waters of life wherein she sailed—the
shallow problems already put from them,
all decoration, convention and imitation thrust
aside.  The missionary and the little boy had
passed.  And now Romney did a very good
thing for him, and something that he would
not have thought possible before this day.  He
drew a chair close to the yellow rug, saying:

"May I?"

"Yes."

... They talked of Paul, of missionaries,
of Asia, travel.  Her manner was easy
and genuine, her observations wise and humorous,
but her eyes full of challenge.  There was
tenderness in them, and something that for a
better name he called deviltry.  He felt
himself in the presence of a big nature, whose
sweep was from the primitive passions of birth
and death, of fear and hunger, to some
consummate and mysterious ambition.  He could
not tell what she wanted; and at the same time
her thrall was stealing over him, preventing
him from seeing her the same at different
moments.  He felt that her sweetness could be
unfathomable to one she loved.  She was
exquisite in every detail—lip, nostril,
finger-tip, hair, figure, voice, manner, wear—all as
perfect as the yellow rug.  Yet it was beauty,
rather than loveliness, something to fear about it.

Romney knew in that first hour that he did
not challenge her.  He felt his youth, his
imperfections, the wastes of his past years.
All that he had fancied good about those years
looked questionable now.  If he had known
that he was to meet this woman, his life would
have been different.  He had met no one like
her.  She accepted his best with ease and
without wonder.  No man had been able to do that.
She tossed a crown over the highest of his
mental offerings and added a higher one of
her own on his favourite subjects.  Yet they
were not showing each other their wares.  She
stimulated him as no one had done before, and
as for her part—it was the pleasant passage of
an hour.

An Irish woman with an olive skin and
dark hair and eyes—slender and not too tall.
Her face in profile had the Greek essential of
beauty, but with a hardly imaginable delicacy
covering the rigour of that austere line of bone
structure.  She seemed the most conserved
creature he had ever met, as if every
excellence of life had been known to her from a
child—all love and reverence and protection.
He suddenly remembered that fury of instinct
with which she had kissed the boy Paul in
the throat.  Something earthy and ample
about that, sound and deeply-grounded like
a peasant woman's passion.

He wondered again and again what she
wanted.  It had nothing to do with money or
position—Romney was sure of this.  Queerly
enough the truth did not come to him until
later.  They dined together humorously in the
little cabin of the *Sunkiang*....  A
Burmese tiger had killed her husband.

"I can stand it—if I don't stay in one place
too long," she said, looking at the farthest
punkah.  "It is always with me.  If I stay at
home, or any one place many weeks, the
thoughts seem to pile up so that I cannot
breathe.  They drive me away—"

She had evidently not found before much
understanding of this point—seemed without
hope to make herself clear to him.

"The thoughts of it become heavy in any
one place," she added, "so that there is no
home—"

"I know," Romney said.

She looked at him quickly.  Any one might
have said it, but Romney spoke as if he had
earned the right, and she questioned that.

"The tiger killed my baby, too,—though I
was in England—"

She said it apparently with little emotion,
but Romney sensed a slow pounding of agony
in her breast, like a sea that cannot quiet down.

"I have thought of everything," she was
saying.  "I have some philosophy.  I have no
foolish sense of this life being all—or death
being all, but, oh, I was going to take him his
little baby—as soon as it was born.  I was at
his father's in Kent, England.  And to think
that a bit of pink paper and the word *tiger*—"

Romney was silent.

"My baby would have been as old as that
little boy with the silly missionary father,"
she added.

"Why silly?  I only saw a bent drab man
with his particular idea of God—"

"Silly because he doesn't permit the child
to hear fairy stories—"

"Ah—"

Romney found himself regarding her judgment
as quite right.

He thought he was beginning to understand
now, yet she seemed to live too powerfully in
the present hour to be lost altogether in a
tragedy of five years ago.  The look of her
eyes had to do with the future, not with the
past.  At the same time there was something
tremendous in the slow, still way she had
spoken of her child and its father.  A
magnificent sort of Englishman he must have been
to hold this woman's life to his....

They were on deck again.  The wind had
gone down.  The moon played upon the mists
of the ricelands on the southern shore.  To the
north the river was crowded with small boats
and the myriad lights of a low-lying city were
fused into a dull red glow.  The woman was
thrilling him now with every sentence:

"I am not hugging a grief.  I see that I gave
you that impression.  Perhaps I carry it with
me—and give it forth from time to time as a
matter of habit.  It is doubtless as interesting
as another, but it is not true.  Life is too short
to try to make most people understand.  If I
care enough to explain, I tell a different, a
more real story.  You are good to talk to.
I think I must have been lonely when you
came and drew up your chair.  That startled
me pleasantly—your doing that.  At least,
I knew you weren't common.  Grown-ups—men
and women adults—should dare to be
real to each other.  How chatty I am—"

"I like it.  I do feel the gift of it—"

"No, I'm not going around the world
clinging to an ancient bereavement....  He was
a very good man, patient, a man's man—a
tiger-hunter.  It's all in that.  I was younger
five years ago.  I was so young that I thought
for a time my future sufficiently wrapped in
his.  Then I had his baby.  That made a kind
of devil of me.  I had *lived* those months.  I
found that there was something huge and
endless about that experience.  I am not giving
you any cant about motherhood.  I could
smell and taste and see into things as never
before.  I was in a rage when he went away
to hunt tigers.  Why, he took it as a matter
of mere nature—as something in the natural
course of events—that I should bring *his* child
into the world.  I was growing into a real
creature and he could not rise out of the
annual tiger rhamadan.  It is a sort of
religion with his family—and couldn't be broken.
And then I was smothered in his family.
When the word was brought a kind of
madness came over me—sorrow—yes, there was
real sorrow.  I remembered all his good, but
the madness had to do with *perpetuating
him*—a man who could leave me in that smothering
British household....  It seemed I
wanted a child that had nothing to do with
him—with them....  What I wanted in
those days, I wanted with a kind of madness.
They said it was my grief that killed the little
one.  These things are mysterious....  And now—"

She laughed softly.  Romney was trying to
adjust this story with the earlier talk, but each
part destroyed the other.  He could as readily
believe the first as the final.  It dawned upon
him that the real truth might lie somewhere
between, but there were no tangible forms to
grip in this middle distance.  He was not
inclusive enough to know that she was for
the moment intensely what she said.  In any
event the strange lapses of the tale did not
break the enchantment.

"Don't try to understand," she added
gently.  "No man could understand—at least,
none but a very great artist."

"But now," he repeated.

"Oh, I search and search.  I know that
travel does not bring me nearer to what I
want, but I can't rest long in one place.  He
left me everything that the world can give, but
I can't live long in his houses.  Yet what I
search for is as likely to come to me at home,
as here in Asia—"

"What is it you search for?" Romney asked.

"A man," she said.


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   2

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Romney lay in his berth after midnight.
All that he had known and won heretofore was
gathered together but did not weigh in the
balance against Moira Kelvin.  No discrepancy
stopped the tumultuous striding of his
thoughts after her flying image and the
multitude of her sentences.  She had amplified her
story.  Here was a woman brave enough to
go out and look for her own.  She believed
she would know him at once.  She believed
the woman in her would know before he knew.

"It's not a matter of place," she had
repeated.  "I don't hasten matters by
rounding the world every year or two.  I know he
might just as well cross my own threshold in
Ireland or come to one of the late tiger-hunter's
households in England.  Not a
matter of place, but the right time.  I think
when we are both ready he will come surely—it
must be he who is not ready....  See
how the years go.  I am older than you, Sir
Romney.  These are years on the vine now.
I am nearing thirty.  I am afraid of this
waiting.  It sometimes makes me feel sour to wait.
I don't want to be sour when he comes.
I want one more child—one child from him.
I learned something of what it means—oh,
just the beginning of that mighty mystery.
I would kill him—if he did not prove the
real lover.  No more tiger-hunters for me.
All boyish things would have to be put away
by the man I took for my own.  He would
have to know what it means to be a father.
There's something heroic about that that the
world doesn't dream of yet.  My lover would
have to understand that.  At least, he would
have to know when I told him.  God, how few
are the lovers in the world."

Romney pondered this again and again in
his berth, sentence by sentence.  Once she had
laughed and said:

"The man I mean—why, his romance is
greater to him than his life work."

And again, she had bent forward whispering,
her hand upon his knee: "Sometimes I
feel as if I were strong enough to be the mother
of the new race."

All this on a little river steamer, deep in
China, the rice-lands giving away to the hills
as they neared Hankow.  Moira Kelvin had
but one theme—the lover she would some time
know.  A frail superb woman burning with a
dream.  Romney felt that there was stuff in
her to endure fire that would wither most
women.  She had the physique for great
emotions.  He quite believed that she was capable
of killing the man who failed her.  He sensed
something of her deadly horror in the mistake
she had once made.  She was different now
from the girl-wife of that patient English
sportsman.

"There are analogies in nature about this
killing of the male," she had said.  "Look at
the fate of the bee whom the queen crowns
king in their flight."

The hours had passed magically.  It was he
who had risen first.  He was afraid of the
woman, afraid as he had never been before,
of some intrinsic lacking of his own.  He felt
at times that his own presence had nothing to
do with her ideal—that she was merely telling
her story as she might have done to some
woman companion.  Then there were other
moments of personal relation—as if she felt
from the first the power she possessed for him;
that she was interested in making it greater;
that she loved the use of her power in his
arousing; even that he might be or become
something of this solar being she dreamed of....
Always with her was the feeling that
she was not interpreting herself exactly, some
histrionic weakness—that she was carried
away in the ardour of her impulses; that she
acted perfectly the moment, but was not
exactly that.  Romney hated the logic of the
male mind that persistently brought him this
observation.

They were together the next afternoon at
Longstruth's *Pyramids* by the river, a little
table in the bamboo clumps with the most
famous tea of the Empire.  Two white butterflies
were whirling together persistently near.
Moira Kelvin's eyes followed them dreamily.
Romney said:

"They make me think of the States—little
common kid-day butterflies.  I don't know as
I ever saw them before in China."

"They are around the world," she answered.
"They are always where I am because I see
them.  Always two—like bluebirds, and
always silent like bluebirds.  I see them and
all well-paired things....  Once in Ireland
in the fall of the year I found a cocoon, a very
large and different one.  It was on an old lilac
tree near the bedroom window where I slept
as a child.  The silk was gray brown, a filmy
weave like a dress my mother wore as I first
remember.  I loved her terribly in that dress—ah,
the moths, I was telling you.  I broke
the branch and took the cocoon to the room.
Then there was a night in the following June
when I happened to be home for a few days.
It was a misty windless evening of endless
twilight.  Great purple mists came up and
breathed upon the earth and mated and melted
into the holy breath that hung over the grove
of copper beeches....  I am hungry and
thirsty to-day, Sir Romney, or I would not
talk like this.  Sometimes Nature maddens me....

"But I was telling you of that June night.
There was a rustle in the corner, and I ran
from the little room.  That house was full
of ghosts to me, and there seemed no love in
the world—only loneliness and twilight—my
heart streaming its torrent upward and
outward, but seeming to touch no living thing.

"I laughed at myself for being frightened
by a little rustle and went back into the room.
I saw a great gray moth at the window screen
and then I remembered and ran to the desk
where I had left the cocoon.  The whole
branch had fallen—and I got the picture of
the birth of a winged thing there in the
shadows.  The moth itself was on the screen—a
gleaming gray creation, with a light of its
own about it—the light of the fairy world
which I remembered from a child.  The
wings were whirring silently—the still strange
creature poised for flight in the night, and
held by this man-made screen.  At the end of
each feathered antenna was a pendent cross.
I tried to open the screen, but it was old like
all of the things of that house and I ran to
find a servant.

When I returned, the moth was not alone.
*Its own* had come to it through the
twilight—answering some cry we are too coarse to
hear.  They were there together—a mystic
pair of wonderful gray mates—one on the
outside of the screen, one in the room.  I
could not wait for the servant, but cut a door
in the wire with a rough bronze paper-cutter,
and away they flew together."

It was her theme.

All that day Romney dwelt in her power.
She gilded his world.  He found that his
relation to her was that of servitude.  She
commanded imperiously, dictating what they
should say, where they should go, what they
should eat and drink.  Yet he was glad, for
this had never happened before.  It did not
occur to him that this mysterious establishment
of their relation was fatal to the real
romance.  Each minute forged him anew.
She was great and glowing.  He did not know
that all the old ideals of wooing and winning
that the world has come up through were
impossible with her.  Vaguely and darkly the
hope formed that *time* might change something;
that the luck of a white man in Asia
might come to his aid.

Romney was less the mere crude male than
most men.  He had intuitions, visions, deep
yearnings, answered to very little of the
levelling dominance of the trade mind, but on the
very points that he excelled, she chose to
master him.  It was as if he had been
provinced in Asia and she had come from all the
earth.  His thought of her to-day was not the
thought of yesterday.  It did not dawn upon
him that her changes might not be moodiness
or incoherence, but the very width of her orbit
and splendour of her diffusion.

There was at Longstruth's a Chinese boy
who served them.  He seemed to enter into
their thought of the little delicacies.  He had
some English which Romney chose to use for
a time, but there came a moment of late
afternoon when a matter of service required
explicit information, and Romney administered
it in Chinese, excusing himself as he took
his attention for a moment from the woman.
He turned back to her to find a new interest
in her eyes.

"Tell me about yourself," she said suddenly.
"You must have come to China as a child to
speak like that."

"No, I have been here only four years—three
years in India before that.  My ways
have not been interesting.  Since you came
they have all been cheapened.  I see I have
wasted my time—"

"Now that is a good saying.  Thank you.
Sometimes, Sir Romney, you are very attractive—"

"It is quite true.  The things that interested
men here—I mean the Americans and English,
the big exploiters—have not held me long,
though I have worked with them and for
them.  Always the different, the more hidden
things called me.  Until yesterday I thought
I was at least doing decently well.  But I see
you have somehow touched the core of things.
I've been puttering—"

"At least, it is good not to be considered
either wicked or insane," she answered.  "I
usually draw that.  I wonder that you like
my things.  Sometimes I have even felt
myself that I am a little mad.  The first time that
came to me was in England the first year after
the tiger.  It was a summer Sunday morning—the
earth was risen in beauty—birds singing
as they only sing in the sun-mists that
follow a night of rain.  It was a seething of
bird-song, of colour and fragrance—just a year
after the tiger.  As I listened, the fury of
longing that I live with came upon me in high
tide—and then in the midst of it, I heard the
sound of church-bells from the village.  It
was like a gray cloud, an evil odour, a
catarrhal voice....  Spectres of the English
Sabbath.  People stifled me for days after
that....  But I talk and talk and I want
your story now.  See, we have been together
all day and some of yesterday and you have
listened—"

"I am not through listening.  So much of
me was asleep before yesterday."

She smiled swiftly at him.  "You shall not
escape now that you are so good.  See, the
night is coming.  Everything is here.
Longstruth's is worth coming up the river for.
China is sweeter here and undefiled.  I would
be hideously lonely without you—and you
have not told me who and what you are.  Why,
listen, I don't often ask a man to talk about
himself."

"I get the force of that.  It's only that what
I have is drab and young.  I would have made
it different had I known you were coming—"

"Sir Romney—there's a pull about you.
You do not diminish.  Oh, I must know all
about you now—"

"I hear and obey," he said.


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   3

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Romney was a bit taller than necessary with
a beaked nose and a head that bowed
naturally.  When he turned from the side and
looked up at you smilingly, it was a face you
were apt to remember.  The mannerism was
so peculiarly his own when he was interested
or amused, that he did not know of it.  There
was nothing about him (unless it was the
depth of calmness in his eyes) to denote other
than a sophisticated white man travelling in a
state of comfort if not plenty.  A clean-faced,
white-toothed American of twenty-seven—a
good mouth, a good brow, straight lean
shoulders, and a long dark hand—nothing
striking or exceptional, except the beaked
nose, and possibly the depth of calmness in his
eyes.  Something of poise and power in that.

"I came out here seven years ago from
California," he said.  "A tender-chested young
student from Palo Alto with book-Sanscrit.  I
had a post with an American consul in one of
the second towns of Bengal.  I used to write
letters in Bengali for him.  He had a
rice-brewery on the side, and couldn't write
English.  He used to chew tobacco and promote
his business, swearing that rice beer was more
delectable than English ale, and experimenting
in keg-making with the native woods.  It
hurt him to have to import kegs.  The English
didn't like him and he had an incessant war
on.  It kept him fit, this battling.  The East
could not smother his energy....  But I
took other posts and was presently touching
the skirts of Mother China.

"She challenged me more than India had
done.  I really got the call from her one
morning on the Pearl River a little above Canton.
It was a shimmering day—the big rice-lands
on either side.  Some rice we saw yesterday,
though we're a bit far north.  There was a
glitter about that day as the sun rose.  I seem
to remember this now more than then.  You
always put an atmosphere to your stories—the
kind of day or night.  Nature means
things to you....  I knew right there that
day that I had left India for good.  That was
four years ago.  China needed me and I was
to spare.  All hitherto was mere preparation
for a life in the East, more real.  You see the
English have everything in India.  The
higher a man climbs the more he feels the
ordering English hand.  It doesn't make any
difference if he likes it or not.

"I was merely carrying a little commercial
message up the Pearl River that morning.
China touched me, kind of opened up to me
then and there, the big deviltry, the big
cunning, the big beauty in the world above the
dollar sign and the designation of the British
pound.

"I remember the saffron legs of my boatman
and his sing-song intonation as he hailed
some naked neighbour in a passing junk.  I
began to get the quality of the voices of the
Chinese then, as I had heard the native
Bengali three years before—a kind of lust in my
heart to know what they were saying, and
why they said it.  I threw up my job and
travelled north.  I studied long in Shanghai.
Long—that is, about two years.  Academic
Sanscrit didn't help then.  I had to get a new
neck.  I learned the basic Chinese and then
began to put on the flourishes of the provinces.
I didn't do this with the idea of commanding
big money, but I began to make money.  You
see, I was getting something that only eight or
ten Americans have.  I wanted more than the
language.  I wanted the working of the
Oriental mind.

"The only clue to that is religion.  I had
studied a lot with the Hindu boys in Bengal.
That's what they do best—study, gather in,
mull over, meditate, but bolt at the idea of
action.  I was American enough to want to
make some of this study-stuff come true, but
that in India was a valuable period of mental
accretion.  It wasn't living here in the East
that made me in a sense familiar with the
native mind—it was the sacred writings of
China, India and Palestine.  In Shanghai,
and later in Peking, I hobnobbed with the
young *literati*—a different class from the
Indian students, very interesting men who
prepare themselves almost cosmically to enter
local politics.  I saw that China had always
pulled me strangely.  Meeting the boys here
recalled to me how interested I had been in
the Chinese students at Palo Alto.  It was
from a Chinese at college that I began to get
a real conception of the historic and esoteric
figure of Jesus—the man we make a religion
of in the States.  Over here the steady-going
literature of the best minds is never far from
the utterances of the mystics and the prophets.
I met them all from Patanjali to Paracelsus
and volumes of magic, the spiritual properties
of medicine, studies of the stars that none
would scoff at so breezily as the modern
astronomers of Europe and America.

"More or less at this time I was in touch
with Americans in China who were making
money.  I lived a double life—holding fast
to the commercial world, and keeping secret
my enthusiasm for matters of mysticism.  This
recreation kept me from getting stale and
tainted.  The white man over here plays a lot,
and he drinks too much at his play.  Perhaps
I'm getting too diffused in this story, but I
rather wanted you to understand, since I
began, the idea that drove me to become
powerful in the native mind and at the same
time to hold a grip on the West.  I was
disinclined to the poverty of the earth and at the
same time unwilling to release my grip on
certain ideas of Heaven.  You see all real
mysticism is out of the East.  There was only
one way to make good on this training and the
Chinese knows how.  The Hindu doesn't.  It's
to keep God and man separate, to keep the left
hand for the spirit of things and the right for
matter and the world.  I had a gift in the
beginning for these languages.  I wouldn't
have gotten them without that.  I wouldn't
have had the urge without it.  It was that lust
to know what the river-men were saying, and
not only that, but to know why they said these
things.  A man might learn Chinese in a
certain number of months, but he can't learn the
*feel* of the people without a call to them.

"Finding that I had mastered something, I
proceeded to forget it.  That means that the
processes began to work automatically.  I had
learned to think in Chinese—that's the
truth—so much so that the English and American
training I had known began to take on the
same sense of distance and novelty that they
would from the standpoint of a cosmopolitan
Chinese.  For instance, you and the yellow
rug—even before you spoke, appeared to me
in a kind of haze of romance—"

He smiled at her.  Romney was himself for
the first time in her presence because he saw
that his story was making her incline to him
pleasantly.

"Meanwhile," he added, "I had ceased to
be a boy in certain ways, and I had come into
a bodily health and strength that I never knew
as a boy.  I had learned to wait and I had
learned how to laugh—"

"That is much," Moira Kelvin said.

Then Romney realized—perhaps it was
something of premonition—that what he said
was not quite as exact as it would have been
before meeting her.

"Perhaps it is too much," he replied quickly.
"I would have said it without qualification
before—before yesterday.  I only mean in
men-matters.  Perhaps I have to learn how to
wait and how to laugh all over again in the
things that are nearer the heart.  I was only
talking about the pressures that the world
put on a man.  Perhaps I have not put away
boyish things that pertain to a man's relation
with women, his woman.  That's an arcanum
to me—"

"Arcanums call you, don't they, Sir
Romney?" she asked.

He saw the gleam of her eyes and teeth in
the purple dusk.

"Something as they call you, I think.  I
have never known the sheer excitement of a
human presence such as you have brought to
me.  It's because I can lose myself in you.
China has a new atmosphere when I'm with you—"

"I am interested.  I like your praise."

Her voice came lingeringly to him.  "You
are not so young as I thought," she went on.
"And yet you are young.  You are still
preparing, and yet you have passed the
multitudes of men—oh, so far."

"Presently I began to see the new birth of
China.  It became clearer and clearer as I
learned more of the native mind.  Now that
I think of it, this new birth which is not yet
consummated, is like the gray glistening moth
of your Irish house that lay in the desk
through the long winter.  All that the usual
white man sees, even now, is the weathered
rusty chrysalis of the old, but I see the wings.
They are still pinned.  The body is moist and
craving, but it looks great and good to me.
I met some of the young men who are ready
to give their lives for it—a kind of inspired
group of young men, like Hugo's group that
nearly became famous.

And there is one American whom I was
honoured to meet—oh—just recently.  My
story is rapidly getting up to date.  This
American, a hunchback and a prophet, has
given himself to old mother China.  He
dreams about the peace that is ahead for the
world, and his dreams are straight as the
hammer to the anvil because he has no
sentiment, knows all about war—even the
cleansing of war—has written a text-book on
military tactics which is the biggest and newest
thing in American and British camps—yet a
dreamer about peace—"

Her face was close to his in the dusk, a
yearning in her eyes that shook his heart.  A
chill went through him because this yearning
was not for him.  He saw that he had touched
her in the center of her mysterious being—saw
that a man with a dream was more to her than
any man's action.

"Tell me more," she whispered.

"Nifton Bend—have you, too, heard of him?"

"Not until now.  Is that the Hunchback's name?"

"Yes.  I only saw him for about ten minutes.
It was in Peking a year ago—the strangest,
saddest and longest face in the world.  It
looks up at you, for he is maimed.  I could not
speak when he first looked up at me.
Something leaped in my chest.  I wanted to put
my arms about him and lead him to a chair.
It wouldn't do to tell that impulse—only to
a woman....  The name of Nifton Bend
was repeating in my mind.  It was in a room
of a native professor's house in the Congrou
section of Peking.  There were students about,
but all became hushed with the Hunchback's
presence.  Cushions were brought and we sat
down around him.  I remembered his name in
connection with the military text-book now.
That came with a jump.  He was young and
yet long ago I had read another book of his,
which, until he was here before me, I had
not related to the author of the text-book.  It
was during the college days in California
when that other book came to me, and I loved
the Chinese setting.  The book itself, I did
not remember.  It was half a story, half a
fairy-tale, but from it, the spirit of China had
come to me—something related to the emerging
of the great gray moth.  This was only the
beginning of recollections.  I had heard this
man spoken of as the spirit of Young China,
as the organiser and leader of the new Chinese
army, as a represser of the Japanese influence.
This frail and broken body seemed, in the
extravagance of my thoughts of that moment,
to hold the future of the Empire.  I saw him
somehow as the embodiment of the depth and
genius of the yellow race.  They called him
*The General*.

"He was looking at me with a dead, expressionless
gaze.  An instant before his eyes had
been burning, and there had been a smile
on the woman-mouth of him.  Only the pale
angular jaw and the narrow temples had not
changed.  I was startled at his look.  His head
made me think of a wolf-hound—that long
ironed head.  It was not until normal
consciousness and the smile returned that I
realised that his lapse of expression meant
that he was *seeing into me*—that I had been
appraised body and soul—"

Romney talked coldly now.  He felt the
entire passion of the woman turned from his
own story—that he had touched something
that took her farther from himself, if nearer
to her dream.  He caught a glimpse of what
it would mean to hold the heart of this woman
in all its power.  It was like Romney to make
as much as possible now of the opposing
influence, yet he hurried through:

"Nifton Bend's eyes were lingering warmly
upon me again.  I felt zeal for service under
him, but I was tied up for the time being.
Yes, it was as if I had found a master.  In
coming into his presence, I had touched the
inner circle.  He spoke of China and Japan,
a low uninflected English, and then of
America—how he had left her because there was no
play of his powers in America—how the States
seemed to him tranced in trifles—yet how he
loved the States.  Presently he said that we
were destined to meet again—and I knew that
the audience was finished."

"Where is he now?" Moira Kelvin asked.

"In Peking—at least, he is never far from
the centre of things, and that is Peking."

They were silent some time and then the
woman spoke:

"You have told me a story of yourself—by
talking about China and another man....
Take me back to the hotel, Sir Romney, I will
see you to-morrow.  Come to me at noon if
you like.  It has been a good day—thanks to
you.  I'm glad to know you better and better.
It sounds cold—but perhaps some time you'll
know what that means.  I am a little mad
to-night....  I seem to feel old China in her
new birth—moist and craving like the big
gray moth—her mate not yet come—and this
Hunchback whom you are destined to meet
again—"


.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   4

.. vspace:: 2

It was a whirlwind fortnight at Hankow.
Romney was game, rather big game, for a
questing beauty a-wing around the world.
His soul had been asleep to her kind of magic.
She touched him awake.  His education and
many attitudes towards life were torn down
and rebuilt.  There was a furious lover in the
man, and serious weaknesses that had never
been tested before.  Though he did not
acknowledge, and perhaps was not aware of
the fact, he had been in his own way a terrific
worker.  The passions of his life, in a single
day, had been turned from his tasks to Moira
Kelvin.  She had to be a rather splendid
creature to take gracefully the full tumult from
such a man's heart, but this was her genius.

Romney's woman matters heretofore had
been sundry and discursive.

She took his all and was not filled.  No
other pressure could be brought to bear upon
a man to make him greater, to make him
surpass himself, than an encounter with a woman
who could contain him at his highest force,
and still have an aching void to spare.

Moira Kelvin was thirty years old, in full
bloom, trusting nothing under the sun but her
own heart.  Whether it was mania or the
excellence of her evolution, her conviction
remained upstanding that there was one man
somewhere who could fully awaken her.  She
was without laws and without fears, but she
would have considered it the most vulgar form
of failure to give herself to a man who called
her only in part.  She was in the height of
her power, and modern enough to wish to
know a man well before she revealed to him
more than the usual arts of woman.  Her one
great mistake had been made at the end of
girlhood in the case of the tiger-hunter.  She
held her body and her beauty even more sacred
now because of that failure.  Yet she looked
into the faces of men everywhere.  Any man
brave enough could have his chance.  Romney
made the most of his.

For hours on their last day together Romney
could not speak.  He looked long into her
face from time to time—until it turned into
a mist before his eyes, or other shadowy faces
passed before it.  He could see nothing beyond
her but his own death, and he knew enough to
realise there could not be much help in that,
considering his present frame of mind....
They were at Longstruth's, a sultry evening.
She was tender and tyrannical in turn.

"... We are not enemies," she said.  "I
have been no more to you than you have called.
I know you are not holding that ancient
balderdash that I lured you on.  I have never
from the first day kept from you my conviction
that the one had not been found in Sir
Romney.  And yet you were more to me than
I thought at first.  Why not take the full
honour of that now?"

"You are going away," he said dully.

"It is a mercy to you—though I am not
merciful.  If you were a fool, like most men,
you would think me a devil."

"I suppose men who are not big enough to
make good with a woman—call her a devil—"

"Or a vampire," she laughed.

He shook his head.  He had lost his sense
of humour for the time.  "I'm not making any
mistake about you.  I've been away about
world matters like most men.  The women we
meet usually call us to be less than we are,
rather than more—"

"Men have made women that way," she said quickly.

"The way doesn't matter.  That's what happens,
or at least men think so, and fail to get
on the ground where even an average woman
is at her best....  But it's not generalities
for me.  I perceived myself lost in you.  I
loved from the first the great open nature
which you drew from—mates in everything,
your whole creativeness lost in the one
subject—your whole power and reason for
being—love.  When I came to you I seemed to
come into my own country....  I did not
seek you.  I was happy enough in the old.  I
looked bleak and blind to myself before your
coming.  Oh, I praise you right enough—only
it's hard, damned hard, to give up—"

"You will be tremendous for some woman,"
she whispered.  "Let me tell you—there was
one day when I rocked before you—"

"To think I could diminish after that," he
said slowly.  His voice chilled her.

"You have said it all, Sir Romney.  We did
not seek this thing.  At least, I had no wish
to hurt you.  I do not play in these great
matters.  Some have thought otherwise, but
I do not play.  You would not have known
me an hour if you had not been worth knowing—"

"I have ceased to be worth knowing then—only
to-day?"

"That is not kind, Sir Romney.  You are
less than yourself to say that.  We have been
much together.  If you are hurt by this, it is
because you are less than I think you are.
Hurt—I mean enduringly.  Hurt, of course
now, but constructively.  You will not die.
Perhaps you will not break training seriously.
Listen, do you think I fail to know what will
happen to you—if you make the best of
this? ... You will be a greater lover for some
other woman.  She will have to be a greater
woman to call you.  You will know her more
in the first hour because of these days with me.
You will be less apt to make the one hideous
mistake which men and women make in the
world—that of choosing the wrong mate.
You will be a quester because of these days
with me.  There's something precious about that."

"If there is but one woman in the world
for me—as you say there is but one man for
you—then why is it that I want you so?"

"This is your initiation.  Mine was more
sordid and revolting with the tiger-hunter.
I am your awakener.  You think I am everything,
because I am older, deeper in the world
of love—demanding so much—thinking so
much of these things.  Remember this—there
is no such thing as the triangle among real
people.  Mark the woman as common-minded
who is in doubt between two men whom she
knows well.  All shuffling and experimenting
is the cause of misery in the world.  The
higher the soul of a man or woman, the more
essential is *the* voice, the hand of one.  Any
key will fit common locks.  As for you—you
were held in your work.  All the natural fury
of you was compressed in the gray and the
silence of mere men-things.  You were like a
sleeping prince, Sir Romney.  I but break the
enchantment, and look into your face as your
eyes open, and say sorrowfully—'No, it is not
he,' and pass on."

"Moira Kelvin—you pass on."

"You would not want me to take less than I
dream of?"

"But I love you.  I never said it before.  I
have no place to put this great thing—that you
have called.  It doesn't come back to me.  It's
got all of me.  It leaves me so much less than
alive—when you pass on."  He smiled at her.
"Sounds weak and pleady.  I don't mean it
that way.  I want nothing of pity, of course.
Pity, that would be obscene.  I'm not making
a picture of the heart bereft.  This is no
doom-song to a gracious lady—only knowing you is
an insult to the rest of the world."

Her slim hand darted out to him.

For a moment his voice choked.  The touch
of her was like a greater self.  He was
tortured with a vision of what it would mean to
have all of this woman—to command her
tenderness utterly, her bestowals, the full deep
look of woman to man, the night and day
presence, the child she dreamed of—this woman
lovely as a golden cloud....  He trembled
and his head turned away.

Her face came around to his.

"Romney," she whispered.  "It isn't nearly
so easy as it would be if you were less a man.
Oh, don't you see that?  I would have had the
heart of a girl and pitied you, and thought it
love.  You're enough to make that—except
for the life I learned in England.  Now it's
the one covenant.  Why, the man I want—I'll
do the winning.  I would bring the fight to
him.  Nothing could stand between us.  I
could be saint or wanton.  You don't know me.
You would not want half of me.  You could
only want that part of me you are able to
command.  Perhaps, as that Hunchback said to
you, 'We shall meet again.'  I feel that you
are a big fellow—brave and quiet and
generous—that you have the stuff to make a lover.
The real lover must be a bit of a mystic and
you have that—but not now, and I must go on....
See, how I have stayed—"

Romney stared hard at her a moment, and
then beyond.  It was all black, a depth of
bamboo clumps like a jungle, over her bent
left shoulder.  He saw his end in that
blackness.  She was light and power and beauty
and art.  A group of waiting-girls were
playing the *vina*, behind the lattice by the bank of
the river.  It was like the slow song of
nightingales.  The scent of roses passed between
them like a spirit hand.  Her face was nearer.
The warm scent of her was in his nostrils, and
power came to him that he had not known at
all that day.  Romney spoke:

"Don't think of me as holding you.  I love
you too much for that—how easy to say that
after once it is spoken....  I have nothing
but praise and gladness to give you.  Yes, you
have stayed—that I might be with you—that
I might have my full chance.  I know what
you mean by its being worth death—and what
a man he would be to command your heart
once, even—and live on afterward....
No, I wouldn't hold you.  I wouldn't cry out.
I would hold you by sheer love for me—but I
am not great enough for that.  I would cry
out if you came to my arms, but they are not
magnetic enough.  I have had my chance.  I
know what a woman is.  Forgive me if I
disagree about there being another—for me.  I'm
afraid there isn't, because I've known you—"

His voice became very soft.  "You'll feel
it," he added.  "You'll feel it following you
around—a man's love for you—mine.  I
win—to know what I know to-night.  And when
you find him—know that I drink his health.
I could do that devoutly....  I have had
your baggage taken to the boat.  The launch
will call here for you....  In a few
minutes....  I think—I think you are not a
woman at all—but an immortal!  You see I
cannot suffer thinking of you that way—"

"Romney—"

"Yes—"

"Romney—no one is watching.  I would not
care if they were—put your head a moment on
my breast....  Ah, and now upon my
knee ... dear boy ... Romney, I am
blind.  I almost hate to go.  Don't let me stay,
will you? ... Ah, kiss me—once
... lips ... ice cold ... once?  It isn't
true!  It's just passion, Romney!  I hate
myself.  Don't let me stay to-night ... once—"

They were standing.  She had not spoken
for long.  The launch was waiting.

"I want something that you have on—something
of yours," he managed to say steadily.

She unfastened her cloak, gave it to him to
hold—took off the waist she wore—a bit of
gold-rose chiffon that he could cover in his
palm.  Then she put on her cloak again.

He helped her into the launch.  Her bowed
head turned to him a moment, and she covered
her eyes.  The launch sputtered away.

Romney went back to the seat near the
bamboo thicket.  The scent of roses wavered
past, and the music of the *vina* came in to him.
Romney drank.  Once he raised his head.  It
was her steamer passing down the river.
Hours afterwards he was drinking there alone....
Toward morning Longstruth himself
came and sat down, but the American did not
speak.  Neither was he drunk in the least.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SUNDRY ADVENTURES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART ONE: THE GREAT DRIFT


.. class:: center large bold

   SUNDRY ADVENTURES

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   1

.. vspace:: 2

The night was starless, windless.
The funnels of the *John Dividend*,
a tramp steamer, lying in the
yellow water off Woosung, were
smearing the deck; the cinders crunched
under the boots of the solitary forward
watch.  This was a white man who leaned
over the railing, and reflected in the dull
fashion of a bruised mind, that he would
have to scrub down that deck at dawn.  A
live cinder dropped on the back of his neck.
He brushed it away stolidly without haste.
The action was that of one so accustomed to
suffering that the finer sense was deadened to
ordinary pangs.  The tall attenuated figure
was clad in loose and dirty garments of cotton.
One of his reckless eyes a fist had rimmed with
black.  In some respects this was the most
miserable man that ever swabbed the decks of
the *John Dividend*.

He had been given a berth without undue
questioning while the ship lay in Manila
harbour; had spent eleven days and nights on
board the tramp, learning what the deeper
hell is like.  He had been refused the privilege
of going ashore at Woosung, had been abused
by the captain and the crew, beaten by the
second mate and bitten by the engineer's dog.
Besides he had gotten onto McLean's books to
the extent of twenty-five dollars.

McLean was the second engineer, a sober
Scot who augmented his earnings by loaning
money to the crew at interest.  The murderous
rate which he charged reinforced him
somewhat against the big chances necessary in
dealing with lawless, ship-jumping wanderers.
Yet his losses were smaller than men believed.
McLean had a sleepless gray eye—only one,
but that sufficed—and a memory for faces and
wrongs as remorseless as temporal things
can be.

He never accounted a debt lost until he had
seen the dead body of the debtor and found it
barren.  He was a profound believer in the
smallness of the world and in the efficacy of
time.  He had money banked in all the
Oriental seaport towns from Aden to
Yokohama.  He was a money-lender by nature.
The sea was a means, not a labour of love.  In
a word it was wisdom to keep away from
McLean; and if that were impossible, the
next best thing was to pay what he had
coming with interest in full, for he had a way
of overturning cities and draining seas for
his own.

The white man on watch had seen the more
favoured members of the crew return from the
port in song and sottishness.  He thought of
the lights of Shanghai up the river, beyond
fourteen miles of foul marsh mist.  His own
various and recent miseries had often recurred.
On this night that the *John Dividend* dropped
anchor off the Shanghai port, they brought the
white man a kind of madness.  There was
nothing in particular to watch.  Overside, the
sea and dark were one, though the ship was
surrounded by Chinese junks.  Some of the
junks were manned by begging lepers, but the
needy would have fared ill from the mercy of
the *John Dividend's* crew.

As if moved by an involuntary impulse, the
white man tumbled forward into the dark.
The junks shot toward the splash, like a school
of sharks after a chunk of pork.  The nearest
dragged in the prize, and the forward deck
of the *John Dividend* was left without a watch.
This was not exactly a loss, since the missing
man as a sailor was equally worthless above
and below, but there was a bad debt and a bad
name left behind, consequently a memory.
McLean held the memory and the missing
man's note for five pounds.

Dawn was upon the water as the junk
approached the city.  From either bank came
the shrill voices of the river-dwellers not
unlike the waking sound of winged scavengers.
Hoarse shouts were heard ahead.
The American buried his face while the last
drunken party of the *John Dividend* pulled
past, headed for the ship.  When the voices
could be heard no more, the fugitive raised his
head, shuddering.  It was then that he noticed
the other occupant of his own junk—a
hairless female without hand, without teeth, with
an empty socket in the place of one eye.  She
manipulated the oars by means of straps
attached from her wrists to the handles.  A
child was in her lap, and the child was so far
clean.

This was the creature who had helped him
into the boat before light, who had touched
him.  When the junk bumped into the
masonry of the city's front, he tossed a silver
dollar into the leper's dress.  She screamed
for more as she would have done had the piece
been a double-eagle.  Fearful lest she should
spring at him, the white man threw another
coin into her lap and fled.

Yet after all, he took Shanghai with something
of a smile that day.  The first thought
was to get clean clothes, but there is always
formality and inconvenience about such
purchases that are not connected with the barter
of rum.

Within a few hours he had fallen once more
into the great drift; resumed his classic jaunt
over Asia and the Islands.  It had begun far
up a certain big yellow drain many months
before.

Of the two days which followed, only
distorted passages that touched McLean, the
money-lender, came to surface.  Certain
foreigners, however, were stopped upon the
streets of Shanghai by a dilapidated American
who seemed to have a wild laugh back in his
brain, and who inquired with manner, "Has
the *John Dividend* put to sea?"

The drift took him at length to the Walled
City where a white man may truly be lost, and
where countless animals, roughly shaped like
men, move about to a dirge-like beat of many
afflictions and seem waiting for death.

.. vspace:: 2

Three days after the white man disappeared
into the walled city of Shanghai, a great liner's
nose cleaved the yellow water off Woosung.
On the hurricane deck, well away from the
enthusiastic party of American tourists, a
small slant-eyed man stood alone by the
landward rail.  To him every puff of the warm
breeze was lotus and memory-laden, though
he kept his sentiments in chilled steel.

"*Dr. Huan Ti Kung, San Francisco to
Shanghai,*" was all the ship's registry told of
him....  He might have been twenty or
forty, as you preferred.  One couldn't tell
anything definite from the styleless black suit
and hat he wore, nor from the sombre repose
of the classically Chinese face.

Throughout the final two hours of the
passage between Nagasaki and the Shanghai port,
Dr. Ti Kung did not once leave the liner's
deck.  The ship was now churning the yellow
emptyings of the Yang-tze, and that which
held his eyes ahead, looked very much like a
swamp to the eyes of the Americans and
English.  To Dr. Ti Kung it was not marshland,
but the garment's hem of the Mother Empire,
not seen these many years.  There were no
tears in his eyes; it is doubtful if his pulse had
quickened.  It is dangerous to suggest the
nature of a yellow man's emotion.  None
but a yellow man could understand exactly.
Yet this was certain, Dr. Ti Kung had not
stood on the deck heretofore during the three
weeks' voyage from San Francisco.  He had
not gone ashore in Japanese ports.  The
expression on his face was as serene and
contemplative as usual while the liner lay on the
different days in the three harbours of Nippon.
But the face of the yellow man is not an
authoritative document.

The recent ten years in America had been
years of much movement, study and mystery.
He had lived much in college towns, in
Toronto, Vancouver, also in California and
New England.  It had not been the mere
matter of an education, though he had specialised
rather extensively at chemistry and biology.
Plentiful education is to be had in Peking.

Dr. Ti Kung had made friends in America.
There were Americans of his own age who
had tried to know him as a white man knows
another.  It may be certain of these believed
they succeeded.  The Chinese accepted with
equal mind the condescension of his inferiors,
who held the belief that the Celestial Empire
was a kind of giant laundry, and the frank,
emotional friendliness of those of his
classmates and business affiliates who had found
that he was equally prodigious as athlete and
student.  His was a manner of profound
gentility, with a mental background sumptuous in
colour and experience.  To Dr. Ti Kung most
of these Americans were acquaintances,
nothing more.  The word *friend* in his
language was something to which only the best
aspired.

In spite of his various appearances for a
year or more in different colleges and
commercial establishments, none of these affairs
had made up the real life of Dr. Ti Kung, nor
had anything to do with his present journey
home.  He had not worked for money.  A
certain class of American acquaintances had
found him not only approachable for
temporary benefit but admirable in forgetfulness
as he was unswerving in bestowal.  His material
means seemed inexhaustible from the first.
A large portion of his life in America was
unaccounted for, except by the few men and
women whose lips were as well governed as
his own.

Dr. Ti Kung made himself very small in
the crowded launch on the way up the river,
and was one of the first to step forth upon the
stones of the Bund.  A word to a coolie there
and his baggage and other matters of
disembarkation were taken from his hands.  He
moved into the foreign quarter swiftly,
passing through the streets with as little interest
as if it were a daily custom.  A mile deep in
the Nankin Road, well past the row of
German tobacconists, he hailed a particular
'rickshaw coolie from a group and was carried by a
round-about journey through the northeast
gate of the Walled City.  Here Dr. Ti Kung
sniffed; at least something of relaxation was
for the first time apparent.  His surroundings
were not pleasant, but it was China herself.

The street had now narrowed to a passageway.
There was not room for two 'rickshaws.
The beggars were forced to move back close to
the stall-fronts as he passed, and the progress
of his coolie was necessarily slow.  Presently
the passage was broken by a series of broad
stone steps to the right.  Half way up these,
in the midst of a group of beggars, sat a white
man, very drunk.  He appeared to be
expounding some great matter in a lingual
mixture straight from nowhere.  His head
rocked leisurely from side to side.  But one
eyelid could withstand its heaviness at a time.
On occasion both of the lids would drop,
whereupon the white man's hand would
fumble to his face and prop up the nearest
with a very soiled finger, an effort that quite
commanded his faculties so that speech halted
for the moment.

Dr. Ti Kung spoke to the 'rickshaw coolie,
who halted promptly.  Leaning forward, he
surveyed the figure with thoughtful interest.
It now appeared that an insect threatened the
lean inflamed face of the American, for the
propping finger was withdrawn and waved
laboriously before the beaked nose, the
eyelids meanwhile falling in abandon.  Just a
word was spoken from the 'rickshaw and the
next instant the figure on the steps was alone.
Dr. Ti Kung now took one shoulder, ordering
his coolie to the other, and the American was
lifted to his feet.  Walking rigidly on either
side, they steadied the limp and slender giant
to the vehicle, where he sprawled across the
wheel and was pushed with considerable effort
into the seat.  He sighed luxuriously and
called for a cigarette.  Dr. Ti Kung brought
forth his case, lit the match, and resumed his
way on foot, a man's length or more behind the
'rickshaw.

Thus they proceeded for some distance
along the numerous unsavoury passages.
Keeping to a direction was impossible in
trending the intricate alley-ways; the coolie
seemed merely to be following the paths of
greatest smell.

By degrees the novelty of the ride wore off
for the tall fellow in the 'rickshaw.  Even the
cigarette stump, burning into the padding of
the seat, failed to interest him.  The eyes of
Dr. Ti Kung, walking behind, were presently
held to the back of the vehicle which strained
and creaked outrageously.  A moment later,
it stopped.  Stepping forward and around, the
Chinese gentleman found his 'rickshaw coolie
standing like a faithful horse, waiting to be
extricated from the embrace of the American
who had launched forward over the handles,
with the intention seemingly of depositing
himself upon the neck and shoulders of the
native.  He had not altogether succeeded.
Dr. Ti Kung decided that his charge must
have a change.

They were now at the junction of the
passage and a broader artery, where a barbershop
was in operation, partly upon the corner
and partly within doors.  Dr. Ti Kung
beckoned and three of the barbers were at his side
in an instant.  The idea was not broached to
the white man.  He was seized and benched,
lather applied at once.  He had evidently met
Chinese at home.  His jaw hardened and he
appeared to await some brutality from
without, before taking exception to events.  At the
first scrape of the blade, however, he lay back
at ease—a white man's long training under the
knife.

Meanwhile the chief barber, disdaining
other than to officiate in the present activity,
turned to Dr. Ti Kung as if resuming a
conversation halted yesterday:

"... The amazement of this low-minded
proprietor in having his unmentionable shop
patronized by so enlightened a personage, is
without bounds and earth-defying."  He
produced a water-pipe of silver mounting and
proceeded: "To say nothing of this illustrious
foreigner who thus disguises his exalted rank—"

"You suffer from slight misconception,"
said Dr. Ti Kung, "only as regards the
companion of this foreign prince.  Behold in
myself a rural born of lowest degree—"

The barber drowned the utterances in the
loud bubbling of his water-pipe.  "This day
will ever linger in the memory of one
degraded chief of barbers, for the patronage
of a court companion of the great Yi—"

Dr. Ti Kung again courteously depreciated
himself, and they turned to the American.
The chief of barbers said:

"The illustrious one now occupying the
chair has relapsed in revery, having given no
directions.  Is it desirable that the entire head
be denuded?"

Ti Kung uncovered his own queue-less
head.  "Let the hair be short-cropped merely,
as this of his servant—and the features
shaven."

"So be," said the chief, shuffling over to
direct the operators.  In a moment he was
back in his position beside the Chinese gentleman.

"This illiterate one," he began again, as
the gurgling of the water-pipe was renewed,
"perceived in the reports today that the
wrestler, Kwong, won all honours in the
athletic contests at the Imperial Pavilion.  His
prowess has doubtless come under court
attention before.  Today the trained cormorant of
the Mandarin Pih has proved to be the best
diver in a tournament that has been held three
successive days on the river.  Probably,
however, this fact is already known to one whose
relatives recline in the Yellow Palanquin...."

Just now one of the barbers drew back a
step to survey his half-finished task.  The eyes
of the others were drawn to the strange voices
at the turning of the street.  A small party of
American tourists, exploring the Walled City,
had reached this point.  Dr. Ti Kung recognised
the party as belonging to the ship he had
left this morning.  Just at this moment the
white man leaped up from the barber's chair
and staggered forth, waving his hands.
Dr. Ti Kung observed that his charge had been
whipped back to consciousness by the voices
of the tourist party.

The Chinese gentleman spoke quickly, a
low, intense order.  One of the barbers darted
after the white man who had turned down an
alley-way to the rear of the shop, Dr. Ti Kung
following leisurely.  A moment later, he
watched without concern while two brawny
bare-shouldered natives overcame the
half-shaven one, and carried him through the
nearest door....  It was still early in the day.
The tourist party had passed on.


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The white man awoke several hours later
on the floor of a small stone cell containing one
table and one chair.  The chair was cemented
to the floor.  He had not jarred it loose,
though the cell was so small that his body had
been forced to adjust itself to it during sleep.
The table was also stationary.  The door was
of heavy black wood, intended to preserve
silence from without and possibly from
within.  There was a small metal disc in the
door and by the finger-marks around it, the
prisoner grasped the fact that it doubtless
covered a hole.

Gaining his feet he had to bend considerably
to put his mouth to the opening.  He
called and turned his ear to the disc for
answer.  He was about to make further
outcry when he heard a peculiar scuffling step in
a distant corridor.  It soon halted before the
door and inquired in a nasal, whining tone,
something which sounded like:

"*Pai ning?*"

The white man now recalled that he was in
China.  Recollections came quickly.  He sank
down into the chair, the thick table pressing
against him.  He heard the scuffling step
depart and wondered what he was in for.
There was no doubt in his mind regarding the
nature of the place.  There is a similarity to
such places around the world.  The stationary
table and chair, however, were new.

He was dry.  He was in pain.  His face felt
sticky, and rubbing his fingers across it, he
was at first inclined to doubt his senses.  The
right side of his face witnessed to several days
neglect, while the left cheek and part of the
chin were cleanly shaven.

"*Pai ning,*" he repeated.  "Or was it *pai ning*?"

He could not tell.  He remembered a native
barber, but did not know if this were a new day
or still last night.  The last he remembered
clearly was a vow of mortal friendship
delivered in Shropshire dialect by a sailor from
his Majesty's cruiser *Dunedin*, and that they
were about to anoint the vow in a bar-room
close to the water-front.  He wondered if all
the lights had gone out at that instant or just
his own.  He patted his face in several places,
regarding his hands intently in the gloom for
blood, but none appeared.  He was all right
muscularly; the choking which he experienced
was to be expected.  Now the vital
questions appeared: How long was he in for?
Had he been tried?

"*Pai ning,*" he repeated.  "Yes, that's what
he said."

He now arose and shoved back the metal
disc once more, but his call was touched with
a different respect.  Listening was again
rewarded with the scuffling step and a whining
voice.

"*Pai ning?*"

"Sure!  *Pai ning*," said the American.

There was hesitation without, after which
the question was repeated.  The prisoner
explained his need for drink in Chinese and
found himself making signs of draining a
fourth-dimension cup against the black door.
The scuffling retreated.

He now relapsed in awe.  His first impulse
had been to use strength.  He was aware of
his strength because it had been tested and
failed.  The awe had to do with thirst.  He
had felt this before and became deadly afraid
at the memory.  He pressed his body into the
seat again and cleared his throat.

Just now there was a voice in the corridor,
a key in the door, and a Chinese gentleman in
European attire entered smilingly, holding
out his hand.  The white man took the hand
and tried to recall where he had seen that face
before.  It had nothing to do with China,
nothing to do with recent years, yet somewhere
before he had seen that smile, and something
was glad within him.

"Well, Mr. Romney," said Dr. Ti Kung,
"did you rest well?"

"Let me have a cigarette," the other said
unsteadily.

A certain case was proffered again.

"Thanks.  You haven't a touch of heartener—have
you?"

"I have ordered refreshments," said Dr. Ti
Kung, lighting a match.

"How did you hear of my trouble?"

"Trouble?"

"Well, the fact is," said Romney, "I was
not altogether there when it happened—just
a sort of night-shift working....  What
did I do?"

Dr. Ti Kung lit a cigarette.  "This morning
in passing by the waterfront," he began
pleasantly, "I came upon you in the midst of a
group of friends—sitting and talking, you
know.  I recognized you at once, waited until
you were not engaged.  We had a short ride in
my 'rickshaw up to the street of the Everlasting
Spring.  Here you became restless; you
were not feeling yourself.  We stopped at a
barber-shop, but you were impatient to be off.
In fact, you insisted upon leaving before
the—"

Romney smiled painfully, passing his hand
again over his half-shaven face.  However, a
certain appreciation formed in his mind for
the man who described his condition so delicately.

"And after that?"

Dr. Ti Kung hesitated....  Here the
door swung back on silent hinges and the old
man whom the American had called to
through the chink, scuffed in with glasses and
a bottle.  He made a curious little bobbing
bow to Dr. Ti Kung, and scuffed out.

Romney added, when the door had closed:
"I mean the lock-up, this calaboose, what am
I in for?"

"This is not a jail.  You're merely in one
of our examination cells."

The other turned white and arose.

"What am I enlisting for?  Some conscript
mess I got into with your countrymen?"

"Not at all," laughed Dr. Ti Kung.  "This
is an educational institution; this chamber is
connected with one of our colleges.  We put
aspiring young men in these chambers together
with a set of questions and a large quantity of
white paper, leaving them in quiet contemplation
until the questions are answered.  Here,
exchange of thoughts with any other student is
impossible and one is able to put his best
concentration upon the task."

"I see," said the American, looking about
at the thickness of the stone walls.

"Our young literati," continued Dr. Ti
Kung, "are rigorously brought up."  He eyed
Romney with narrowed lids through the
smoke.  "It so happened that this place was
at hand when you required rest, so we carried
you in.  By the way, you are very light for
your length."

Romney did not appear to hear the observations,
but leaned toward the other, saying
apologetically, "You'll have to excuse me, but
I give it up.  My head is bad.  Where did I
meet you before?"

Dr. Ti Kung almost smiled.  "The first
time, I believe, was at a certain field-meet in
the Santa Clara valley."

"Lord, that's more than seven years.  I have
you.  I was fit that day—"

"You were fit this morning," beamed Dr. Ti Kung.

Another drink came.  Romney was more cheerful.

"Say, what's this *pai ning* stuff in use here?
I know the expression, but didn't get the connection."

"*Pal ning?*" repeated Ti Kung.

"You've got it.  That's the way he said it."

"Why, that means literally, 'f-i-n-ee-s-h-e-d?'  It
had to do with the examination
papers.  The hall-boy came at your call.
His duty was to inquire if your work was done
before turning the key."

"It wasn't," said Romney thoughtfully.

He was thinking of the day of that
field-meet in the Santa Clara valley.  He had been
a distance runner of sorts, a bit too fine
physically—a little cough in the throat that had
stuck until he came to China, but a superb bit
of health compared to the red panting animal
he had become in the past nine months....
His throat was cooled; his whole nerve-system
had leaped to the stimulant which Ti Kung
had ordered.  Romney laughed.  He wouldn't
even have been able to think as coherently as
this, but for the two recent drinks.  It was a
deep ironical laugh from somewhere within,
possibly from the soul of things....
Running—and a victory had thrilled him.  Cheap
things to thrill over.  He hadn't asked much
in those days.  Now he was an inflamed pig,
half-bearded, in soiled white clothing that he
could get the smell of....  He had sincerely
tried to arrive at the end of himself, but
he had put on a belated kind of toughness in
the years of Asia.  He wondered if he would
go on trying, or square about and regain
something of his old form—form of mind as well
as form of body, his old form among men.

Romney looked up at Ti Kung and laughed
again.  This very thought of rehabilitation
was not from the wreck that he felt himself
to have become, but from the fresh warmth of
alcohol....  No, he had done his living.
If he got well enough to think connectedly for
any length of time, a certain two weeks would
rush back and make a monkey of him.  No,
this was a false note—this idea of regaining
form.  He didn't want form among men.
Nothing would be interesting.  The Immortal
had spoiled all the rest.  Even China would
bore him.  And she was gone—on her own
blessed highway.  It had seemed good to put
an end to himself out of extreme boredom of
days, but he hadn't counted on being tough as
blacksnake....  He would be kicked and
trampled around Asia a little longer until
something broke—something that had been
so perversely strong inside of him.

He looked to find Dr. Ti Kung smiling
contentedly and without haste.  The Chinese had
understood the laugh.  It was remarkable how
this little yellow man understood.  It had been
the same, many years ago.  They had all
commented upon it.  They had always found Ti
Kung on the dot, without haste, without
raising his voice.  It was so now....  Why had
he stopped to pick up a ruffian white man on
the street?  Romney felt himself leaning on
the other.  He hated it, but didn't lie to
himself about it....  His hand crept to his
face—one clean side, one hairy one.  It was like
him.  He swallowed the shame of it.

"Well," he said, "what are we going to do
about all this?"

"I will tell you in three days," said Dr. Ti Kung.

There was something so authoritative, so
decisive and prepared, in the statement that
Romney identified it with a clean side.  It had
to do with climbing out....  This man was
on the dot.  His eyes were full of fire, yet
hard-held, steady and kind; full of reason
and order.  Three days.  Ti Kung meant
three days.  There was no lying, no leaning in
that.  He had a design.  There was something
to Romney in his own weakness and vacillation,
like the splendour of God in this capacity
of vision, this steadiness of eye and clarity of
speech; white strength of hand and hard-held
manhood.

"And what now?" he remarked.  Even in
this rare moment of self-examination, he did
not know it, but he asked that last question
like a child.

He was spared the pathos.

"We'll go to my home," said Dr. Ti Kung.
"It's not a 'rickshaw this time.  I have ordered
a carriage.  I take great pleasure in bringing
you to my home."

Romney drew his hand across his chin.  The
other touched his arm.

"All that will be attended to.  Don't let's
think of it.  You will find that all is ready
for you."


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The scent of soap in the fountain-place of
the Ti Kung house might be considered by
some a preposterous detail, but it was real to
Romney.  It had to do with Longstruth's, on
a certain night when he had felt himself to be
a far more reckonable person even than on the
day of the field-meet at Palo Alto which
brought him a trophy or two.  It was on a
night about mid-way in the Moira Kelvin
revelations when it suddenly appeared that she
was wavering a little.  Hope lifted and he had
felt fit to conquer continents.  But that had
passed.  He had somehow diminished again.

It is true that she had been shaken during
their last moments together, but that was
different.  Romney was man enough not to take
any advantage there—even in thought.  He
understood her that night.  She was in a scope
of a more common attraction.  She had hated
herself in it.  Had he pressed that advantage,
it would merely have meant to unseal a crater
for hell to break forth not only for himself but
for her.  Before knowing her, he might have
considered the savage splendour of that
passion as having to do with a woman's great gift,
but he glimpsed in the days preceding what
it would mean to the man who could force the
capitulation of the full creature.  Even in the
blinding of those moments of parting, he knew
he was far from that magnitude.

Romney threw back his head and laughed
at the upper arch of tiles, his arms held out.
It was the laugh of a man who stands on the
rim of the last ditch....  He had certainly
sifted to the bottom of things.  The *John
Dividend* was the last of many ships.  He had
made the grand traverse of the Asiatic coast
from the Yellow Sea to the Bay of Bengal and
doubled back to Shanghai.  This drink-thing
was the great weakness he had uncovered.
Three days after her steamer had gone down
the river, he had fallen into the low eddies of
it—a cheap thing, but he felt cheap.  He saw
that he had always been intoxicated somehow.
A turn of a card and he might have become a
saint instead of a drunkard.  Mother China
had intoxicated him first; then the woman.
It was all a matter of temperament.  Having
lost the levitation of cleanness and strength,
he had permitted the mother-force of gravitation
to take her certain course.  From Longstruth's
at Hankow he had swirled into the
great drift of the water-fronts—deserters,
remittance-men, hangovers from every form
of human failure.  He had spent everything
he had within reach—a large amount of
money.  He had learned the value of money
when his pockets flattened to a few thin coins.
There was a large slice of his fortune left in
Peking, but it was so placed that he would
have to go there to get it.  He was on the way
back now.  In fact the *John Dividend* would
have taken him almost there—she was booked
for Tientsin—but had been too stagnant and
stenchy in her bowels.  The fact is he would
never have reached Manila and the deck of
the *John Dividend* except for this new
something, superlatively fine in his physique.
Altogether he had seen a lot of life with the
integument off—and had expected little more of the
late days than to be found dead somewhere....

The scent of the fountain-place had a
certain whipping magic about it.  It seemed to
cleanse away some weakness.

It made Moira Kelvin draw close in memory,
but there was a queer up-pull to it now,
as if she said:

"*You have played enough, Sir Romney.
Give it up—you're too clean-blooded to die
soiled.  You don't want me.  You've forgotten
for days at a time what you are trying to kill
yourself for.  If that next daybreak had found
me in your arms—you would have hated me,
and I would have had for myself something
infinitely worse than hatred.  You were big
that night to let me go.  Nature will not let a
man as big as that pass out without doing his
work and finding his own.  If you want
sin—pray, sin magnificently.*"

The cool running water passed over his
fevered and wasted body.  There was ample time
for everything.  A servant brought him a
house-gown and slippers.  Ti Kung's barber
was waiting.  A little helpful drink was
brought from time to time, not too often, and
just a touch.  Ti Kung was waiting for him
below.  Romney had found a fineness of
comprehension in the Chinese that he had not
revelled in from any man for months.  It was
almost like a woman's.  It liberated the better
parts of him, but he was ill and fagged to the
core.  He looked forward to a long, clean
night.  First he would go back to the fountain
place.  He would think of that Longstruth's
night before he slept....  Ti Kung showed
him his room, opened the door, led him to
the window of the low-lit chamber.  From
the casement he pointed out the stars and the
lower lights of the distant shipping.

"I'll be away tomorrow," he said, "but
shall return for dinner.  You may rest and
read.  You may go to the city; there is a
carriage.  There are books; there are servants
who understand English.  Forgive me, I
always forget that you speak our language; in
short, anything you may wish.  If convenient,
be here for dinner at eight to-morrow.  If
you have another appointment, of course, I
can wait—"

"I'll be here," Romney said.

... It was not until the door was shut
that he saw the gleam of glass and the
half-open door of a walnut cabinet against the
wall.  He understood all that it meant before
he took a step toward it.  He wished that Ti
Kung had spared him this hospitality....
It was very complete, even to importations
from America, even to certain brands that he
had not seen for years.  There was crystal,
silverware, napkins, and this that was covered
on the table clinked with ice as he touched it.
He was dry and tense.  Everything had been
designed to turn him loose, even the departure
of his host.

Romney thought of the words of Dr. Ti
Kung in the examination cell: "I will tell
you in three days."

He laughed softly.  "And what he will tell
me in three days hangs imperatively upon this
most perfect cabinet.  Romney, here's a ripe
chance to use your head.  You are allowed one
respectable *touch*.  You may choose your
poison—but just one."

He measured out a portion by no means of
a size that a man is inclined to seize with his
last dime, drank it with discretion and without
water.  Then he stared awhile at the stars and
the shipping, took a long drink from the
water-pitcher, and went to bed.

But Romney could not sleep.  It was not
so easy and laughable as when the episode
began.  His thoughts turned to the walnut
cabinet as the eye turns to fire in the night.
He lay restless and wide-eyed in the dark.
Presently the moon came in and gleamed upon
the open door and upon the glasses and bottles
on the table, bringing out inner fires from the
multi-colored glass.  He arose often for water.
There was fever burning full-length.  The
novelty of keeping himself in hand left him
and it became fight.  The bars had long been
down....  The long night crawled.

He heard some English sailors pass through
the street below.  The Chinese city was full of
sounds not to be designated—cries, gongs, the
tapping of canes, sounds that the elemental
traffic of the day had deluged, for he heard
women's voices and the voices of children.
One does not hear these in the day-time.  He
relit the lamp at last, smoked and read, and
when the activities of the night had at last died
out, there was an hour of blackness and quiet
that was like a jungle experience.  He was
full of fears, not at all the kind of fears that
Romney knew when his mind was in order.

Dawn came, and with it a soft breeze that
stirred the wind-glasses in the garden below.
It was a thirsty tinkle, a sound he had heard
somewhere before and found hauntingly
sweet.  There was a touch of rose in the light,
and the scent of rose came to him in the
morning dusk, and rushed his thoughts far up the
Yellow River....  Old days in the open
swept back to mind with rugged value.  He
was on his feet.  The night was gone.  He
could take a drink now without breaking his
word, but the new strength tided him over that.

A servant tapped at the inlaid door and
asked if he would have anything.  Yes, he
would have coffee.  He found the place of the
fountain.  The cool morning air came in as he
bathed, and with the scent came back to him
the sense of equilibrium that he had not known
for many days, a suggestion of self-sanction,
perfect but valid....  The coffee was
served when he returned to the room.  He
asked if he might walk in the garden then and
the servant tarried to show him the way.

Three servants were standing at the street
door in the dim-lit lower hall as Romney and
his guide passed below.  They were engaged
in a more or less orderly passage of words.
Suddenly a cry arose, and the three servants
were seen to leap upon a man in European
dress who seemed intent upon entering.
Romney disdained more than a side glance at
the encounter down the long dark hall, as he
followed the footsteps of his diminutive but
most engaging guide.

In the garden there were stone and water
glasses, cool shallows, deep drinking palms,
awakening birds and amazingly perfect roses,
all in a space no larger than a city back-yard.
A high wall with broken glass on the top,
suffocating China outside, and within the
beauty of the pearl and the lotus.  The
American's tension allayed somewhat in that beauty.
He smoked and picked his way among the
stones, sniffing the blooms while the day rose.
The voices of his own countrymen outside
the wall hardly broke his reverie at first.
Presently a peculiar sound held his attention.
It was a scraping, as if some wooden object
were being raised against the masonry.  He
halted as a hand came over the top of the glass.
A blue-sleeved arm was picking its way to the
inner-coping, the woolen sleeve alone between
the flesh and the bare glass.  The top of the
head that appeared presently was rugged and
close-cropped.  Something about it was
strangely familiar, but no more showed for
the present.  There was a renewed scraping,
the head paused in the air, then dropped back
again.

It startled Romney, but he did not feel
called upon to protest.  The house seemed
adequately protected with man-servants; that
fact had been impressed at the street-door.
He forgot the incident, and was leaning back
against the wall a couple of minutes
afterward, when his eyes were called to the corner
of the wall at his right.  Poised motionless
above it was the ominous head again, and that
light vulture-blue eye, which found his own
like an electric contact, and loosed his jaw.
McLean had seen him at the same instant.

"Looking for me?" Romney asked.

The answer made him think of the
boiler-room of the *John Dividend*.  There was
silence after that.  The eye remained fixed
upon him.

"Come here," added McLean, unwinking.

Romney did not move.

"Come here," reached him again, hoarsely.

There was pull to it.  The intensity and
concentration of that single utterance had real
attraction.

Just then the little house-servant appeared,
saw the head above the wall, and called for
assistance.  Other servants came quickly.
There was considerable hub-bub behind in the
garden as Romney went indoors sick and
slowed-up.

He found his way back to his room.  There
hadn't been a single coin in the clothes that
he wore when entering Ti Kung's house.  The
contents of these pockets otherwise had been
carefully placed on the table in his room, but
the clothes were gone.  As he stood in his
morning-gown reflecting upon the recent
affair, his boy came in, bringing a plain black
suit of fine quality, suggesting that he try if it
would do, and adding apologetically that
breakfast was now prepared.  The clothing
fitted perfectly.  Romney realized that they
had been made overnight from the dimensions
of his old suit, which did not appear again.
He wondered if such a thing could be done
outside of China.

McLean was both light and heavy upon his
mind as he transferred his few belongings to
the new coat.  Drawing forth his hand, he
found that it contained currency of the empire
to an amount that he had not seen since the
early days of his abandonment.  It was an
altogether comic-opera amount.

He turned to the servant who stood by, grinning.

"If that one-eyed man comes back again,"
he said, "show him in."

"One-eye gone way down," grinned the boy.

"What's that?"

The boy made an eloquent gesture to
betoken an open grave, supplementing the
picture which Romney felt mentally, with:
"One-eye gone way down."

"Now, that's too bad," mused Romney.
Then there was a crisp, brown, small fish
before him that made him forget.

That night the Doctor came for dinner—a
cool, delicate meal, exquisitely Chinese—rice,
tea, several varieties of sea-food and small
high-colored vegetables.  Ti Kung appeared
alert for the welfare of his guest.

"My dear Romney, I'm afraid things have
been pretty dull for you here.  A little matter
takes me to the Provincial Headquarters.
Would you care to come for the ride?"

The American learned more of his friend.
Certain officials and older students were
encountered.  Their deepest respect, even
reverence, for Ti Kung interested Romney, as well
as their quick and animated interest in
himself as he showed acquaintance with their
language.

There was a secret meeting which he could
not enter, but he became aware as he waited
that the long halls of the provincial building
were dotted with groups of nobles and elders
not in the least pleased with the political
activity of the younger men with which
Dr. Ti Kung was associated.

Presently Romney retired to the carriage to
wait, leaving word with a page for Ti Kung
to be informed.  Nobles and others were still
entering the building, often old men largely
attended and in full regalia.  A native throng
was collecting rapidly and cluttered the street
at the entrance of the building.  The effects
produced on the crowd by the entrance of
different personages were varied and absorbing.
Some were lauded; others brought forth
scowls and mutterings.  Excitement seethed
and cleared Romney's mind.

Ti Kung was not long in coming forth.  He
apologised for being detained, quite as if the
matter he had attended was of most trivial
importance.  Even as he talked, the crowd
thickened about the carriage, and pressed
against the wheels.  Dr. Ti Kung leaned
forward to speak to the driver, who began to lash
furiously at the heads and shoulders of the
throng.  Romney was the first to see the long
knife that whipped up from the wheel, and
was lucky enough to jerk the Doctor back into
the seat in time.  A pistol was thrust into his
hand.

"I regret we will have to fire," Ti Kung said.

Neither shot to kill, for the way was
instantly cleared for the horses.  They passed
out of the public square without further
molestation.  Romney leaned forward whimsically
and searched the Doctor's face.

"Quite the usual thing, is it?"

"Of late.  They're just children."

"Are they apt to get any less good-natured?"

"Yes, they have suffered much.  They do
not understand."

Romney fingered the pistol.  "I feel quite
like a boy," he remarked.  "There's a charm
about this thing.  I never shot one
before—without everybody standing well back."

Ti Kung's hand darted over and touched
Romney's appreciatively.


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   4

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It was the end of the promised three days.
Romney was dressing for dinner when there
was a tap at the inlaid door, and Dr. Ti Kung
entered with grave smile and hand outstretched.
For just a second he had looked
into Romney's eyes.  His manner showed
neither relief nor surprise; nor did he offer
any comment upon the rallied manhood which
he must have observed.

Romney had climbed a stiff grade in the
three days.  They went below for dinner, but
it was not until their coffee was served and the
catfooted servant was gone, that Dr. Ti Kung
appeared to note the patience of his companion.

"Doubtless, Mr. Romney," he began, "you
have been wondering a good deal why I
brought you to my home, and toward what
end things were trending here.  The time has
come for me to enlighten you somewhat."

The American lit a pipe he favoured and
Dr. Ti Kung drew his chair closer.  They
were alone.

"I saw you laughing there in the Street of
the Lepers—or was it the Street of the
Ever-lasting Spring?" continued the Chinese.  "To
me it symbolised the blending of America
with my poor country.  We are now without
veils between us.  I was in a most serious mood
that morning, anxious with the weight of many
affairs.

"You sat upon the stone steps with the
beggars beside you, laughing.  You were in
the glow of events—at one with those about
you.  You used to say back in college, 'To hell
with it,' that most ingenious of many wonderful
American remarks.  I thought of that.
I said to myself, 'Huan Ti Kung, you are
heavy; you are long-faced.  Why should you
bear your burdens with such labour?  If you
fail, very good.  If you win, especially good,
but having done the best you can—'To hell
with it.'

"So you see, Mr. Romney, you offered me a
fine message that morning, and after all I was
very fond of you from the beginning.  So,
here we are.  I promise you days of excitement.
You have seen from the little episode
in front of the Provincial House last night,
that all China does not love me.  I counted it
a good omen that you saved me from a wound.
You may have the pleasure again.  But
supposing you had not, or supposing you were not
quite so quick the next time—'To hell with
it!'"

Romney leaned forward.  He knew that the
foregoing was simply the Oriental way of
introducing a subject of real moment.  He felt
new inside, mind and will.

Dr. Ti Kung continued:

"I look upon you now with great satisfaction.
You are free and adventurous, and you
are my strong friend.  You are a mind—an
interpreter of our life.  We need all these
things from you.  You know how poor China
is distressed at this hour—"

He leaned forward and spoke very softly.
The long low room in which they dined was
empty, yet the voice was pitched to reach
Romney's ears and no farther.

"... I did not go ashore in the Japanese
ports on the way home, but I heard much
from those who did.  It happened that I
became so interested in you that much of the
first day here in Shanghai was consumed.
The three days since, I have been catching up,
studying the events that came to pass during
the two weeks' voyage—events, Mr. Romney,
that the world is too intensely occupied to
notice, but which we Chinese regard with
finality and deepest foreboding.

"As you perhaps know, the Japanese have
demanded from us all that we hold dear.
They are a fighting people, whetted by recent
victories.  There are three parties here in
China: Old China, which says 'We will
temporize,' the Middle Party which says, 'We
will fight,' and the party—"

Romney knew instinctively that the destiny
of Ti Kung was aligned with this third one;
and yet he supposed that it was also a fighting
destiny.

"And the third one," the Doctor repeated,
"which believes that war as the Japanese know
it; that war as it is being waged on French and
Polish and Carpathian fields at this moment,
is a stupid and ancient activity, having no part
with what the best men of all countries
know—"

"But," said Romney, "it's the Japanese way.
They may bring the fighting to you—fighting
such as they know.  You may say that war is
archaic rot, but if it is to be met, must it not be
met with force?"

"Of course, but not with force of the same
nature," said Dr. Ti Kung.

"You mean to say that this third party in
China is going to stand pat on the expediency
of toleration.  The Hindus have taken a
hundred years—"

"Not exactly that," said Dr. Ti Kung.  "We
believe that Japan can be stupefied—even
strangled."

A servant entered at this moment and spoke
to Dr. Ti Kung—a hurried sentence.  Voices
from the street now reached them, as if an
outer door had suddenly blown open.

Dr. Ti Kung arose quickly, beckoning
Romney to follow.  They made their way to
the rear of the house and into the garden.

"Another little engagement.  So glad you
appreciate these absurd affairs.  You have
your pistol?"

"Yes—I have become attached to it."

Ti Kung thrust a packet of papers into
Romney's hands.

"These are invaluable and safer with you.
In case I am separated from you or hurt,
deliver the packet in person to the address in
the inner envelope, Tientsin.  Now we must
get over the masonry."

Together they lifted a bench from the
poolside to the wall.  Romney helped his
companion over the jagged glass on the coping.  He
then removed his coat and laid it upon the
top for his own passage over, his hands and
arms already bleeding.  On the coping, he
perceived that Ti Kung was not alone below.
Romney landed upon his feet between two
struggling figures.  A knife burned his back.
He kicked with effect in the direction it came.

Meanwhile he called for Ti Kung, and a
hand came up to him from below.  The assailant
had vanished.  Something in the touch of
that hand made him know that his friend was
badly hurt.

"As little noise as you can, Romney," came
a whisper.  "There will be others upon us.
Are you hurt?"

"No, are you?"

"I am afraid—a little.  Help me up.  We
must get away from here with all speed.  Have
you the packet?"

Romney left him and sprang to the wall's
coping for his coat, pulling it loose from the
glass.  The papers dropped out as the coat fell.

"Yes," he answered, "I'm glad you mentioned
that.  I'll be more careful hereafter."

"Do," said Ti Kung, regaining his feet.

They were in a passage of almost utter
darkness.  The Chinese was making poor
work of walking.  The American lifted him
forward and listened for direction from a
voice that grew weaker as moments passed.
All was silent behind.

"I need sewing up," the Chinese whispered.
"It's very unfortunate....  That light
ahead is the Grotto Road.  We will be safe
there.  If consciousness leaves me, put me in
a carriage, paying the driver and speaking
the words, *Sarenji loopni*; then make your
way as rapidly as possible, taking the papers
with you, to a gentleman named Minglapo, in
Merchant's Square, Tienstin—full directions
inside outer envelope."

Romney reached the lights of Grotto Road
with the form of the Oriental sagging limp in
his arms from loss of blood.  It looked like
death to the American.  The hardest, or possibly
next to the hardest thing he ever did, was
to obey orders.  It was very far from Romney's
way to leave a friend in a plight, but this
he was called upon to do.

Whatever it meant, the driver seemed to
understand, but to Romney, there was something
altogether too frail in the words *Sarenji
loopni* to send a friend away with.  The driver
accepted his coin, closed the door of the
vehicle, and whipped away, leaving Romney
standing alone under the dim street light.  He
watched the vehicle out of sight, and began
for the first time to feel the effects of the
night's activities.  Under his torn coat he was
wet with blood.  He transferred the packet of
papers to a safer pocket, lit his pipe thoughtfully,
and then it occurred that he must set out
for Tientsin that night either by rail or the sea.


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   5

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Minglapo was a dealer in inlays of wood
and pearl and jewels.  His shop in Merchant's
Square, Tientsin, was a still place of many
riches.  Minglapo sat in the far shadows, an
elderly Chinese of large unwrinkled bulk and
a voice like the wonderful water-music in
Fingal's cave.

The large part of a week was required for
Romney to reach this shop, for they do not
travel great distances over night as yet in
China.  When he sat down before Minglapo
his faculties at first were deeply occupied with
the problem of where he had seen this old
master before.  It dawned upon him at last
that he hadn't, but that Minglapo when he
shut his eyes was almost identical in feature
and color with a death-mask of Beethoven that
had hung on his study-wall back in Palo Alto.

"I came from a gentleman named Dr. Ti
Kung," Romney began.

Minglapo bowed.

"My orders were not very explicit.  I
believe that there was an order-book that he
asked me to deliver to you," the American
resumed, perfectly aware that a direct
statement of facts would have discountenanced the
Oriental.  "It was all very hurried at the last.
He was stricken with illness in the street, and
turning to me, a comparative stranger, asked
me to deliver this package to you.  With that
he was helped into a carriage and driven away."

"Yes," said Minglapo, raising his eyebrows
just a trifle, "the order-book—you have it?"

Romney was startled at the English, quick,
concise—the speech of a Chinese who had
been among the younger peoples for many
years.  He drew forth the yellow packet and
gave it to the other.

Now Minglapo was sitting upon a raised
dais, several sumptuous rugs between him and
the polished wood.  He sat upon his limbs,
and smoked continuously.

The large envelope was opened and a
certain paper drawn forth.  This he perused at
first with surprise and impatience; then with
a beam of humour which opened into laughter
wide and deep.  Minglapo was a spectacle in
this giving forth.  His body rippled under the
silks; the ashen yellow left his face and neck,
giving way to rising ruddiness, the yellowish
eyelids dropped, suggesting the mask again,
but this was broken by the open mouth.
Mastering all was the sound—soft, intoned
laughter, full of leisureliness and music; not
infectious exactly, since one who witnessed it
first was too awed to be drawn in—a surpassing
wonder over all.  The teeth of this
elderly Oriental were like the teeth of a young
woman.

Minglapo subsided by imperceptible gradations,
and lifting his eyelids at length, surveyed
Romney as one newly awakened from sleep.

"This is a most wonderful order-book," he
said slowly.

Minglapo was rippling again under his
gown as he replaced the papers in the
envelope.  The inscrutability of the fat figure
challenged Romney.  It occurred to him that
if he should start to go, something of finality
might come from the impressive figure.  He
cleared his throat and arose.

"Dr. Ti Kung, as I have said, gave me no
further orders before the door of his carriage
closed upon him.  I presume, having fulfilled
my task, that it would be well for me to return
to Shanghai—"

"Very naturally," said Minglapo.

"Then I will bid you good-day."

The Chinese was holding the yellow packet
in his hand.  A further sheet had been drawn
forth, glanced at, and returned.  Minglapo's
hands were perfect.  The face of the envelope
toward Romney was but partly covered by the
eight beautiful fingers that held the paper
lightly, while the face bowed above.  The
eyelids narrowed and the corners of the mouth
were sunken, the broad, bland forehead, just
faintly ruffled.  There came to the white man
a sense of prodigious power, as if this man's
thought could manipulate the destinies of
other men; as if behind that brow a
conception was now forming so clean-cut in all its
processes that instant action must follow its
maturity.  A suspicion dawned upon him that
this man was strong enough to be Ti Kung's
master.

Minglapo rose almost imperceptibly.

"Mr. Romney."  The voice halted him.
"Your friend informed me you were coming
some time ago.  I have been expecting you.
Please sit down."

Romney smiled.

"It would be natural, as I said before, for
you to return to Shanghai, except that I have
heard from Dr. Ti Kung, who, I perceive,
picks well his associates.  These are delicate
matters; these are times to try men's souls.
Our friend is now healing at sea.  I am
grievously concerned, however, over wounds that
could delay such a man for six days.  Much
depends upon his coming.  The character of
Dr. Ti Kung's service cannot be duplicated.
In saving his life, Friend Romney, you have
done one of those significant things upon
which the destiny of a great people hangs,
and an action that can never be publicly
known.  It is with utmost pleasure that I ask
you to remain under my roof.  I hope that we
may succeed in making you comfortable in the
interval before your friend arrives.  There is
to be a particular servant for you in this
house—one of my favourites—"

Minglapo clapped his hands, and a small
but almost perfect creature of the *boy*-class
appeared, alert in every sense and apparently
without inertia.

"This is Bamban.  He is yours, Friend
Romney, and you who know so much of China
realize that a bestowal of this kind between
man and man means that Bamban is no longer
my servant."

Fastidious in his ways, swift and delicate in
all his doings, Bamban appeared to embrace
his new master with the sudden look of eager
intelligence which shot out from under his
lifted brows.  Romney knew enough about
China to realise that Bamban held something
in the deeps of his being that could not be
transferred.  At the same time he knew that
only some significant treachery on his own
part toward the interests of Minglapo could
ever call this reservation into action.

In the several days following Romney
became convinced that he was being studied in
ways beyond Western ingenuity to fathom;
and though he was schooled to be guileless in
intent and at the same time wise as the serpent,
the processes of surveillance which he
imagined about him were either above or
below his own levels.  He had nothing to
conceal, and no plan apart.  He met all fancied
subtleties by being himself, just that, which in
the case of uncomplicated purpose is the
invariable master-stroke.  The fact is,
Romney had learned much from the Great Drift.
He could let himself go.  His nerves had left
the surface once more, covered themselves in
the cushions of health.  He did not know the
particular passion that drove Ti Kung and
Minglapo, but he felt it big and gripping.
He even felt at last that he was identified with
a movement potent and far-reaching enough
to command those powers of his which all his
former dealings with men made him repress.

Though Minglapo did not appear to be a
man of great riches, there were objects of
priceless beauty in his establishment, which
was a shop only on the street floor.  No one
appeared to buy while Romney was there.
Once while the American was standing in the
rear of the shop, the floor raised a little before
his feet, and he was aware of a deep oil-lit
basement that had every look and indication of
being a fully equipped chemical laboratory—vials,
flames and crucibles, tables with spawn-trays
and culture-boards.  An oppressive,
earthy breath as from fungoid growths
touched Romney's nostrils from the opened
trap.  Minglapo called him to the dais at that
instant and the trap itself was abruptly closed.
The Chinese upon whose shoulder the door
had been raised did not emerge.  There was
something aged and wasted about the figure,
the eyes spent and hollow.

Romney enjoyed the challenging mystery of
it all.  The two upper floors, high-ceiled and
extending far back from the street, formed
little less than a palace.  Ti Kung's house in
Shanghai was austere as a monastery
compared.  Romney found himself surrounded
with luxuries startling even with his considerable
acquaintance in the East.  Ensconced
here in the midst of influences insistently
languorous, he was amused to find a tendency
of his own character to tighten rather than to
let down.  The first night in Ti Kung's house
had seemed to straighten him out and render
distasteful abandonment such as he had
known.  Abandonment here, he was well
aware, would bring about the same results as
the wastrel days on the water-fronts.  He had
entered into that with the fixed purpose of
letting life go.  It had refused to leave him,
and now he was rather distantly glad to be alive.

In his own quarters, on the second day, he
drew forth the frayed and soiled chiffon waist,
washed it carefully and put it back in his
breast.  It was no more than a handkerchief.
It had seen him through strange days and
roads.  He was the least maudlin of men, but
the little fabric meant something striking and
imperishable in his nature—something of him
no longer, but around him.  She was not *the
woman*, but she had made the picture of what
a woman could be.  The farther from her, the
more he appreciated.  She had known in two
weeks what it had taken him nearly a year to
find out—that they were not for each other.
The change had come to him from the months
in the Drift—something to break his
unparalleled infatuation.  All her wonder and
daring and splendour remained clear, and yet
the terrible draw of her had somehow eased
upon his heart.  In a word, he saw as quite
true another of her sayings—that love can
never be on one side alone in a great romance.

Late the fifth afternoon of his stay in the
house of Minglapo, Romney got the first
inkling of the real business at hand.  There had
been talk at the dais for several moments,
when the old master turned at the soft
swinging of one of the shop's rear doors, and
without finishing the sentence on his tongue,
remarked:

"And now, Friend Romney, you are ready
to meet a countryman of yours, General Nifton
Bend—"

Very low in the doorway appeared that
long, sad, strange face, and again the leap in
Romney's breast and the impulse to hurry
forward and help the Hunchback to the cushions.
At the same time—a hot thrill for an
unemotional man—the thought that his association
with Ti Kung and Minglapo meant association
with Nifton Bend, the genius of Young China.

At the moment of the General's entrance
from the rear, the servants had sprung to the
main door opening on Merchant's Square,
closed and barred it as if for the night, though
the afternoon was not entirely spent.  The
servants of the shop were banished and the
three sat down together....

Romney's mind had rushed back not only
to his first meeting in the native professor's
house in the Congrou district of Peking, but to
Longstruth's where his impressions of that
brief former interview became vivid and
animate again for the listening of Moira Kelvin.
The Hunchback seemed to bring again something
of her almost as intimate as her perfume....

Daylight did not reach them now.  The
dead expressionless look had come again to
the General's eyes.  Romney felt his own face
turn bloodless under the second appraisal, as
was the other's in the warm gathering dusk.
The unhasting and uninflected voice spoke
again—the voice of a man with a single
purpose, a man so close to the end that he laughs
at pain.  The words came slow and steadily,
like running water:

"... We are working for the future of
China.  We may be wrong.  We are doing the
thing as we see it.  Our deepest convictions
are that we are right.  We do not mean to
meet Japan in this extraordinary crisis in the
old fashion of arms and battle-lines.  We do
not care to fight.  We favour theoretically the
expediency of toleration, and yet we observe
to the east and south, India, and on the north
and west, Japan.  Old India is magnificent in
philosophy and yet so far without the physical
impulse to protect herself; Japan, empty-minded,
imitative, is furious with the idea of
her own raw power of men and guns.  If mind
is a finer and more potent force than matter,
we believe that guns and explosives and
battle-lines are to be mastered by a thought.  It
cannot be written that Chinese age and wisdom
shall succumb to the upstart and hot-headed
people that has not even a language of its own—"

Nifton Bend's face was lit.  Romney did
not comprehend.  This man, an authority on
arms and military matters, spoke now against
their use in case of war with Japan.  He may
have been a mystic in so far as his vision of
the future went, but he had been enough of the
manipulator of matter to make the new
Chinese army.  Did he plan to use some force
of extermination more powerful than gases
and explosives?

Minglapo now spoke to Romney, though his
hand affectionately touched Nifton Bend's
shoulder.

"We have learned to accept a lift of the
General's eyelid, Friend Romney.  He had
not been thirty seconds in this room before you
were approved.  Already Dr. Ti Kung had
approved you—and I.  Still you would not
have touched this inner circle as now but for
your action in saving our Doctor's life.  It
appears they burned his house that night in
Shanghai.  You were intrusted with papers
that contain certain of our plans.  You may be
asked to carry them again—even to Japan.
There is for you a possibility of being an
instrument toward the ending of all war from
the world.  China need act but once to end all
war.  It is a superb adventure for you, and
incidentally you will be a power in preventing
the world-calamity of a Japanese Asia."

Nifton Bend now spoke again:

"The history of that package which you so
safely brought to us would make the raciest of
novels.  Once I hoped to become a novelist
myself.  That was in the days before the big
dream of being a foster-child to the ancient
Yellow Mother.  In order that you may not
be troubled longer by working in the dark, I
am going to tell you something of what the
yellow packet contains—"

And now there was the snap of a bone—the
unmistakable snap of a faulty knee-cap,
from the far end of the room.  Nifton Bend's
utterance was cut short.  Romney glanced
quickly at the two faces.  Minglapo's hands
lifted slowly from the cushions.  They seemed
to waver a moment—then were clapped
together.  No servant appeared.  It had
undoubtedly been a servant of the household
and had he been innocent he would have
responded to the master's signal.  Minglapo
clapped his hands a second time, louder, and
Romney saw in his eye what to him was
unmistakably a command to make haste toward the
part of the shop from which the snap had
come.  Rising, he heard a cry from Minglapo
and was conscious of Nifton Bend making for
the door to the right of the room.  From
overhead and from the hall-way outside was now
heard the stirring and hurried approach of
servants.

Romney skirted the shadowy edge of the
long rear-hall, running silently on tip-toe.
All that he saw at the far end was a slight
movement, as of a door being softly shoved to.
It had moved possibly no more than an inch.
The American pushed it open.  This
rear-room was empty, and there was no sound
whatsoever.  He crossed quickly to a further
door which opened to a dim hall.  A crouched
figure came to a stop at the far end under
Romney's eye—the decrepit figure he had
seen for an instant under the lifted trap to the
basement.  One of the servant's hands was
concealed under his blouse.


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   6

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Certain aspects of the affair which followed
were ridiculous, and others profoundly
Asiatic.  Romney had felt himself far
removed from the need of physical encounter
with any human being, and yet as he came
close to the tense bowed figure of the Chinese,
the meaning of the concealed hand darted to
his mind, also the sense that he must act
quickly in an aggressive way or withdraw
again out of the reach of the striking arm.  It
has been observed that, generally speaking, it
was easier for Romney to advance than to
withdraw.  There was another point in that
fraction of a second.  He could not use a hand
or foot upon an Oriental bowed with years—not
even to disarm him.  The fact is Romney
dove forward, a sort of hip-tackle, the idea
being to carry the servant's body to the floor
with his arms pinned.  After they had bumped
the polished wood together as one, he was
disagreeably shocked at the extreme emaciation
of the figure beneath him.  This turned in a
moment to astonishment at the extraordinary
strength and agility which the Oriental
displayed.  There was a crush in the thin hard
limbs twined about his own, and the hands
were not to be held captive, but darted again
and again to the girdle where the knife lay.
Romney flattened his weight upon the lithe
body and struggled for possession of the
tearing, cutting fingers which sometimes found
his face and again burrowed into the pressure
between them.  It was Minglapo's voice and
foot that stilled the struggle, the latter placed
disdainfully upon the neck of his house-servant.

Romney strolled back to the dais ashamed
of himself somehow.  Minglapo and Nifton
Bend joined him a moment later, and rather
quietly, as if they appreciated the delicacy of
the white man.  The emaciated one was
brought in by two house-servants.  He stood
now before the master of the shop, trying to
repress the heavy breathing of his exhausted
body, and to cover as well as he could the
trembling of his muscles from the recent
strain.  Something of warmth and approval
crept into Romney's heart for the old man, as
the pregnant meanings of the moment cleared
in his mind.  Minglapo dismissed the servants
and regarded the trapped one, as Romney
imagined, with something of strange kindness.
Shutting his eyes, the vast head of the master
moved slowly from right to left, then bowed
before the American.

"Again you are our good genius, Friend
Romney....  There appears a need wherever
you are—of fast action.  I am beginning
to believe in what our Doctor says of the thing
called American luck."

Romney waved his hand deprecatingly, and
the General remarked with a smile:

"Our young friend feels with very good
cause that he has better gifts for us than the
force and swiftness of his hands."

He turned to Romney, adding:

"Do you not see that it was imperative for
Young China to find the owner of that
badly-hinged knee?  Our enemies would have
required but little more than a report of our
words before that accident.  I trust there has
been no mistake as to one of these being the
lucky knees."

He pointed to the house-servant's thin legs,
and presently Romney fell once more into the
charm of Minglapo's voice, though a tension
was increasing in his mind in regard to the
fate of the captive, his eyes turning often to
the hollow-eyed one, as the voice of Minglapo
came to his ears as from the deeps of a
bubbling well.  From none but a fat man with
a great chest could such softness and volume
issue.

The trembling of the servant's body resulted
from exertion, not from fear.  His features
were sombre and changeless as the east at
evening—a face of deep intelligence, but just a
wrapping of yellow-pale tissue on the bony
block of it, except for the burning quiet of the
eyes.  The ears were decently cut, the mouth
and brow were good.  Deference, attention,
apprehension—these three were expressed and
held in order by a concentration that was no
less than mastery.

Nifton-Bend had also satisfied himself in
study of that face.  Minglapo was now
questioning his servant in Chinese.

... Fifty years old ... served in this
house for two years ... came from the
South, from Canton ... papers in his
possession to prove this...

Nifton Bend leaned forward to straighten
the fringe of the cushions at Romney's knee
and whispered:

"They all have papers.  He is Japanese—as
we shall doubtless prove—"

The talk went on.  It appeared that Minglapo
was interested in the same point that the
General had just expressed, for presently he
made a gesture to bring the servant down to
his level.  The lifeless eyes rolled backward
for the fraction of a second as the wasted
figure obeyed.  He bent but one knee in his
kneeling, his right leg thrust back loosely, the
left bearing the full weight.  The three also
watched intently.  Again the warmth surged
up into Romney's throat—a curious fondness
for the Oriental's courage and guile.

Now Minglapo stretched forth his hand to
his servant's head and drew it forward into
his lap.  Silently and resigned, the other
submitted.  Still the left knee did double service.
Very carefully Minglapo examined the man's
crown, tweaking the queue with tense fingers,
peering into the braid close to the scalp,
letting the tight black length of it pass before his
eyes slowly, as if watching the gloss of it under
the lamp-light.  This braid alone of him
seemed fully alive.

"The queue is right enough.  He has probably
been in the service for many years, ever
since a little boy—probably helped to map
Manchuria—like as not helped to whip us in
'95.  Worked here two years waiting for
to-night, and then, just a little dryness of the
knee—"

Minglapo bade his servant stand once more.
Nifton Bend leaned forward, placing his hand
upon the loose right knee.

The servant explained that it was a bit
rheumatic; that the pain was unbearable when he
bent it.

"I'm afraid he will have to bend it," Minglapo said.

A look of agony swept across the servant's
face, as the master commanded him to bend
both knees at the same time.  The force of will
now called into action was so intense as to be
like a frictional heat in the room.  He
lowered himself slowly, the weight seemingly
equally divided in both limbs.  He was now
sitting on his heels, Oriental fashion.
Minglapo waved him up again, and commanded
him to repeat the exercise with a quick movement.

The tell-tale snap filled the room.

There was something exquisite to Romney
in the fact that not one of the three faces to
whom this was like an ultimatum, changed.
Not the trace of a smile, nor light of triumph
appeared in the eyes of Minglapo or the
General.  A hundred times more, they respected
this old man as a captive spy, than when he
was merely one of the house-force.  They
respected him perhaps as only one gamester
can respect another....  Minglapo went on
speaking, but slowly, fragmentarily now.  He
clapped his hands.  A servant came and
returned immediately bringing a small
lacquered box.

"Is he not superb?" Nifton Bend
whispered....  "They train them from
childhood.  The Japanese system of espionage is
far-reaching—ah, look there."

Minglapo had reached forward and lifted
the blue loose-hanging blouse of the spy,
rolling it well up above the shoulders.  The bare
brown chest and back showed scarred and
blackened from some terrible maiming in the
past.  There were series of lumpy welts upon
the back which Minglapo examined minutely.
The disfigurations of the chest were of a
different nature, long pale scars over which the
skin stretched with a honey-like transparency.

"One of the most trusted of his kind beyond
a doubt," said Nifton Bend.  "This is not the
first time he has been caught.  Those three-barred
welts on his back are from the Siberian
knout, a devilish contrivance made of knotted
whip-cord soaked in brine.  The dark rashy
appearance in spots is also from the
North—frost-bite.  We have a hero in our midst,
Mr. Romney, one of the real ones whose names are
never known."

The spy stood perfectly unemotional, looking
upward, turning obediently whenever
Minglapo took his arm.

"... He knows it is his last half-hour—"

The last was in a sense abrupt to Romney.
He had been so absorbed in the whole game of
these passionate nationalists, that the life and
death end of it for the one caught had been
put aside from his mind for the moment.

Minglapo arose and drew a goblet of water
from the cooler, opened the lacquer box, took
forth a small metal case which contained a
long needle.

The pressure of it all was now a trifle heavy,
even for the well-repressed American.  The
excellence of physical manhood manifested in
the whole affair did not take away entirely the
fact that the spy was about to be murdered.
Romney felt he could not stay.  His head
turned to Minglapo and back to Nifton Bend.
Their faces were expressionless and half
averted.  They would have accepted a
reversal that meant death to them, with the
same external calm that characterized the
manner of the spy....  Yet the American
could not lift.  He was no stranger to the
various fashions of brutality, but the temptation
to pluck the stupor needle from the hand of
Minglapo was well nigh overpowering.  The
unoccupied hand of the master was now held
out toward the servant as if to take his arm.
Very slowly the spy's hand lifted from his
side, the palm toward Minglapo's, moving
forward as one would grope in the dark.  Over
his face was that same eternal quietude like a
faint reflection of day in the sky at evening.

That tableau seemed immortally fixed in
Romney's mind.  He leaned forward, his
hands gripping his ankles as he sat....
Suddenly the principal was plucked from the
centre of things.  It was the queerest
extraction—a sort of side-lurching as if the spy's
body had been hurled past....

A quick shot from Nifton Bend at Romney's
left—the voice of Minglapo in
English—then a crash of glass and frame as the
body of the spy hurled itself through the
forward casement.

"Your work, Friend Romney.  Get him, or
all is ruined!" this from Minglapo.

As he darted across the room Romney realised
that it did appear to be his work, that the
house-servants were not to be trusted, that
Minglapo was fat and the General maimed
from birth.  He dove through the pearl
casement, somewhat enlarging the opening the
other had made, and the street took him—a
stunning impact.  Then came a curious
realisation of the freshness of evening.

The spy was up and away, the American
following at a pace not adjusted to distance, a
sprint which could not have lasted two
hundred yards.


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   7

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A boy runs, an animal runs, but a white man
cannot preserve his esteem chasing a native
through a Chinese street.  Still the words of
Minglapo rang in his ears—"Your work,
Romney.  Get him or all is ruined."

Other thoughts flashed as he ran—thoughts
having to do with the changing and colouring
of the Oriental maps, the end of a warring
world, the strange patience and passion of
practical visionaries like Minglapo and
Nifton Bend and Dr. Ti Kung.

He ran with his elbows tucked in, his head
forward.  The spy, turning often, would have
seen but for the duck a face that did not know
how to quit.  Yet Romney who knew what
physical condition meant was surprised at his
own lack of form.  The Japanese ran with a
limp—ran for his Emperor in whose service
he had given youth and all the fine edge of his
vitality.  It was not until he was spent that he
turned fox.  Luck was not with him.  The
white man neared and the streets they passed
furnished no hiding place, not even an open
door.  At his last turn Romney met a creature
on the ground with fists upraised.  Perhaps at
no other time would he have found the spy
without a weapon.

The fists of an Oriental are always pathetic,
but these were piteously so.  Romney did not
join action with them, but sat down on a door-step,
gasping, laughing a little.  The ludicrous
cringing attitude was a clue to a still greater
pathos.  The white man in his exhaustion was
struck again suddenly with the darkness of
the whole drama.  Why should he return this
heroic little figure to his death?  It was true
that he was somehow in the service of the Big
Three, that he had touched the secrets of their
devoted lives, but now, as in the shop of
Minglapo, the great zeal and patience, the
unswerving fealty of this spy's service to his
most human and impossible God, had a merit
to it that touched him where he was tenderest.
Nifton Bend and the two Chinese leaders
meant adventure; reinstatement into the world
of real men; more than that they meant initiation
into the deepest crafts of men....  Ti
Kung had picked him up from the gutter of
the world's darkest slum, placed him on his
feet, trusted him with a matter of life and
death, sent him on a journey to his masters.
Minglapo was a figure to tie to; and as for the
Hunchback, Romney had uncovered an emotion
that startled himself.  He knew now what
it meant to love a leader—something of the
old mystery of what it means to die for
another.

And yet they had thrust their responsibilities
upon him.  To take back this old man,
all broken with exhaustion, meant to deliver
him to his death.  The personal side of the
subject was big and near.  He had run down the
spy but didn't know what to do with him....
The little Jap had his life to live, his
work to do.  He had already done great silent
unanswering tasks.  He lay face downward
on the turf now, panting hard—too old a man,
his vitality too far spent, to be used so roughly.

The fact that Romney had been too long in
Asia to care much for Japan and her ambitions
and that he was deeply called to the
mysterious activities of such men as the Big Three,
didn't change a whit his incapacity just now.

He sat down on a doorstep, just at the feet
of the spy, and mopped his brow laughingly,
though his mental movements were heavy and
severe.  The way he personally panted and
perspired, disgusted a mind in which the old
ideal of an athlete still remained....  He
saw for the first time the expediency of Pilate's
memorable washing of hands....  The
sound of hurried footsteps came up the narrow way.

Romney gambled with himself.  If these
were Minglapo's servants—the affair of course
was out of his hands.  If not—well, he
couldn't exactly let the Jap escape with
information that would betray the lives and
work of his friends....  The hurrying feet
had not to do with the house of Minglapo.
They were Tientsin policemen—three of
them—summoned to duty doubtless by the chase.
Perceiving the American now, and his game
on the ground before him, they brought
lanterns to bear upon the two faces, talked long
and with much gravity.  Romney blinked into
the lantern light again, an extra-long
exposure.  Then his life-story in full was
hypothecated by one of the officers.  The two others
afterward relieved themselves of prolonged
intonations in many high keys, having little to
do with the facts of the case.  Their manner
became sumptuously courteous, even deferential,
so that the American felt in justice to
them he should rise from the doorstep.  They
touched his elbows on either side—slight,
lifting pressures, bowing repeatedly to him and
pointing over their shoulders in a direction
contrary to the shop in Merchant's Square.
Romney did not care to return just then to
Minglapo.  In fact, he doubted whether he
ever would again.  Two of the officers had
lifted the spy between them.

As they walked, a little ray came down upon
the American from the future.  Policemen
meant calaboose, even in China.  Calaboose
meant on some occasions an inconvenient
chance to think.  Minglapo of course would
exert himself in behalf of them, but delivery
meant a return to the dais and resumption of
the murder process.  Meanwhile in the little
old head walking behind, between the two
Chinese policemen, were facts and suspicions
enough to break entirely what Romney was
willing to grant as the biggest game in Asia
at the present moment....  Just now it
occurred that a properly trained Japanese spy
would be able to talk in English, which would
prove utterly unintelligible to the Chinese
police.

"Oh, I say, we'd better fix matters
somehow—so we'll pull together—"

"Good," came the answer.

"You—why didn't you say something before?"

"There was nothing to say.  I expected
death when I fell in the street—"

"I suppose that was my business."

"I do not understand—"

Romney was charged with queer elation.
He would have known the spy was Japanese by
his English—probably a University of Tokyo
training.  He was familiar with Japanese
students.  Always they bent forward with the
effort of thinking in a foreign language.  The
Chinese were inclined to sit back and let the
other do the heavy work of listening.

"You mean you don't understand why I
didn't kill you?"

"Yes, that is what I mean."

"I'm not a murderer.  I haven't got anything
against you."

"Then you are not with them?"

"Yes—"

"I do not understand—"

It was the East and West again, a chasm
that could not be bridged.  Romney dropped
the subject.

"We'd better fix matters—as to what front
is best to put up—"

"Front?"

"What we'd better tell them, so that our
stories will fit—"

"Stories?"

"Listen," said Romney, straining for the
non-idiomatic.  "They will ask questions at
the station.  We must answer.  If we answer
differently, it would be better if we had not
spoken—"

"Yes.  I am your servant.  We had a disagreement.
You started to beat me and I ran—"

"Just a little domestic difference," Romney
remarked.

"Yes."

"Where do we live?"

"I came with you from Shanghai four days
ago.  We have been in the country since
arrival—"

Romney was further amused.  Minglapo
had been studiously avoided in the arrangement.
The spy had a fertile mind.  These
things were a part of his work.  He was aware
even of Romney's coming from Shanghai.

"You are not to remember the place we
have been since Shanghai and Tongu," the
Japanese added.  "I have been showing you
our country.  You are rich.  You just play and
pay....  You must speak sharp to me now,
as if you did not like my talk—"

Romney noisily rebuked his servant.  The
hands of the little policeman tightened on his
arm.  "Good," said the Japanese in frightened,
cringing tones.  "Now I will explain to
them that I am your servant and that you were
displeased with me."

There were suspended explanations to the
policeman; long, voluble breaths and fresh
beginnings, as if the spy were releasing a
memorized address; after that a moment of
silence, and a low wailing sentence in English:

"It does not please them altogether."

They were locked presently in the same
cell.  Voices of the drugged and drunken beat
through the corridors, and screams of
madness from lower passages.  And still Romney
had his chance to think.  The Big Three
wouldn't be pleased to learn that he had
permitted the spy to fall into the hands of the law.
Even the Japanese didn't understand a white
man's mercy.  These nationalists were an
interesting sort.  They didn't ask from others
what they were unwilling to give themselves.
Failure meant forfeiture of life in their work.
But the West didn't breed this sort of thing in
a man.  Romney found himself not as intrinsically
of the East as he imagined.  He could
conceive a big system doing away with a host
of lives, but still he didn't care to be the direct
instrument of taking the life of one man.

Presently he found himself in the midst of
conjecture as to how the Big Three meant to
strangle Japan.  For many moments this
matter wavered back and forth through his
mind, and did not take real form until he
happened to recall the laboratory in Minglapo's
cellar.  There might be a connection here.
He had heard of a ghastly, almost incommunicable
horror having to do with the slaying
of multitudes without any formal arrangement
of platoon, brigade or corps....

He dozed in his chair at last, dreaming of a
nation stricken with pestilence—its soldiers all
away in the clean and ancient barbarities of
war....  He would wait for Ti Kung and
then possibly it would be well to clear
himself from the Big Three.  Perhaps they
wouldn't trust him—even to keep his mouth
shut....  The little old spy slept at his feet....
In the heart of the night, a prison-guard
entered with a lantern, drawing the
cell-door shut behind him.

Romney opened his eyes, and saw a queer
intelligence in the glance of the other—a face
he had not seen before.  The prison guard was
intent for an instant upon the figure at
Romney's feet, the lantern-ray pouring over the
spy's length from feet to queue—then back to
Romney's face.

"Sit quiet and say nothing," he whispered,
"Your friends are working for you.
To-morrow you will be free.  This—remember—is a
madman.  He is not responsible....  Say
only that he attacked you and me—now—"

The voice of the prison-guard came from
the dark, behind the lantern-ray.  Romney
caught up sleepily with the full significance
of the words.  Suddenly the lantern fell and
the stranger raised a terrible outcry, springing
upon the spy, who had half-risen.  Now
they were on the floor together, and a shot was
fired.

The prison-guard was the one to arise.  The
lantern was spraying the stone floor with light,
above was darkness.  Romney's face was
caught in the hands of the policeman, and
these words were driven in his mind, even as
he struggled to be free:

"Listen.  He leaped upon me and tried to
take my pistol.  I had to shoot.  He is done
and cannot deny.  They are coming—"

The officer now raised his voice for help,
and the corridors drummed with hurrying feet.


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   8

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Romney did not sleep during the rest of
the night.  They were slow about taking the
body of the little spy forth from the cell.  The
murder passage recurred repeatedly.  It had
been very swift and matter of fact, the
prison-guard explaining what Romney should say as
he watchfully prepared to assassinate the
Japanese, who in his turn arose slowly and
empty-handed to meet the end—all this in a
treacherous lantern-ray.  Romney did not fancy such
patriotism.  Of course he realised that the
cause of the Big Three would have been
ruined had the Japanese spy managed to live
to make his report.  He granted that the Big
Three dreamed of a greater and purer China;
even granted that if their dream were applied
to the machinery of nationalism, the result
would be finer for the Orient and the world,
than if Japan became the dominant power of
Asia.  At the same time he was not so modern
in holding a curious repugnance for the
present episode.

In mid-afternoon the murderous prison-guard
found an opportunity to whisper that
Romney's liberty would have been obtained
hours before, had there not been found another
charge against him, the nature of which was
not yet clear.  The prisoner was asked to be
patient, however, that great forces were at
work to set him free.  Romney took another
long breath.  At times like this, the period of
his life, since the parting at Longstruth's
seemed altogether irrational.

They had not yet cleansed the floor of his cell.

It was not until toward evening that he was
led forth to meet this mysterious new charge.
A bearded Chinese in lavender robes sat in a
high box and appeared four-eyed behind his
spectacles.  Before him stood the avid
McLean of the *John Dividend*, now turning at
the step of his prey and feasting his single eye
on the length and thinness of the American.

Romney's laugh was doubtless charged to him.

"Hello, Mac," he said, "I heard you had
gone way down—"

"It has cost me a great deal to bring you
face to face—"

"If I had seen you ten minutes after our
meeting over the wall in Shanghai, I could
have fixed that little matter—"

"It is to be fixed now.  The cost of
collection and the payment for personal damage
received—brings the amount to twenty-five
pounds.  The items are all here—"

McLean presented a long paper of charges.

"I may not have that much—what in that case?"

"Back to *John Dividend* or rot here—"

Romney recalled that he had slightly less
than a hundred dollars, which, with his other
belongings, was now in the hands of the police.
He offered seventy-five dollars to close
McLean's claim.

To his surprise this amount—three times
the original loan—was refused.

"Come around to-morrow—maybe I can
raise the wind," Romney suggested.  "I've
made you a lot of trouble and you've got a
right to be sore."

Romney was still further surprised that the
money-lender did not wabble.  He had not
expected to be led back to the cell.  An hour
later, however, he was called to the office again
and after an evening's performance of formality,
extending through trial, initiatory and
several deeper degrees, he found himself in
the street, his own money not used in
obtaining this freedom, and a secret verbal order,
imparted by the prison-guard, for him to
report at once to the shop of Minglapo.

Dr. Ti Kung had returned.

The three were gathered at the dais when
Romney was admitted.  Dr. Ti Kung raised
his hand and apologised for not rising.

"From what they tell me," he said with a
tired smile, "your former proficiency in
athletics has stood you in good stead."

Minglapo glanced whimsically at the
forward casement, repaired since Romney had
crashed through.  The deep bubble of a laugh
started, but dripped back.

The Hunchback bowed toward his countryman,
studying him with a strange mixed
expression of anxiety and compassion.  The long,
narrow, wolf-hound head held something that
invariably lifted Romney—something very
deep that had to do with the love of man for man.

"I'm afraid," he remarked, "that I don't
take the joy in a foot-race that I once did.
And it's mainly knowing how now.  I'm really
far from fit."

"We trust that there will be no more of that
for your portion.  We have reserved a task
for you, Friend Romney—not more important,
perhaps, but of a much higher form of
activity."

It was in Romney's mind at that moment to
state certain objections, but the face of Nifton
Bend held him silent.

"I have been honoured," Dr. Ti Kung
added, "in that my friends have found you all
that I promised—and more.  It is strange that
Mother China should uncover among her
most valuable workers, two men of your country—"

"I have been wondering if I have the training
for such ardent nationalism," Romney
said quietly.

Dr. Ti Kung turned to Nifton Bend who replied:

"We have thought of that.  I can answer
you best in my own experience.  I was
without a country—and dared to be a citizen of
the world.  It was this old Yellow Mother
who took me in.  China is not a nation.  She
is the bed-rock of Asia.  All elements are in
her breast—the most ancient, and conceptions
so modern that they cannot be spoken aloud.
For one must *whisper* the absolutely new.
There is no place as yet for a visionary in
America—but there is a place here.  One who
works for China works for all the East—and
for the world, since out of the East all great
things come to light."

The Hunchback smiled.  "I do not speak
much in this way.  There is something in you
that draws forth the dream....  But I see
you are troubled."

"Perhaps it was because he was locked up
for a night and a day," said Dr. Ti Kung.

"No, it is not that," said Nifton Bend.  "I
saw it here before the little house-servant
escaped.  He won your heart, Mr. Romney?"

"Yes," the word came eagerly.

"You lost your sense of the greatness of a
cause—that could sacrifice him so ruthlessly?"

"Yes.  He was all tempered with suffering—so
absolute in fortitude....  They murdered
him at my feet in the cell."

"He has done well.  Perhaps you can see
that we too love a servant like that—"

"Yes—but to put him out of the way—"

"The cause is greater than the man."

"I do not mean to argue.  I can either take
it or leave it."  Romney could not say more.
There was an encompassing understanding in
the Hunchback's eye.

"We are glad to discuss this with you.  The
East regards these things differently.  Tell us
how you overtook him and what happened
before the arrest—"

"He fell from fatigue.  His hands were
held up to me from the ground.  I knew that
you wanted him dead, knew what you expected
of me, but I sat down on a doorstep to
think it out.  He expected death.  He was
trained your way.  He asked me afterward
why I had not killed him then.  I knew you
could not rest while his thoughts held
together in that gritty head.  Presently the
police came along.  It occurred to me if he
were a trained spy, he would know English,
and it was so.  We arranged our story on the
way to the lock-up—arranged it so as to keep
out the name of Minglapo....  When I
saw him trying to take care of that dry
kneecap right here in this room—why, the stuff of
me went out to him."

"Europe has gone mad," the Hunchback
said wearily.  "France, England, Italy,
Austria, Russia, Germany, all goring each
other—America threatened—Japan standing ready to
take up the murderous confession of her
material-mindedness.  Mother China can stop all
that forever."

Except for the presence of the Hunchback,
Romney would have assumed a Western point
of view fully at this time and explained that
life had taught him to do most of his dreaming
at night.  Instead, he said:

"Of course, I should be very glad to hear
about China's power of mastering Japan
without arms and ending war forever from the
hard-pressed earth—"

It was one of the strangest moments.  Romney
had come very close to the truth several
times in his own thoughts, but never so close
as now.  His question had put the answer into
three minds.  It was not that any one of the
three intended to speak, but what he had asked
had brought the picture of the truth as each
saw it into a kind of form of words.  If there
is anything to the transference of thought, the
mental pictures of the three may have helped
Romney to the solution at that moment.  He
had turned from Nifton Bend to Dr. Ti Kung.
Queerly enough, just now he recalled the
extraordinary interest and capacity of the
Chinese in chemical and biological matters
during his work in Palo Alto.  Instantly upon
this was added the sharp recollection of the
trap entrance to the basement laboratory in
this very house.  Then came the large seeming
importance of the packet he had delivered to
Minglapo from Dr. Ti Kung.  Might not the
documents contained in that represent the
fruits of Ti Kung's studies in the laboratories
of the States?  All this was in a flash, and over
it all—it was like a panorama—a Japan with
desolated streets and highways, an Island of
Pestilence....  Nifton Bend next spoke:

"You see, Mr. Romney, as you now stand
troubled by this dramatic little matter having
to do with our spy—it would not be well for
us to complete our plans for you.  You are
honest.  You are of the West—called to us and
called from us, by your ideals.  Our measure
is heroic.  A measure to accomplish such a
result as we deem to be required now must be
heroic.

"Without knowing exactly the form our
activity will take, you can continue to serve us.
If we told you the exact truth—your very
possession of it would endanger your life in
the event of its making you waver in your
allegiance to us—"

"You mean like the spy.  You had to kill
him because he had learned too much.  But I
know as much as he now—"

"Perhaps not.  He has been in this house
for two years, and during the last day or two,
he has been used in a particular service."

"Then you think what he heard here was
not all, but merely an added inkling to the
full understanding."

"He became dangerous to us."

"You do not think that I am dangerous to
you now?"

"Your case is different.  We have seen your
trustworthiness.  We know that any difference
now is moral and that our cause is safe in your
hands.  At the same time any explicit methods
which we might use must not become the
property of any mind which is not imbued
with the great passion which we feel."

"You say you could use me without divulging
further?"

"Yes.  We wish—"

"You are not treating me then, as you would
treat an Oriental—"

"That is because I am an American.  My
friends have learned to trust me—and I have
chosen to trust you—"

Romney thanked him.

"What plan have you for me?"

The two Chinese turned to Nifton Bend
who arose.

"This morning we planned to send you to
Japan.  The delay in securing your release
from custody has changed that.  You are to
start for the Gobi Desert.  The plan is
written, the progress of your journey set down,
the policy and full meaning of your mission.
These papers are in my chamber on the floor
above.  There may be a detail or two to finish
in regard to them.  Your servant will bring
you to me in a few minutes.  If you can be
ready within an hour, it would be well for you
to reach Peking in the morning.  Let me add
that this is a mission of great mercy, not a
mission of death—"

Romney made himself ready in his own
quarters.  A lift had come to his heart which
he did not pretend to understand.  It had
seemed that his acceptance of the mission
had been ordained deep in his own volition—the
decision arising finished in his consciousness
while the Hunchback spoke....
Many of the preparations for travel had
already been made by Bamban, who left him
to bring the word from Nifton Bend.

... Romney was in one of the halls, his
servant walking ahead.  A door opened a
little distance forward and low in it, the place
a half-grown child's head would occupy,
appeared the long face of the Hunchback—beyond
that, golden lamplight, the sound of a
softly-playing fountain, and an instant later,
the movement of another figure in the mellow
light.

Romney halted.  The figure had come
forward.  The head and breast were above
Nifton Bend and two bare white arms rested
upon the low shoulders.  One was held out.

Her head turned slightly, the light touching
that perfect profile.  She was smiling.
Romney could not feel his limbs, yet they carried
him forward to the outstretched hand.

"It's good to see you again, Sir Romney."

Something had broken within him.  The
strange elation had changed to a tangible
power.  There was sorrow in her loveliness.
But such a sense of the beauty in the presence
of the two together—a kind of entering into
the heart of a sacred place.  And queerly
enough he felt himself at the end of
commonness—mere man movements and matters put
away, an end to the drift of the waterfronts,
all helplessness and the stress of hand to hand.
She was close, looking into his face.

"You have put on something that I could
not find a year ago, Sir Romney," she whispered.

"For awhile I thought I had lost rather than
gained.  I hope you are right," he answered.

His eyes were held to the yellow rug.  It
lay over a low chair by the fountain.  She led
Nifton Bend to it, the bare arm ever close to
his shoulder.

"I am glad that he is chosen for the mission
to the desert," she was saying to the
Hunchback.  "I am glad you two know each other,
for I found Sir Romney very much a man."





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.. _`ANNA ERIVAN`:

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   PART TWO: THE GOBI


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   ANNA ERIVAN

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Romney was not delayed long in
Peking, and the few days were
interesting, for his credentials
opened a different shelf of native
life from that which the foreign traveller
ever encounters.  Here he was surrounded
by the young men to whom the names of Ti
Kung and Minglapo and Nifton Bend were
demigods, no less.  He saw the cause of
Young China in force, felt the strong fresh
beat of it, and became more than ever glad
that it was in the world, and that he had the
honour to be a servant of it.  To him, there
were no longer three but four leaders.  He
told Moira Kelvin this before he left the
lamp-lit room in Tientsin.  She was vital
warmth and depth of background to a picture
such as his.  Men called forth his friendship
and loyalty and service, but there was something
in the spirit of romance which she stood
for, that made a slave of him, and there was
something of creative significance in her
love-relation with the General that was so intimate
and sacred that he did not bring it even to
the foreground of his mind for close analysis.
Her personal pull upon him was easily
borne now.  He kept it as a kind of secret
sweetness of life.  It honoured her, and the
yearning that came with it was one of the
finest ingredients for moral health.  No man
spends energy in yearning whose real forces
are asleep.  So they were good girding days
and his health came back.  He felt himself
relaxing again in the slow rhythmic breath
of the interior.

Romney only knew that he was going to
the Gobi Desert.  There was a Peking letter
among his numbered documents; another
letter to be opened in Tushi-kow and for all
points of his journey ahead up to a town in
the desert called Wampli.  But these letters
were not to be read until he reached the towns
noted, and the documents attending each
letter were promised to give him further
details as to friends, impedimentum, his task
and safe conduct.

Three days were spent in Tushi-kow where
the Chinese Post Road forks from the
Russian caravan route to Siberia.  Here he was
quartered in the house of Fai Ming, whose
name was in daily use by the members of the
cause in Peking.  This old aristocrat who felt
honoured in giving his wealth and strength to
the people, had many tales to tell of the
Chinese awakening, of the young social order
in America and Europe which he had visited
since Romney had been home.  It was his
view that a certain brotherhood passion was
trimmed for ignition around the world and
would shortly become a circle of cleansing flame.

"The camels are ready," Fai Ming said on
the last day, "but I would not have you hasten,
my friend.  There is a long caravan-route
from here—let us say to Turgim, where a real
activity may begin for you.  Another party
will start three days hence if you wish to wait—"

Romney shook his head.  "Yet I have felt
that I have been in my own home with you," he added.

"Your mission is unprecedented.  The
desert tribes are said to be full of zeal, and
slow in discrimination, though you will not
meet dangers on this side of Turgim.  In any
event we are taught that a man with a real
mission is in the hands of strange and powerful helpers."

Bamban meant superb tea, dry blankets,
and dustless food.  Also, he appeared to
command a proper respect for his new master not
only from the native travellers, but from the
camel-drivers and Tartar merchants.
Moreover, that camel-reek which became a part
of the very texture of everything in the
caravan, as all men and equipment of a cavalry
outfit partake of the essence of horse, was at
least checked in its pervasiveness so far as
Romney was concerned, by the tireless efforts
of the fastidious one.

"Bamban, you're getting to be a habit that
will be hard to break," Romney remarked
one evening early in the journey to Turgim.

Days folded into each other, and something
from the unearthly gleam of the desert edges
entered his soul.  His mind moved slowly.
Sometimes he wondered if the old quick
thinking and sharp mental activity would ever
come back.  At times he had no care regarding
it, feeling that all surface glibness had
passed for good.  His orders so far were only
arousing.  He did not know as yet what he
was to do in the Gobi, though the intimations
were of a most challenging kind.  He had
been furnished with copies of manuscripts
written in Chinese and in part in Sanscrit,
containing information regarding the desert,
information that the world at large would
scoff at.  He was advised concurrently to
study these papers.  More and more he
realised that in ways other than his linguistic
prowess he was fitted for the journey at hand.

He thought much of Moira Kelvin and
Nifton Bend.  One night by the desert fire,
with Bamban sitting expectantly near, the
salient events of the year moved by in steady,
and for the first time, ordered procession,
beginning with his first glance at the yellow
rug on the little river steamer *Sungkiang*—that
whirlwind fortnight.  For a month or
so he had been close to death—he saw this
clearly now—her laugh the note of his delirium,
her kiss the heat of his fever.  After that,
a kind of low animal hate which had to burn
out before decency and sense came.

He was cool now.  The night was winter
clear.  He would never have been able to see
her so largely and definedly as now, had she
taken him.  She had become a kind of
institution, but impersonal.  His present run of
thoughts was not without a touch of chivalry.
He saw that there are very few really exciting
vampires among the love-women; that no man
strikes fire with a superb woman's genius
without enduring benefits.  If a man figures
out the cost in dollars for such an adventure
he's not a lover of quality.  If a man's career
in the world is slowed somewhat, it's an easy
price to pay for being privileged to enter even
for a little time the domain of a passionate
woman's genius.  The yellow-rug woman was
his initiation.  The fact that he had glimpsed
a devil in her too much for a boy to subdue, no
longer prevented him from seeing that the
fault was his own weakness and that her devil
was in no way smug.  He had well put away
the cheap male diversion of hating all women,
because he had met one too great to hide
herself in him.  He did not want Moira Kelvin
back, but his heart was strangely expectant of
meeting some one of her quality, some glory
akin to hers, but nearer his own full comprehension.

Because he did encounter something of this
kind, he is present on these pages.  The rest—the
strangeness, the peril, the desert itself, is
mere setting and arrangement.

In the main, the deeps of his mind were
undisturbed, the forces there moving often
with a finer vitality than he had known
before, but day after day the expectancy
recurred in the same form, the sense of an
imminent and radical complication.  He
could not quite put away thoughts of this
delicate and encompassing mystery.  Always he
said, "This will pass when I really enter the
desert," but it was not so in the journey to
Turgim, though he saw no white woman
throughout those majestic days—only the
dark and yellow women in the shadows of
the Rest Houses at evening—creatures very
far from complication.  Still, the gently
lingering of feminine redolence in his
reveries....

Always when he thought of the woman yet
unknown, the penetration and one-pointedness
of his mission diminished.  In the colder
morning hours he was able to reckon with the
soft haunt of it all; but in the wondrous nights
of desert moonlight (the same lady of the
moon, full-throated, head tilted back) Young
China of the towering present, and the
sand-strewn relics of the ancient Lemurians, said to
be left in the Gobi, alike lost their conspicuous magic.

At Turgim, a vile and sprawling town,
Romney drew a somewhat clearer idea of
what he was out after, and the vague vastness
of the undertaking at this time possessed the
large part of his thinking in the day-light
hours of travel.  The main road was left at
Turgim and the next point was Nadiram, six
days' journey straight west into the desert.
Three Tartar merchants arranged to travel
this stretch and Bamban explained that they
relied upon his master's credentials, since
Nadiram was usually reached from an open
spur running south from the Chinese Post
Road at a point ten days' journey ahead.
Nearly two weeks was to be saved by this
western cut, but the trail was commercially
unsafe.  The remotest of the Russian consuls
was said to be stationed at Nadiram.

Six days—a party of five camels.  The
Gobi now gave them battle, days of burning,
nights of sudden chill.  The three strangers
proved helpful, as they knew the best switches
of the trail and the halts for water and rest.
Three times desert bands swept up to the little
caravan—foul and furious they appeared,
demanding their tariffs of money to the last
copper or kopeck.  It was on this journey that
Romney first heard the hyenas....

The last day of the journey to Nadiram was
ending.  It had been an extra long stretch for
the camels.  He planned to rest a few days,
and Nadiram was supposed to be for him, the
last day on the outer and open highway of the
desert.  A sense of the mystery of the East
came that night, as it had not since his early
days in India.

They neared the settlement in the first
coolness of early evening.  It lay in a strange,
fixed fashion, as if moulded low upon the
rolling sand.  Except for the shadows, it would
have been unearthly.  Indeed, there was a
sharp intensity to the shadows, such as one
finds upon the moon through a strong lens,
but the colour was lowered—a Gobi colour, a
lifeless, sand-scoured yellow.  Romney
gathered his padded coat about him before the
hut-shadows fell across the way.  The desert
was clean, but the smell of the town was of
uncovered dead.  In the open, the sun had
played upon all surfaces; men had defiled
these shadows.  Romney shivered, his nostrils
had long been clean of Turgim....

Nothing of his reading or imagination had
pictured this entrance to Nadiram, and yet
there was a strange and evil familiarity about
it all—as if some ancient picture of his mind
finally opened to tally with the present, object
for object.

The moon was not yet risen; the town was
lit, but the desert still in twilight.  The main
road through the town stretched straight into
the East.  In the very centre of it, in the low
distance, the planet Jupiter was rising—something
to hold to, something of peace and spaciousness.
It was needed, because the sights
and sounds and scents about him, as the camels
rocked in, belonged to a flaring hell.  Little
shops were lit with torches in the doorways,
torches that roared and were red.  The faces
of the keepers took on this red light, also the
faces of the beggars in the streets.  The tired
beasts moved forward rapidly and with a
stealth that had long been forgotten in the
desert.  The forward drivers were continually
screaming for right of way.  Thus
Romney saw Nadiram, the faces of the people
turned upward in the red reflection—like a
kindling of hatred upon a countenance of
impassive gloom.

The three Tartar merchants disappeared
into a side street.  Romney turned presently
into the court-yard of the Russian consulate,
and dismounted, deeply conscious in the dusk
of the eyes of a woman in the doorway.


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From the moment that he beckoned to
Bamban to make his camel kneel in the court
of the Consulate, until the woman's eyes
turned to his from where she stood in the
narrow opening of the door, an intensity of sheer
living possessed him such as he had never
experienced except during the Hankow
fortnight.  His good limbs stumbled as he crossed
the level stone flags, not because he had been
on the rack for hours, but because the main
force of his life had turned out to the woman's
face—as if all his life hitherto had been but
a journey to that face.

She gave no sign; merely bowed and said
in English:

"The Russian Consul is ill.  He can see no one."

To the weathered Romney had come a
certain dismay.  He had been able to meet
most pressures from men; take up most of
men's crosses and carry them to Golgotha, if
necessary, but the burden of this—that her
face was calm, that her eyes gave no sign, that
his approach meant nothing of the extraordinary
nature that had prevailed upon him—this
held the unique pang.  He tried to save
himself, as a man's mind will, by the thought that
the suddenness of this encounter and the utter
absence of beauty from his life for many
weeks, had stimulated him in an unusual way.
This that had rocked his heart was just a
pretty woman's influence.  She would say
something presently to break the dream, and
he would be quite calm again.

It was not until after this rush of thinking
that Romney came up out of the deeps—enough
to laugh at himself, for expecting her
to be startled by his coming.  But it was not
a very successful laugh, not the kind he used
in men's affairs or against the worst that the
world had shown him since the other woman
went her way.  The idea of his mission did not
rouse him.  He had merely concentrated on
work to pass the time until this moment.  In
fact it is the great workers of the world who
become terrific to handle when they turn from
their tasks to a woman....

Romney had no particular message for the
Russian Consul, yet he said with difficulty:

"Is the Consul very ill?"

"I think he will be able to see you in the
morning."

Now she was looking at him differently,
her head bent toward him.

"You do not speak like an Englishman," she added.

He drew closer.  "I am American."

It was not apparent whether she was
pleased or regretted the fact.  That there was
a medium of language between them did not
occur in its full importance until afterward.

"I am Anna Erivan, the Consul's sister."

If she had been Erivan's wife, Romney
might have treasured for some time a certain
deep dream, but certainly he would have kept
his dreaming clean-clipped that night; and
certainly he would not have tarried in the
court, until he was asked to enter the Consulate.

Bamban was sent with the camels to the
Rest House.  The woman made tea and placed
food before him, lighting the candles and
tending the fire upon the hearth.

It was a low, broad room, the beams of the
ceiling uncovered, the floor paved with flags,
like the court, and gratifyingly clean.

She spoke as she served him....  Her
brother was not dangerously ill.  He would
be up again in the morning, if that would do....
She had been here with him a year.
Yes, she had been lonely....  There were
no other Russians here, no other Europeans,
none who remained....  No one remained
in Nadiram.  It was but a point on the long
road.  No one came back; all moved on.  In
good time every one passed on.  If one
remained long enough in Nadiram, all Asia
would go by, she supposed....  Mostly,
however, they were Chinese and Buddhist
holy men, many of them weak from hunger
that they had brought upon themselves.  She
loved the holy men.  Some of them were quite
pure....  There was one very ancient one,
who was almost dead.  He had slept in the
court for a whole day, and she had served him.
His heart was an abode of peace.  She had
been better for days following.  She had felt
a strange peace for an hour or two from others
who had passed, but never like the power of
this very old saint.  His name was Rajananda....
Mostly it was a passing of world faces,
Chinese and Tartars who pressed on, wanting
something—their faces set with desire....
Sometimes it was all like a dream to her, the
great rolling, burning desert—the moving
dots becoming men and horses and camels, the
men and horses and camels becoming dots again....

Thus she talked, breaking and toasting
bread, pouring his tea.  Romney's heart was
like an upturned cup with listening.  He ate
but did not taste the food, drank but did not
know that the tea was priceless.  Night had
closed upon the court.  He heard the heavy
breathing from an inner room, and horses
somewhere outside clearing their nostrils
from the dusty forage.  The voices of the
Chinese came in when he stopped to listen, an
endless iteration of nothings.

The woman moved about—a sentence and a
silence—cleansing the tea things.  An hour
passed.  The place was bare as before.  A
plate of sweets was left upon the table, a
pitcher of water with a cup beside it, a tin of
tobacco and papers.  She rolled a cigarette
absently, standing by the table, still telling of
the long road.  She proffered the cigarette to
him, suddenly recalling herself.

"I quite forgot," she said.  "He taught me
to do it for him."  She looked at the shut door,
from which the breathing issued.

Romney accepted the cigarette gratefully.
He spoke very little and quietly, a deep hush
upon him.  He had been afraid to comment,
lest she be aroused and hastily call in the
fragments of her story.  He was sensitive enough
to know that she was easing some tragic ache
from her heart.  Her voice, her face and
figure, the hands that served, the story itself,
filled his imagination with pictures and a
startling kind of power.

The sense now came to Romney that he
could be himself at last.  This woman was
a flame that freed him.  In the light of her,
he dared be a full being.  He did not feel
less, nor was prompted in any way to act or
cover.  She did not make a slave of him, but
called forth such as he had of humour and
wisdom.  He could see past the flash of her eyes.
There had been at times such a surface dazzle
in the eyes of the yellow-rug woman that he
had not been able to see beyond it, but that
dazzle was for him and the world.  Nifton
Bend doubtless encountered no such difficulty.
It was but one of the perfectly appointed
barriers that preserved the love-woman for her
own....  There was a moment—it was
the same that Romney fully realised that he
was himself at last—in which the smooth-running
levels of Anna Erivan's story
changed to rush of a cataract:

"... I have been here a year—do you
understand that—a year?  I came from
Odessa, four thousand miles, by train, by
caravan, over mountain passes, across rivers,
through wastes of sun and rock....  Days
of fever heat, nights of perishing cold—thirst
and suffering—four thousand miles, five
hundred on the back of a camel....  My
mother was just dead, yet all the way I
dreamed of the bountiful heart of a big
brother I had not seen for years.  He was
here.  All the way from Odessa I came to him.

"The last fifty miles I travelled with Tartar
merchants, and learned to know them well.
They were not unreal.  They were good to
me.  And yet, I was so frightened.  They told
me as I neared Nadiram on the road from
Urga that their caravan had a thousand miles
still to wander through the desert, past
ruined cities and along dried-up river-beds to
Peking.

"It was evening when we reached here—just
as you reached here this evening.  I had
seen Nadiram spelled out on the maps; I had
seen the post-mark on his yearly letter.  I
had pictured it so differently, and this is what
I saw—sun-dried clay, and the low blowing
desert and this court-yard with the Russian
flag.  I had expected him to come forth to
meet me.  All day I watched.  I had started
early for the journey's end.  I entered the
court, but saw no face.  The merchants passed
on, turning queerly.  The door-way was
heavy with dust, that door where you entered.
I pushed it open, my arms ready to fling about
him.  I thought he must be busy or detained.

"This room was darkening.  It was not as
you found it, but sodden and evil—an evil
odour.  I called, and there was no answer.  I
was frightened.  I had been frightened all
day.  One does not know what one can stand.
That was but the beginning, and I thought I
was close to death then.

"Do you know what I found?  I will show you—"

She turned quickly to the door and opened
it.  Romney saw a great bear of a man, half
sprawled over a wooden table, the candle
sputtering near his head in the fresh pressure from
the open door, the sharp fume of brandy
issuing.  The body seemed swollen, neck and
ears, shoulders, abdomen, legs—all swollen,
but the top of the head.  That was small and
sparsely covered with hair, the candle-light
upon it.  The lips were swollen and parted.

"That is what I found," she said.


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Presently she shut the door of the forward
room with quick hand—her face remorseful
and tender.

"I don't know why I did that.  It was
hateful to do that—and before you.  I don't
know why I did it."

"You had to," he said.  "I listened so
intently, you had to tell me.  You could not
tell one more ready to understand and help you."

"But he is not always like that—not always
like to-night and that night.  There have
been many days ... oh, but he is not what
I expected—so different from when he left
Odessa.  But very kind, always kind.
To-morrow morning he will be kind enough.
Only such a desolation comes over me out of
his soul.  It is like the desert....  And
nothing I can do changes him.  I have ceased
trying to change him, ceased trying, ceased
hoping—"

"Some men can't stand the desert," Romney
said.  "One must bring a certain integration
of force, a certain resistance, to stand it
here.  The Gobi saps the vitality of the weak;
it often takes the sanity of men who do not
drink....  Your brother does not know
what comes over him.  He feels himself
going insane, that's all.  A man drinks, when
he feels that, if he's the kind that turns to
drink....  You had to tell me.  It's lucky
I came.  I wouldn't have failed to come—not
for worlds.  Perhaps I came to take you away—"

... Her fineness appeared only to one
who had the grace to see.  Romney, surprised
at his own words, sensed vast reaches in her,
depths that defied him, something of the
newness of new Russia and hues of beauty ancient
as Asia.  Her eyes had widened, making her
face the more fragile.  Just then he saw the
rising moon through a low pane behind her.
It was in the full and still red from the
horizon.  The glass was poor, distorting the
circle so that it was like a bulging grain bag....
She had not smiled, nor taken exception
to his words.  There was no coquetry in
her.  She waited for him to explain.

"You have seen all the terror and the
oppression of the desert.  You cannot have
failed to see something of the rest," he suggested.

She paused and he added, "Something that
has to do perhaps with that old Buddhist holy
man you spoke of so kindly."

"I only know he brought me a strange
peace," she replied.  "As if living here with
no one to talk or listen to, wasn't all of life,
but just a little part, a hard part....  He
was very little and old—but so kind!  I am
telling it very badly, but I got a sense from
him, not through words, that I must take this
hard part, day by day, and put it behind; that
it had come to me because I deserved it, every
day of it.  And I do just that for hours,
feeling courageous, but I cannot always hold it.
The rebellion comes back; the darkness and
squalor of it all come back."

"Does something like that peace ever come
to you from the desert itself?"

She shivered.  "No, it does not belong to
me.  I am here, because there could be no
more terrible place.  If I deserved suffering,
the design is perfect.  But I have whimpered
enough.  You see I was choking with it.  I
have *used* you—to ease myself."

"I wonder if it is all illusion to me," he
mused.  "I have seen another side to the
desert—nights like to-night when everything
is softened in moonlight—the old civilisation—and
all so clean.  The Gobi is a mate of the
moon's.  I think it is almost as big as the
moon.  It starts the imagination because
everything is finished.  It has had its day, like
the moon, and there is a wonderful story to
be read if one could pass the aloofness.  Even
here in Nadiram we are but on the edge of its
mystery.  Hasn't the heart of the desert ever
called to you?"

"Only when I wanted to die," she answered.
"I don't know why men should love the past.
Each day is enough conquest for me.  I can
face anything in the morning—*except yesterday*.
Until noon I am brave, and feel that I
can take what is to come from ahead; but I
cannot turn back.  The moon is dead.  The
Gobi is dead.  I don't care for the cleanness
of death.  The death ahead for you and for
me and for all—that's not so hard to face, but
it seems to me sometimes that we are the
products of many deaths and I dare not think of
that....  How strange our talk!  And
you should rest from your journey.  There is
a room here for you.  You will not need to go
to the Rest House.  Are your servants cared for?"

"Yes, thank you.  I'll stay, if I may.  The
journey has not wearied me, but you are very
tired.  The day has been hard for you.  I
wish I could say something that would make
you rest....  I wish I might say the words
to make you sleep like a little child,
forgetting the moon and the Gobi and all that is
past—your face turned with a smile to
to-morrow.  There are such words, if I could
think of them."

The smile had come to her face.  Her lips
parted.  Romney had somehow helped her.
He did not know just what word had done it,
unless it was the mention of the little child.

"You have *fancy*," she said softly.  "For
ages here, no one has talked except of meat
and smoke and fire and beds.  Perhaps I shall
rest.  We do not often keep guests here.
Perhaps that was why I asked you—so that I
could rest—"

Still the smile remained.  She added:

"Very rarely an American comes.  We are
fond of America in Russia."

He wanted hours more.  He could have
talked the night away.  Yet there was
something in his very passion to remain with her
that forced him to rise, that long training that
makes a man skeptical and impatient of the
thing he wants most for himself.

She brought a candle and led the way to an
inner room.

"Is there anything I can do for him to-night?"
Romney asked, pointing to the forward room.

"No, there is a cot there.  When he finds
himself in darkness, he will feel his way to
that.  You will hear his fingers on the
wall—but do not mind."

She swung open the single window of the
little room.  The stone-work was barred.
She left him, but did not shut the door.

He stood waiting in the centre.  There was
just a cot with blankets and a table at the head,
upon which the candle sat in solitude.  He
thought of his travel-bags just then, but she
was bringing them and he hastened to the
door, for they were heavy and the camel-reek
was upon them.  She left him again for a
pitcher of water and a cup, very pleasing and
graceful in her services.

"And now is there not something I can do
for you?" he said.

"No—unless—"  She laughed.

"Yes?"

"Unless you think of me sleeping like a
little child, my face turned toward to-morrow—"

She was gone.  Still she had not shut his door.

It was all a kind of blur to Romney until
he lay down.  Then the picture straightened
and steadied.  Could it be that he, Romney,
had hypnotised himself—so that the first
possible woman had fallen straight into his
heart?  He had reached the period of life
when a man begins consciously to look for
his woman.  Does not such a search make the
man blind?  One cannot see clearly so long
as he doesn't want anything.  Was he so
shallow and common as to be caught in a
whirlwind of the artificial?  It was not that he
lowered Anna Erivan in this thought, but
could she be the one woman in the world for him?

Then he thought of her from the first
moment to the last, reviewed her every
gesture and movement of face and hand.  It was
not what she said, though there was much in
that for him, but her comprehension was so
instantaneous.  She had *fancy*.  She loved the
half-lights; she had passion; the whole
strength of her had to do with that.  Was her
strength the strength of repression?  She had
beauty, but was it the kind of beauty that goes
with terrible self-love? ... She seemed
tender and brave and imaginative.

Romney sat up on the cot with a suddenness
that made the whole fabric creak.  And
what of his task?  The possibility of his
penetrating to the heart of the great Gobi mystery
seemed far and intolerable compared to the
next morning, when she would come into the
outer room....  Would she be there first
and he emerge to join her, or would he be
waiting?

He laughed.  Even this simple question
had absorbed him utterly, banishing the
mystery of the desert.  There could not be
two missions.  As for her beauty, it seemed as
if he had created it in his own highest
moments, touch by touch....  Might she
not journey on with him, thrilled, too, by the
strange thing he had set out to accomplish?
This was madness.  Even the physical dangers
forbade that....  The task, whatever it
was, looked little and fanatical beside her.
The Big Three and Fai Ming seemed altered,
their zeal misguided; his own former
seriousness in relation to man's accomplishment,
seemed absurdly young....  This is what
a woman had done for him in one evening.

There could not be two missions.  He must
stay or go on....  Perhaps after reading
the Nadiram documents he could tell her
something of what he was out after, but it
would change nothing.  There could not be
two tasks.  He must cleave to the one and
forsake the other....

Romney was sweating.  It would not have
been so hard, had she not made the whole
business appear insignificant.  Must he be a
ghost-chaser, leaving this superb creature
here? ... Wickedness in her?  He could not
find it anywhere.  She might become a saint
or a wanton, but there would be greatness in
her giving in either case.  In that she was like
Moira Kelvin.  Splendours flashed for his eyes
about her repressions, and yet what had her
repressions to do with him?  She had merely
talked with him, and she was dying to talk.
She would have talked with any one who
would listen and furnish understanding.
After all, Romney relied upon the one fact
that such meetings as he had known in the
twilight in the court of the Consulate, did
not in the nature of things rouse one heart
alone.  There was no magic in life, if meetings
such as that did not contain magic.  Still
he had not won Moira Kelvin....  It may
have been only a waver, a gleam to her, so
far, yet he felt that if he remained, Anna
Erivan would know something of this that
had come to him in an instant....  There
was a kind of bruise in his heart that all his
old life had been lessened.  Suppose she was
destined to be only a passing face to him.
Would the old zeal for the world come back?
Did he want back anything that had been
spoiled?  A woman great enough to diminish
everything else, even for a night, was great
enough for any man.  But the things he had
set himself to do....  Romney's lip
tightened with self-scorn.  He could come to no
decision.  The episode was making him
yellow already.  He had hitherto prided
himself upon his faculties for decision.  He arose
and paced the room in bare feet.  The night
cold came in....

He thought of journeying with her in the
evenings together on the dromedary—she
sitting forward, sun and moon and sand, the
deep drinking at evening, the fire on the
desert, the tents—the tent.

He had stopped in the centre of the room
and now paced on again.  He was not quite
the same after that last.  He wished for the
day.  He tried the cot again, but could not
stay; paced the room, longing for the day.  At
last he thought of papers given him to be
opened at this stage of the journey.


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There was much to read from the Peking
papers, and something was made clear at last
regarding the purpose of his travel.  His
work though political was imposing.  It was
of China yet above China.  Full knowledge
of his undertaking was promised at the next
point of his journey, Wampli, but Romney
had enough now to understand that there was
no illusion about the bigness of the thing he
was called upon to do.  For a time he was
lifted a little from the intensity of the
present episode—at least, from what the world
would have called madness in connection with it.

That was Romney's longest night.  When
the dawn came in, cold and yellowish gray,
he felt that much which had been his the
night before, was gone from him.  He arose
quietly and went forth.  The outer room was
empty, the house, even the forward room,
still.  Outside the chill was leaving, a day of
bright heat promised.  No one was abroad.
He located the Rest House with difficulty,
and finally touched Bamban's shoulder.

"Find the camel drivers," he said.  "Get
the party ready as soon as you can.  We start
for Wampli at once."

Bamban looked up quickly—the nearest
thing to a start that his master had ever noted.
In ordinary course, there would have been
a halt of several days in Nadiram, and even
under the pressure of speed, the camels would
have been permitted to rest for one day.
Moreover, it meant passage alone to Wampli,
since the three Tartar merchants were now to
continue by a northeastward trail to the Post
Road.  Romney laughed at his own sensitiveness
in feeling so keenly the surprise of the
little man.  He did not hasten back to the
Consulate, yet it was impossible to loiter.
Turning into the gate of the court he saw a
movement of the woman within.  It was very
early.  The feeding and saddling of the
camels and the procuring of stores would
require at least an hour....  Anna Erivan
came to the door.  He saw something of her
morning joyousness fade as she glanced into
his face.  This numbed him further.

"How early you rise," she said.  "I heard
your step and made haste to join you, but you
had gone....  You have been gone a long
time.  The tea is ready."

"Thanks," he said briefly.

There was no sound from the forward
room.  She stood behind his chair waiting for
him to be seated.  He glanced at her.  There
was a hard thing in his breast; it seemed as
if his breath did not go lower than his throat.
He sat down to the table.  The woman
brought a covered dish hot from the fire,
placed it before him and poured tea.  She
cleared her voice before speaking:

"Did you rest?"

Something gray had come into her face.

"No.  Did you?"

She winced.  Yet there had been something
in her mind to say.  She let it forth, but the
gladness was gone.

"It was as we said last night—a strange and
sweet kind of rest at first.  I went to sleep like
a little child—drifting away so pleasantly.
But it didn't last.  Something awoke me—some
change.  I could not have slept an hour.
Since then, I have been waiting for the day."

They were like two melancholy strangers
meeting on a strange road, each having lost
his way, debating vaguely.

She ate nothing.  Just as he was about to
remind her, she suggested to him that he try
the contents of the dish before him.  He put
the spoon into it and discovered that he was
forced to follow each movement with his
mind lest his hand stop; that he must give
separate thought to each gesture, the placing
of food upon her plate and upon his own, then
a thought for each morsel that he lifted—a
thought even to taste it.  If he did not keep
up the thinking, movement stopped
altogether.  His eyes were called to her face.
The gray widened there, her eyes very large.

He heard Bamban bring in the camels to
the court at last.  The voice of the driver
with him was like a voice from the pit.  Anna
Erivan cleared her throat:

"Are you going at once?"

"Yes."

"But my brother....  You see, I did not
call him because every moment of sleep helps
him—like this.  I shall get him—"

Her dismay was rending to him.

"Don't trouble.  What I had to say isn't
vital.  It will hold until I come back from
Wampli if—"

Her throat was like a flower.  This that
she wore at the throat was black.  He could
see her hand clearly and her throat.  Above
was enveloped in the pervading grayness, all
but the eyes.  Always as the face cleared, the
low voice of Bamban, or the voice of that
camel-driver from the pit, blurred it.  Again
Romney began to think of the food, morsel
by morsel.  One spoonful remained on his
plate.  It seemed as if he could never come to
the end.  And now he saw the tea.  He drank
it eagerly.  That seemed to help her, too, as
if something of life had come into the
room—something human and grippable.  She took
his cup and thankfully refilled it.  He drank
this more slowly, because it had not cooled.

In the open door was sunlight.  It was not
like the sun of yesterday, yet it was sunshine.
This brought him a swift picture of the day's
journey, a long and full day's passage, then
nightfall.  Every league, every mile, every
camel-pace would take him farther away
from this room....  He heard her voice.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said your face looked gray," she answered.

The horror of the journey held his mind
again, twelve hours in swift passage, and two
more like it to Wampli—every camel-pace
away from this room.

She cleared her voice.  He turned to her.

"Your camels should have rested."

"They are good," he said.

And now he was debating if there remained
strength enough for him to rise and depart.
All he could say was good-bye and the lie
about Wampli, that he would come again.
He was not sure of his limbs.  He was very
tired and her hands were so near—just across
the little board.  His eyes lifted from them
to her throat, and he felt the burn of her eyes,
without really looking higher.  Back to her
hands again.  They were never still—lovely
quick hands, waiting now to fill his cup.

A queer thought came to him—that he
should some time bring her a yellow rose,
and she would hold it in the arch of her hand,
her thumb beneath....  He arose.  He
could stand.  He turned from her to locate
the door, so that he would make no mistake
after he spoke.  He did not know what he
said—some huddled, unintelligible phrase.
All that he knew well was that he took her
hand, that he had to leave it almost instantly
or fail, since a mist came over him—even over
the single madness that he held to.  It was
madness to leave her, yet it was the one strong
prevailing thing.

His feet stumbled on the way to the door.
In the bright light of the court, his camel was
already kneeling.  Bamban stood there ready
to take his ankle.  He reached the seat.  The
camel arose....  Voices of the pit in his
ears, and now he saw her there below.  She
had come forth into the light.  Her face was
clear.  He saw her hand below on the leather
near his foot, her lips forming to speak.  He
bent to them.

"Why don't you *tell* me?" she said softly.

Romney brushed his hand across his eyes
and bent again.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Why don't you tell me?" she repeated.

Romney glanced about till he found Bamban.

"Tell the driver to bring this camel down,"
he said.

The beast knelt obediently.

Romney stood before her in the court.  He
brushed his hand across his eyes again, then
turned to Bamban:

"Tell the drivers to put the beasts away.
It's a long journey and they had better rest for
to-day."

"What have I done?" she asked.  "I would
not delay you.  Oh, no, I would not hold any
one from his journey—"

"Don't make it harder," he said abruptly.
"Let us go in."

"But—nothing but misery comes to a
woman for holding a man from his journey."

"How do you know that?" he asked hoarsely.


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The second camel sprawled out of
the court.  He looked elongated like a dog
that stretches as he walks.  The man and the
woman went in and took their former places
at the table.  It did not occur to them to move
the chairs.

"I had been thinking only of myself," he
said at last.

She smiled faintly, as if she had met that
from men for ages and ages.  Then the gray
cold came again to her face.

"It's a fact," he repeated, "I was thinking
only of myself—I didn't know I was like that."

"It has always been man's way to forget
woman's part in a crisis—and woman's to turn
to man.  You don't know me at all."

"But I do know you," he said.  "You must
have seen that.  In fact, never before did I
know so much from a first meeting—"

"But man always believes that a woman is
at war with his work.  I have always said that
I should not care to be the rival of a man's work."

"And yet, you said—'Why don't you tell
me?' ... Anna Erivan, I shall always hear
that question.  I am going to tell you."

She did not help him to begin.  There was
a kind of core of silence from the forward
room, which was as distracting as the sound
of breathing had been.  He had to organise
himself repeatedly.

"... I was sent out here because I had *fancy*."

He laughed a little harshly.  "Because you
have that you will understand.  I have been
forwarded from Peking somewhat like a
valuable package.  My next point is Wampli, as
you know.  I had looked forward to the real
desert from this point.  It would have been
desert right enough had I gone on this morning."

Her eyes gleamed at him.

"I can't tell you all—not even all I know—I
pick up my orders on the way; but this
much I can tell you, and it mainly became
known to me from papers read only last night,
for they were not to be opened until I reached
Nadiram—"

He told her hastily, something of the
world-crisis, of the parties of China, of the
Japanese danger, and of the big dream of the
truly great men of the Empire, and something
of his own relation with Nifton Bend,
Minglapo and Ti Kung.

"This new party in China is not great
enough to have a large following," he said,
"and yet, though there are some things about
it that trouble, possibly because I am a bit of
an Occidental still, it seems to me that the
power and the vision of the men I have met
in it must become a terrific constructive force
in the future of Asia and the world.  You see
Japan threatens to become a Japanese Asia, if
it is not met with vision and force.  The two
older Chinese parties have neither.  At the
heart of any Empire is its religion, and it
happens that the centre of the religion of the
Chinese Empire is yonder in this desert—the
Inner Temple, even the great Lohan himself—"

"You are sent to that Inner Temple?" she
asked breathlessly.

"Yes."

"To bring forth a sign for the people of
Young China?"

"Come to think of it—it is something like that."

"And you let me delay you this morning?"

"I had not thought of it as a bringing forth
a sign," he mused, watching her, "but that is
really what it amounts to.  If the new social
order in China is recognised by the Inner
Temple; if its dream of progress and power
is found to be a true dream by the Holy Men
of the Inner Temple—don't you see, the support
of all the people touched by this religion
will be turned from the old to the new?"

"They chose a white man, an American,
for this mission—and I am delaying him?"

Still Romney evaded the issue.

"I always thought it queer that they chose
me," he said.  "These Holy Men are free
from racial prejudice.  They are said to be
super-national.  Our leaders in Peking felt
that if they sent a Chinese, the Holy Men
might see in him one nation's ambition, but if
they chose an Occidental who was called to
the struggle of New China because he had
found it the purest dream for all Asia; one
also who could place before the wise men the
position relatively of other nations—"

"What an equipment!"

"I'm afraid it sounds more than it is," he
said hastily.  "You see they did not have
many foreign adherents to choose from.
Nifton Bend would have accomplished the
mission far more wisely than I, but he is the
Centre—needed every hour in Peking."

"I'm afraid you can't make me see anything
insignificant now—about your being here.
They thought you pure enough—real priest
enough—to enter the Inner Temple and
bring forth a sign to the many.  You know
the many always demand a sign.  They did in
Judea—"

He did not look above her hands.  They
were tightly shut.

"I asked you last night—if you ever had
any sense about the Gobi, other than that of
its terror and menace," he said, in an effort
that he knew was vain to lift her from her
part in keeping him from the journey.  "The
Chinese believe that the heart of the desert
is a spirit-haunted land; that the Inner
Pavilion holds all the ancient writings, all the
seeds of wisdom and magic out of the past,
the essence of truths gathered by forgotten
civilisations.

"In fact, the myths and legends which
surround this country make the stories of Peru
and Central America seem paltry and
commonplace.  There are forests, it is said, in
which no white man has penetrated, buried
gold and statuary and all that—"  Romney
smiled.

"You do not need to be afraid of me," she
whispered.  "I love to believe such things."

"Ten years away from America—perhaps I
am too ready to believe," Romney finished.
"Anyway the Chinese leaders say there are
wise men, whom the world never hears of as
persons, doing the great constructive tasks
behind the scenes, and that the central
pavilion of these wise men is in the heart of
the Gobi, and not in Thibet....  But all
these things belonged to yesterday.  I know
now that there are meeting-places in a man's
life, and that in the hours of meeting he
cannot reckon even with missions of mercy....
This—last night—here in the court—has
taken me almost like death takes a man—as
the cups have taken him in there—something
resistless—"

He saw one hand leave the table between
them.  It was held out to him, palm outward,
as if trying to stop his words.  Her eyes were
wide with terror....  Now a change came.
She turned to the forward room, listening.

"Hush," she whispered.

Strangeness was all about them.  Romney
came down from his story, with the sense that
he had not done well.  The silence crowded
in again, as if from the desert.

"Perhaps he is awake," she said quietly.
"Go on."

"That's all.  I learned a great deal last night."

"You say that a day or two would make no
difference, and yet this morning you were up
very early.  You ordered the camels—"

"I thought only of myself."

"You thought it would be easier to go
to-day—though the camels needed rest—"

"I could not hold it in the night that the
meeting meant anything to you."

"You were out on the quest and I appeared
in the way—" she smiled and added, "a
dragon to be overcome."

"I have not imagination enough to make you that—"

"A dragon to test the courage of the
quester.  A man must never forget his
mission—must remember first of all the little
ones, the many little ones, who require a sign."

In spite of the tearing-down, it was a
pinnacle moment to Romney.  She was lovely as
he had not seen her before.  Her swift and
absolute understanding liberated his whole
nature upon her.  Had she chosen to
captivate him, there could not have been
conceived a more perfect design.  Had she met
him level-eyed, weakness for weakness, it
would have sounded, temporarily, at least,
the knell for his infatuation.  Had she clung
or pressed him to linger, it would have
become a mere episode.

He arose, his lips smiling, his eyes
burning with tributes to her—moved about the
table, placed his hands upon her shoulders
and bent his lips to hers.

"Won't you come with me?" he whispered....
"We will go to the Temple together.
We will bring forth a sign to the people."

... Her fingers closed gently upon his
wrists, lifting his hands outward from her
shoulders and letting them fall.  Then she
arose and looked at him tenderly.

"You are dear—I think you could not be
so dear if you were not bewildered.  These
meetings are wonderful, but don't you see—that
you are dreaming?  Don't you see that a
man must travel alone on his quest?  It's like
the old stories—he must slay the dragon that
stands between.  A man does not take a
woman to the Inner Temple.  A man who
passes the threshold of the Inner Temple
cannot have a woman in his eyes or heart.
They would say, 'Why, this is a mere mortal.
He cannot enter here.'  Do you not see, do
you not see?"

"Anna Erivan."

She smiled and put down his hands that
lifted to her.

"You are the quest," he said intensely.  "It
was our meeting.  The Gobi—why, it was but
a means of bringing me to you.  Last night,
as I stood in the court, I knew that.  Today,
when in a sentence you made all the meanings
of my life clear, taking up my story and
completing it briefly—today, just now, I saw that
I could never look beyond you—"

"Don't say that.  I should not have let you
say that.  We are asked to renounce nothing
that lasts.  You must not fail through me.
This is not a good beginning for our story.
You know this.  You are only bewildered."

Romney began to understand her strength.
She had risen above him.  Her vision was
clearer.  In getting down from the camel he
had become altogether human.  The fury of
his ardour was for the woman.  Because he
was moved with desire, he was not at his best.
He took her in his arms, the tempest of
emotions blinding him....

Women with a touch of the savage left in
them, may be captured with strength, but he
had given her a dream of greater days than these.

She did not resist, but the wonder of their
first kiss did not come again.  Instead,
through his mind, crippling his arms, flashed
the picture of his own red passion—and that
in his arms chilled him to the heart.  Utterly
passive, she had allowed him to wound
himself in a way that would never be forgotten.

He felt suddenly small and altered before
her.  He drew back, lowering his eyes from
her face, his hand reaching behind him until
he found the arm of his chair.  He sat down,
covering his face.

Presently she came and touched his hands,
whispering:

"Do not grieve—I was thinking of something.
Do not grieve.  I do not care for you
less.  A woman loves the boy—the boy-tumult
in a man—"

"You were in my arms—and yet I was
alone," he said strangely.  "I never knew such
a sudden loneliness—all that I had for
you—flung back to me—"

"I would not have hurt you so.  But suddenly
as you held me—I thought of the many
little ones waiting for a sign—"

He was still shocked at the lifelessness
which had confronted his passion.  The
shame of his untimely bestowal did not pass.

His life had seemed full of perfect gifts for
her, and a sudden desire had blinded him,
bringing down upon his head a rebuke more
magic than any blow.

"You have made me afraid," he said dully.
"It could never happen again.  I could not
go to you so again—unless you held out your arms—"

"After you have entered the Inner
Temple," she whispered.

The seven words numbered and registered
themselves in his consciousness.  He looked
up at her and there was something endless in
her beauty.

"You must not be hurt," she said tenderly.
"It is the man in you that is wounded.  You
must know that you cannot really be wounded,
unless I am wounded, too—and oh, a woman
is not wounded by loving, by passion—that's
why we are women.  It was only the others
I thought of.  Believe me, all is well—"

"Would you have me go to-day—now—into
the desert?" he asked.

"Wait," she answered.  "I do not hear him.
It would seem that he would be about—now
that we hear him no longer—"


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   6

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Romney arose, but did not follow her to the
door.  He watched her as she opened it, a
breeze seeming to take it from her hands.  He
saw her hands lift quietly, tighten and press
across her lips.  She seemed to become less
in height.  She ran to him, and for the
briefest instant touched her forehead to his
breast—the queerest murmuring little cry
from her throat.  Something of the picture in
the other room had come to him from her
mind.  They did not speak.  He did not
draw her closely, merely sustained her.

Romney saw it on the floor, the face
flattened against the stone, the arms out.  His
hand went out to her and pressed upon her
breast to keep the shock from rending her—as
if she were carrying a child.  The look of
her face frightened him so that he drew her
away; yet all the time he had the sense that
the tragedy had somehow set them free.

"You will let me take care of him—come,"
he whispered.

She followed, obediently.  He did not
know the way to her room, but took her to
the one he had used, pressed her to lie down.
She covered her face in the pillow where he
had lain.  Romney feared she was not breathing
and turned her face outward.  There he
knelt a moment.  Her eyes were open, but did
not seem to hold him.  Moments passed and
then he heard her words:

"You said you would go to him."

"Yes, but I thought you needed me more,
just now," he said.

"You said you would go to him."

Romney left her.

The Russian's body was heavy and still hot.
The silence of it was almost unbelievable,
with the great damp chest still radiating heat.
The weight was dead, but disgustingly soft.
The American had a fear, with the feet
dragging across the floor, that the body might
break and cover the stones.  He laid it
upon the couch and listened again for the
heart.  It was still, as if pinned to the walls
of the chest.  Romney wiped his brow and
found that there was a door into the street.
He went forth quickly.

Bamban, so constantly in evidence, was
queerly enough not so easy to find this time.
He had to go to the Rest House and ask questions.
At last he could not go further, but bid
them to send his servant to him and hastened
back.  The face of Anna Erivan, as she had
looked into the open door, was still held in his
mind.  Bamban was running behind him
before he reached the Consulate.  He understood
quickly and took charge of affairs in the
Forward Room....

She had not stirred.  Romney shut the door
and knelt beside her again.  It was a moment
before she realised his nearness.

"Did you go to him?" she asked.

"Yes."

"He is dead?"

"Yes.  Everything is being done for him....
Anna Erivan, if I could only do
everything for you!  I suffer for your suffering.  I
feel it all—"

Her hand came out and touched his cheek,
her eyelids closed.

"Dearest stranger," she whispered....
A moment later she repeated with a smile,
"Stranger."

Her face changed.  The unspeakable thing
to Romney was that part of the smile
lingered, though her eyes opened and white rays
of purest horror shone in them.  Her lips
parted, the smile holding to them, as something
holds to life, her fingers plucking his cheek.

"To-night—don't go away from me to-night!
I will hear them.  They always come
when any one dies.  I knew they would come
for him, that he would die or go mad, and
they would come.

"They are out in the rocks and sand, they
come closer where death is....  And he was
good as a boy; a good brother.  I came to him
and he was changed.  I knew he would never
go back.  When I heard them the first time
and saw how they affected him, I knew they
would come for him."

Romney crushed her leaping fingers in his hand.

"Listen," he said sharply.  "Tell me what
you mean."

"Oh, have you not heard them laughing
and sobbing at night?"

"The hyenas—"

She shuddered full length, hiding her face
in his arms.

"I could not have spoken the word," she cried.

He repeated, "I shall be with you, I shall
be with you—"

"They always come to the lonely," she
whispered.  "They would have come last
night, only you were here.  No one will ever
know what they bring to me.  They are the
spirits of the waste-places.  They are the
darkness that moves around the night-fires.
Where there is death, they come in.  They
cry so—where there is death.  They know.
They are living death.  They are the spirit of
the Gobi—"

"No," he said.  "They are just fright-things,
the saddest of all beasts, mere cowardly
night-roamers.  It is only human nerves that
make them terrible.  You and I, alone and
well, could laugh at them, as at coyotes and
jackals."

"You are but saying that.  Have you seen
them when the moon-light is upon the sand
and rocks?  They have passed death.  They
are going the other way.  The yellow men
understand, but they bring madness to those
who are white.  Have you heard that it is not
food they want from a corpse?  Have you
heard that?"

"It is food that they want," he said softly.
"I have seen that.  Please don't think of them.
I will be here—"

"Always when he drank, I seemed to see
them around him.  When he shut himself in
there, I could hear them.  Do you know what
frightens me?  It is not the poor body that
they will find in the desert.  They always
find the bodies.  One cannot dig so deep, or
cover so heavily with stones, but they will
find them.  It is not that.  I think the drink
has brought something like them to his soul!
Perhaps he is meeting them now.  He feared
them so, when he drank."

"Listen," said Romney.  "He has done no
great harm.  The desert is too much for many
men.  He did the best he could.  The desert
was too hard for him.  I think he has taken
up already the old good that you knew, the
good that you came out here to find in him."

"Oh, do you think that?" she whispered.
"Or do you just say that for me?  Tell me, if
you really think that."


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Anna Erivan had arisen.  She moved about
her work in the house, accepting the fresh
ordeal, as one accustomed to darkness and
difficulty.  Romney, in the afternoon, saw the
sudden triumph of her will after hours of
utter prostration, an almost irresistible force
of spirit.  Bamban had done all that mortal
yellow man could do.  The day had been
very still and hot; the town had shown an
unreasoning curiosity.  In the lull of evening
they were very weary.  The tea-table was
drawn near the open door by the court.
Shadows moved softly between them.

"To-morrow you must go on your journey,"
she said.

Coldness and premonition came to the
American.  He had met her will before.
This from her was a sort of "I have spoken."  He
seemed to recognise it in the silence as an
old familiar.  She had strength, an integrity
terribly-earned and delivered in fulness and
order.  It was something hers so absolutely
that even her lover could not impinge upon
it.  Perhaps it was the sacred thing about her;
the essence of a character, rapidly unfolding
to him in the twenty-four hours; a character
that would meet all crises and that had
formed itself by ancient acquaintance with
grief....  In the stress of the moment,
Romney tried to evade the issue, but realised
the futility of that.  His own volition was
upstanding.  Very rarely in his life had he
felt its power as now.  It was without
variableness, too.  There was no shadow of
turning in his heart.

"I cannot leave you," he said.

She was very quiet.  "I was weak this
morning.  It was so wonderful for you to come.
When I think of your coming just at this time,
I am in awe before life—the deepness and
strangeness of life.  We knew each other; we
did not need words.  I haunted and tempted
you this morning.  You were strong; you
would have ridden away.  I caught at your
foot quite as a woman does.  I asked you
twice a question designed to make you linger.
And I knew the answer before the question.
I knew that you could not tell me, without
showing how hard it was for you to go; that
you had not trusted yourself to tell me.  I
knew it all.  I loved your courage.  I should
have let you go.  That was my failing—"

"You would have been here alone to-day,
had I gone.  You would have opened the door
to the forward room and there would have
been none to stand behind you—"

"Yes," she whispered.

They were silent.  She looked out
apprehensively at the creeping darkness.

"But that is past.  Perhaps I was meant to
have help this one day, but I cannot take more
time from your journey.  I think I must have
kept some one from his quest—some time.
I must have learned some terrible lesson that
way, for it is so close to me!  The price one
pays, for keeping a man from his quest!  It
is untellable.  You must not think of me.
You must not think of staying with me now.
When you have finished your mission, then
you may come—quickly."

"I cannot leave you," he said.

"Don't say that again.  That hurts me.  I
can never have a sense of innocence for my
weakness this morning if you hold to that.
Won't you give it back to me?"

"Do you think I would leave you here
alone—a white woman in this place, to
arrange your own journey of so many days
to Europe, to pass the nights alone here, till
you are ready, to start all alone?"

"I should not leave here for a journey to
Europe till I am relieved.  There should be
a Russian to attend to all the papers here.
The little but imperative work day by day—I
have done most of that heretofore.  There is
no one but me to do it now....  I shall be
safe enough here.  At most, my part is a little
thing.  My fears at night-fall—they are not
to be considered now.  You are the one to be
considered.  Do you think I have failed to
comprehend the significance of your mission?"

He followed her eyes into the darkness,
thick upon the little court.

"It is not only that," he said.  "You have
comprehended everything.  You always know
before I finish a sentence.  I could be with
you years and never explain a meaning....
My mission does not call me to-night.  If I
were to go, I should never be able to see past
your face, your frightened face, the face of
you here alone at night-fall.  I think I was
guided here to be with you through these
hard days.  Many have said, 'Put love away,'
but the greatest have said, 'Give all to love!'"

The night seemed heavy upon her; her
words came from the heart of it:

"Can it be that you would lower the
meaning of the great ones who say, 'Give all to
love'?  I'm afraid they do not mean the love
of man and woman.  Give all to the love *of
the world*.  Give all to the love of the weak
and the little ones—that is the meaning of the
great ones.  No one knows that better than
you.  This is the place of meetings and
partings.  You know that.  Was there ever a
lingering together of lovers here that was
proof against *ennui*, against satiety?  It is only
the weak who linger, who make their beds at
the meeting-places.  The great ones go on."

She had arisen.  She was farther from him,
but higher to his eyes....  And just then
there came from out the darkness of the desert,
a horrid puking laugh—like a jangling of
stones in a thick glass bottle.  It had nothing
to do with distance.  From near or far it
reached them, and seemed to linger in the
room like an evil odour.

It broke the woman for the moment.  She
caught him in her arms and cried out words
that were like a command:

"... You cannot, you must not leave me now!"


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   8

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It was not capitulation.  The clinging of
Anna Erivan was but momentary.  Though
they had already talked together almost from
the first as if the relation of man and woman
were old and established, nothing of the
exterior obstacles had been removed.  In each
of the three days that followed, Anna Erivan
asked him in a different way to continue his
journey.  He refused.  They spoke little
otherwise.  There were occasional passages
of kindness between them, when they seemed
to touch the great yearning of heart for heart,
but their emotions were not brought to words.
Toward evening they would draw together a
little, but separate early to their rooms.  The
second night, soon after he had entered his
room, the laugh of the hyenas came again
from the desert.  He went to the living-room,
and stood near her door.

He saw the knob turn from within—knew
she was pressing against it—but the laugh was
not repeated.  She mastered her terror....
These nights were hard for him, for he slept
little; and the days were hard.  Though he
was near her, the woman was very far away.
He had the sense of carrying a broken
courage; that he was a weakling remaining in
camp with the women, while the warriors
went forth for the hunt.  He missed nothing
of the pull of the task, but the holding of the
woman was greater.

His will did not change.  Nadiram was
all that was sinister and detestable.  He could
not leave her there alone.  Sometimes he
yearned for the mission, the perils of it, subtle
and open, the worst that it could bring in
exposure and famine and fear.  Her presence
haunted him with every beauty and mystery.
He found himself dwelling for many rapt
moments on the scenes of their meeting—the
first night and morning.  Sometimes he felt
that this was only a door that was shut
between them; that all the love was there,
waiting for one will to break.  Sometimes
again he was in the utter darkness that came
from the conviction that he had forfeited
everything by remaining.  In the main, she
gave no sign.

It was a very still place in his life.  He had
no thought of food, though to pass the time he
explored the town to purchase little delicacies
for the table and comforts for the house.  He
did not go near the Rest House.  In the sight
of the resting camels was something both
indolent and insolent.  Bamban was ever
within call—apparently true and uncritical,
though sometimes Romney fancied a
reproach.  The forward room where the
brother had lain, was opened and clear.  The
few callers were received there, the woman
attending.

Romney ate little or nothing.  He thought
he would see more clearly, and all his
inclinations were against food.  On the third day,
though she did not speak, he saw that he was
making her suffer.  The fear came that she
might think he was trying for her pity—that
nauseated him.  He fell to—and perceived
her relief.

"I thought it was a good chance.  A man
ought to fast occasionally," he explained.
"Especially a man who does not work, should
not eat."

"A woman sees something personal in a
man's fasting," she said with a trace of a smile.

They laboured again that third night at the
old subject—but all had been covered.  Their
eyes were weary.  She would lift her eyes to
him, saying that his mission awaited; and he
could only reply that he would not leave her....
The fourth night something hard and
resolute was in her eyes.  He knew that she
would speak when the tea was poured.  He
waited, more afraid than he had ever been before:

"Do you know," she said steadily, "it is not
just the thing for you to be here with me.  I
am alone.  One does not live alone in a house
with a man—"

Her finger was tapping the table.  She saw
that he regarded it and dropped her hand to
her knee.  It was the hardest moment since
their first trial together.  It did not seem to
belong to her.  They had needed no laws.
They were human adults.  They were a universe
apart in the same house.  It hurt him to
the core—such words from her.  Many times
of late the sense of his own smallness had
come, but he had never fallen so little that
he could not ignore a sham of this kind.

"I did not think of that.  We seemed to be
under a law of our own—"

"But the others," she said steadily.

"You mean Nadiram?"

"Yes—you see I have the office—"

"Ah, yes—the office....  I shall go to
the Rest House, of course.  Shall I go
to-night—or to-morrow morning?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Very well."

She was whiter than ever.  There was no
word at all at breakfast.  Bamban came for
the bags.

"Please," he said, as he was leaving, "don't
fail to use me.  We are not enemies.  Do you
know—it is hard for us to remember—that
all there is between us is a difference of
opinion—each for the other's good.  We cannot
go far astray that way.  Please use me.  The
days are so long."

Her lips moved.  They moved again into a
smile.  It was one of the bravest smiles.

"Of course, I shall try to think of something—"

That night he came to her court a little
before sundown.  There was a stone there
by the west wall, and he sat and smoked until
long after full darkness.  As a rule the hyenas
were heard early in the evening, when they
were near Nadiram.  She came to the door
several times before dusk, smiled and waved
to him.  When he turned away in the full
night, it was as if there was some part of him
that refused to leave; and when he pushed on,
straightening his shoulders, this part tore
loose from him with numbing pain.

Bamban sat on the floor across the room at
the Rest House.  Bamban's eyes gleamed.

"Since there are no orders here, and to-morrow
is the fifth day, it might be well for
the messenger and his servant to push on to
Wampli tomorrow."

"It might be well," said Romney, "But I
don't think I shall be able to clear to-morrow.
Your country and your countrymen have
taught me how to wait, Bamban....  I
recall Tushi-kow when I was very impatient
and the delightful Fai Ming would not let us
even talk about the matter of our journey for
nearly as many days as we have waited here
in Nadiram—"

"Might it not be well for the messenger's
servant to travel on to Wampli alone if the
interval of waiting is still to be extended, in
order to ascertain the orders there, or to be
there if orders come?"

"Would orders be delivered to the messenger's
servant?" Romney asked.

"In case the messenger is unavoidably detained."

There was no longer any doubt in the
American's mind that Minglapo had given
him more than a servant.

"I may think more about that," said he.

But he didn't.  He thought about the
woman.  His faith was shaken now, and his
pride was harshly wounded.  The devotion
he had come to know was a madness and a
martyrdom.  Compared to it, all the things
that men do with their boundaries, ambitions,
conspiracies, and sundry national businesses,
belonged to a lower dimension of life.  He
saw all his activities of the past as little and
lesser movements.  He could not have lived
through them had he known how futile they
were, how empty his heart was.

The great burden now was this meeting of
the old world in her heart—her sending him
away because they were man and woman
alone.  Man and woman, as he had thought,
in the strangest and deepest moments of their
lives.  He loved the quest spirit in her eyes;
he loved her capacity to sacrifice; he loved
her mighty will for him to go and the cry of
her most human heart for him to stay in the
fright from the hyenas.  He loved her now
with this taint of the old upon her—that was
the torturing truth.  But he was disappointed.

He had been so far from the truck of convention,
that he had neglected to speak of this
point first.  Had he spoken of it, he would
have expected her to deny any cause for his
changing from the Consulate to the Rest
House in so far as a convention was concerned....
He felt himself in the old madness.
These were the days of Hankow again, with
all the added forces and energies of his life
making hell for him.  He was like an engine
thrashing itself to pieces with its own power,
because she had cut herself from him.  He
saw ahead a redder rending than he had
known before, and which had brought him
close to death.

He felt at rage with the world; capable
even of telling Anna Erivan how vindictive
was this hurt for a man who would die for
her.  But Romney unfrequently spoke in his
rage.  It came very seldom, and he had made
it a law to laugh and speak of other things
until it passed.

"Bamban," he said, "you Chinese men do
not consider a woman."

"Ah, yes," said the wise little man.

"You do not consider the interests of the
heart of man or woman comparable to the
interests of one's country or business—"

"We keep them apart."

"That does not answer.  If one's country or
business demand the man, the woman must wait—"

"Yes."

Romney laughed.  Bamban waited for him to speak.

"You keep them behind lattices.  You do
not give them the breath of life.  You feel
that they belong to a man's weakness rather
than his strength.  You do not see that the
girl is equal to the boy; that the two are one
so far as the future is concerned.  You think
that all women are wanton, unless they are
repressed."

"We do not consider that women belong to
the larger affairs of man's life," said Bamban.

Romney laughed again.

"That's why as a nation, the Chinese
Empire is ninety-seven hundredths putrified,"
said he.

There was not a look in Bamban's clearly-formed
face to denote if the depth and delicacy
of his regard were shaken.

"You are the messenger of our country," he said.

"Hardly that—a messenger of the remaining
three per cent," said Romney.


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   9

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The next morning he went to the court of
the Consulate, without anything in his hands.
The night had been so rough for him that he
was uncentred enough to seek the woman
for a moment—just to look upon her, to ease
off the mighty ache across his chest.  He had
become very humble from wanting her.  Last
night he had been touched with the coldness
and hatred that seemed close to destroying the
attraction between them, but the emptiness
and irony of all life without her, had come in
the hours following the talk with Bamban.
The thing that he had called a taint diminished
to one of the minor mysteries of womanhood,
and Anna Erivan, brave enough not to
quibble about the wonder of their meeting,
and of spiritual force to forget her own
longing and passion, stood forth with augmented
light and lure.

As he waited a mere moment within the
gate of the court, it seemed that he would die
if she did not come quickly.  The pain that
he had learned to identify with her in
moments of their separation in presence or
thought—a pain that began in the pit of his
left arm and stretched to the centre of his
breast—awakened to burning and agony in
that moment before he heard her step.  Words
were on his lips to say that he loved her, that
nothing mattered but that to him, that he
wanted to die if he could not have her, that
her own terms were his, that he could not take
his thoughts much less his presence again
from the place where she abode—a rush of
confession and revelation altogether unlike
the man that others knew or that he had
hitherto known himself.

She had been in the Forward Room.  He
heard the door and her step in the living-room;
then at last she came to the door of the
court, and all that he could say was:

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

She looked so white that he was awed by
the frailness of her life.  He could not speak,
and the sense of hanging there, impotent,
presently prevailed upon his pride, and he went
away.  During the day Bamban twice mentioned
the town of Wampli, and each time
Romney turned away and smiled.

Always when driven to the last ditch, he
smiled.  One can best survey the humour of
the world from the last ditch.  And this day
moved on, hour by hour, the slowest caravan
in the reach of mortal conception—hours to
the dusk, deadly, crawling.  And when the
dusk came on, he went to the court of the
Consulate and sat upon a stone by the west wall,
and smoked there, waiting for the full night.
Once the woman came to the doorway and
waved at him.  And that night, leaving, he
was torn again.  As he stretched out on his
blankets, Bamban brought a candle.

... Romney suddenly reached for the
yellow hand.  At the touch of it, a sob came
from him, and for an hour he apologised.
Still an hour later he awoke, sweating, with
a start, dreaming that the laugh had come.
Bamban was still sitting by the candle.

"Was that the hyenas?" the American asked.

"No, there has been silence.  You were dreaming."

"Ah, yes."

Bamban watched him for a time.

"You do not eat.  You do not sleep.  You
are losing strength for your journey.  Will
not the woman wait for you?"

"I feel as if I needed some new power,"
Romney said strangely.  "I feel the need of
a master."

"When that comes to a man, the master is
near," Bamban said quietly.

"What do you mean?  You see I have
stopped talking to you as a servant."

"I am your servant," Bamban responded simply.

"But what did you mean about the master
being near?"

"It is a saying among the Buddhists that the
master is ready when the man is; but I wonder
if he will find his disciple with great joy,
when that disciple delays his mission for a
woman.  Remember I am talking still as your
servant."

"I appreciate you, Bamban."

"You are the chosen one.  I wait for you
to remember your mission, and to have done
with the lesser drawing principle—"

Romney laughed.  "It's a clash of the East
and West," he said.

"But they thought you were of the East.
They are waiting now in Peking—in the
conviction of your loyalty—"

Romney turned away as if to sleep again.

The next morning when he shaved he cut
himself twice, for his face was all unfamiliar
with bone; and that evening he sat on the
stone by the west wall of the court.  There
was no sound.  The full moonless night came
over him.  The woman waved in the doorway.
He arose at last and went out of the
court, for there was no sound from the desert.

It was exactly so the next night, and during
neither of these two days did he see Anna
Erivan.  On the third night he arose and left
the court as usual, but there was a light
speeding foot behind him, and her hand touched
his sleeve.

"Oh, come back—send Bamban for your
bags and come back!"

"My God—why?" he stammered.

"Do as I say—"

"But what have I done?"

"Oh, I cannot let you live another hour
with the thought that I was afraid of what
they would think—of your being here.  That
is a lie.  You must have known I care nothing
for that.  I thought that sending you away
would make you start on your mission—I
used that.  It has almost killed us....
Come in....  Since you will not go—come
in to the house with me."

She brought the candle to his face.  "Oh,
you poor—poor—"

She seemed not to know whether to say *boy*
or *man*—"how you have suffered—and for
me! ... I do not understand it.  It seemed
weak for you to stay.  It has been my greatest
anguish that I caused you to stay....  And
yet, there is something deathless about
it—something I do not understand."


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There was something about it also that
Romney did not understand.  Nor could he
speak.  He watched her in the light of the
single candle.  Again and again, the face of
flesh that he knew, faded into a kind of dream
before the intentness of his regard.  It was
she, and yet another face might have been
painted upon it without changing the real
identity.  And all about it was a vapoury
white, different from lamp-light.  It was like
a visitation from the other side.  Out of it her
words came to him, but he did not answer at
once.  The fact is Romney had banked his
fires of late in such a heavy and draughtless
fashion, that they were in danger of going out.

And queerly enough now, certain hardly
remembered passages of strangers through
Nadiram recurred to mind: wild nomads
from the Khingan Mountains driving their
scanty flocks to the sparse pastures of the
south; Tartars, the true descendants of
Genghis Kahn; Buddhist holy men gaunt from
their days of fasting in the solitudes; once a
skeleton troop of Cossacks that stole in on a
mysterious errand and vanished; and the
merchants, the everlasting wigglebrows—all
strangers on the long road through the days
of wasting heat and nights of drawing cold.

... She came to him because he did not
speak.  There seemed a movement around the
room above her head; and the face in the
centre of the faint white ray was at his knees.
He felt vaguely that if he spoke, the face
and all would vanish.

"There is something greater than I knew
about your waiting," she whispered.  "It
belongs to the future ... as all that I
thought I knew belongs to the past....  I
see it differently ... not that you should
stay for my sake, but that you felt a
woman's need and remained....  Won't you speak?"

His head swung to and fro like one to
whom breathing is a burden.  His hand had
gone out to her.  He could not be sure, but
he felt that his hand touched her throat, that
her chin nestled in his palm for a second....
There was a step in the court—Bamban
coming with the bags.  Oddly enough,
this aroused Romney from the lulling
presence of the woman.  Alone in the room with
her now he had found it irresistible.  It was
as if he had come home after incredible
travail....  The fact is he had treated
himself rather badly; there had been many hours
of self-hatred.  He had felt the whole outer
world, (which he cared for second to
her)—arousing itself in scorn for him....  He
would have been unconscious before her, had
not his servant come.

"Bamban," he muttered, "help me into that
room.  I am to stay—to stay here, I believe."

At the door of the room, Romney's back
turned, Bamban stood before the woman a
moment.  She bowed her head until the
servant passed on.  Then she moved swiftly
to the fire, stirred it into flame and put on the
kettle....  Through the open door in
the candle-light, she saw the man struggle
with his shoe.  He seemed unable to see, and
his body swayed weakly as his head bent
forward.  He gave it up for a moment and sank
back on the cot.  She went in to help him.  He
tried to push her away, but she resisted:

"Please, I must help you—"

A picture of her brother in the Forward
Room had come before him, hunched and
helpless, and he would not.

"Just sit down—if you will," he panted.
"Just a little while—so I can be sure.  I am
better—"

There was silence.

"... I was leaving the court," he said
in an expectant tone, as if ready to be
corrected.  "You came after me—"

"You came three nights to be near me at the
time of the hyenas—"

"Yes....  And this is the Consulate—the
room I first slept in, and you are here."

"Yes."

"And why did you ask me here? ... Or
did you tell me already? ... You see,
I wasn't quite all here for a minute."

"I asked you to come, because I was torn
with the faith and the will you have shown.
It seemed to me suddenly as great as the
quest—something modern, added to the old dream
of going forth—as if you knew that the quest
was *nearest*—"

"I didn't know anything like that.  I only
knew I loved you," he said rigidly.

"You felt a woman's need and remained,"
she said.  "Against her will, and all."

"It was not a woman's need," he muttered.
"Everything is out of me, but naked truth.
I loved you—that changed all.  I had work.
You made me forget it.  You held to the
dream.  My dream turned to you.  It is you
now....  I think I shall not pass this way
again.  If there is something more important
here below than this love—very well.  Let
them have it, who say so.  As for me, I love
you.  I think the great man who said, 'Give
all to love,' meant me."

"Wait—"

She went to the fire, her eyes gleaming.
The thing there was not finished.  She
brought water to him in a basin.

"No—let me," she said, as he would have
arisen.  "I want to....  It will make me
happier."

He sank back and closed his eyes.  The
figure of her brother fled from his mind, as
the cool cloth laved his forehead.  Bamban
had kept his clothing in order.  He had never
come to the court at evening other than as a
man who comes to see a maiden.  Her will
now was to serve him.  There was a magic in
the ministry that sent him to the borderlands
again....  Then she brought food, and
would not let him help himself.

"I shall be with you to-night....  When
you sleep I shall be here.  When you wake
you shall find me here....  You must
rest ... and every little while you must
have food.  You have not taken care of
yourself since you left me—"

The splendour had to do with the spontaneity
of it all.  Her every movement was an
improvisation.  He heard her words separately
and as a whole.  He weighed and looked
at them—as at coloured lights, studying the
background and distances between them, in
that strange altering of time that one who
touches the dream-border knows.  Then more
words came:

"I shall always serve you now.  My will is
not broken.  It is blent with yours.  I am
proud and glad—for yours was greater than
mine.  It should be so.  But I should have
seen it before—"

He was wondering what he would say; at
times afraid lest it break some words of hers;
at times unable to think of words.

"Don't try to speak," she whispered.

The old wonder of her understanding
recurred to him.  It would always be so....
Two or three times the thought came, almost
the words, to ask her not to lose her rest; that
he would do very well now—replenished as
he was, and absolutely comfortable.  She left
him presently to bring another sup of the hot
liquid hastily prepared; and then it was as if
he had spoken, though he could not
remember.  Her answer remained in mind:

"You would not deny me the joy of helping
you back to strength—you who have given me
so much—"

... Once he opened his eyes and knew
by the candle that he had slept.

"I think I must have been looking at you
and woke you up," she whispered.  "I won't
look at you that way again.  Wait—"

She brought something different, hot and
in a cup.

... Then long after he heard her say
"Yes?" questioningly, and opened his eyes.

Her head bent toward him.  "Were you
dreaming?" she asked....  "I answered
because you said, 'Anna Erivan, Anna Erivan.'"

Another candle was upon the table....

Again, much time elapsed, when he started
up hearing the hyenas, but her face was calm
and untroubled.

"I must have been dreaming," he said.

"Your dreams should be peaceful.  All is
well.  You must rest, rest."

His hand was taken.  After that he did not
sleep at once, though his eyes were closed.
He felt his strength coming back into his
veins, new life creeping through him, a
resuming of interests in living; all interests
centring in the woman and yet radiating far
from her, out into the world.  He thought of
the whole story since the night of their meeting.

It unfolded like a wonderful flower, his
mind at peace, his breathing steady....
And now he knew that the new life was
coming to him from her hand—rare essence of
vitality, something finer than he had known.
His mind was full of unfoldings.  There was
a vision of days ahead—desert mid-days,
desert evenings, with her beside him, the
superb magnetism of her hand and presence.
He would not take her strength as to-night;
he would be strength to her.  She said her
will had blent with his, and yet in the days to
come he would make her will his law....
The position of her hand did not change and
yet she was nearer.  The huge blanket that
had overhung from the cot to the floor was
lifted to cover her knees.  Then he thought
the candle expired, but it was only shielded
from his eyes.  The warmth of her was
healing and fragrant....  There was a touch
upon his cheek, and it was day.


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Romney washed and shaved, listening to
her step outside.  It gave him a joy that he
had never known before.  The morning sun
was bright and warm, and the wind that came
steadily through seemed less of the arid Gobi
than on other mornings, having for his replenished
heart the freshness of grass and fruitful
valleys....  Her step—the step of a man's
woman in the house.  He laughed at himself;
no one could understand but the man.  It
would sound banal if he tried to tell what
it meant to him—the step so light and swift
and for him.  Presently he made haste; was
quite concerned about moments that continued
to pass apart from her, so that his hand
trembled in the last small tasks.

The little table was spread in white; the
kettle steamed; the sunlight crossed the stone
flags almost to the fireplace.  She was standing
by the table, her shoulder bent a little to
the right, something shy in her smile.  He
moved closer and she turned—the way free
between them.  Romney's arm lifted but fell
again.  That other old moment bewildered
him—the moment he took her and it was not
right.  He had said that she must hold out
her arms.  It was from this mental turning
that the big thought came....

"You are better," she said.

"I shall be ready to travel to-morrow," he
answered.

She turned away and he was close to her
shoulder, but behind.

"I'm strong enough for anything—after last
night," he added.  "I suppose we must put
our house in order now."

She went to the fireplace and returned,
pouring the boiling water on the tea.  They
sat down together.

"No one goes to Wampli from here," she
said at last.

"It's the orders I received—three days into
the west—"

"But the desert tribes—"

"I have certain credentials and money to
pay their tariffs—"

"Life is terrible," she said strangely.
"Sometimes I am afraid of the intensity of
life.  I saw your face last night—white it
seemed in the dusk—and suddenly I found
myself running after you and all I had
thought before looked wrong.  I think we
were dying because we were apart in this
thing....  Isn't it strange?  We have
spoken none of the little things, that lead up
to these deeper revelations between man and
woman....  Running to you, I felt something
great and new in your holding for my
sake.  I could hardly breathe until I told you
that the sick and hated convention was a lie.
I think now a lie is always wrong.  Yesterday
I thought it a good and worthy thing if
it were powerful enough to help you on to
your journey."

He leaned forward listening.  She had so
many things to say, the order was slow in
coming to them.

"Now I see that a lie is always wrong.  The
truth would have sent you forth before this.
It is the truth that makes you ready now.  And
yet last night I did not change in order to
make you go."

Romney spoke slowly:

"It did not come to me until just now.
You have said it.  We are given just so
much intensity—then there is a rest.  It was
like reaching the top of a mountain—last
night—"

"But we have to begin all over again to-day,"
she said dully.  "The truth starts you on
your journey.  Yesterday I wanted you to
start.  It seemed a test.  I could not see the
truth I wanted about you—with your staying
on here.  I felt that I was the cause, and that
some ancient wickedness must adhere to me.
I did everything to make you go—but first of
all I made you stay—clung to your stirrup
that first morning.  I do not understand myself—"

"That first morning held a very real
moment to me," Romney said.

"But that's not all," she went on, appearing
not to hear.

"What more?"

"Now again, I want—oh, it's hard to have you go."

Romney was silent.

"Must we always be apart?" she asked in
the same dull way.  "Last night it all looked
different.  You said such an incomparable
thing to a woman.  You said that you had
turned from your work to me—that your
dream had become me.  I never shall forget
your face—dazed, not realising hardly that
I had brought you back into this house.  It
was as if you were on a ridge between heaven
and hell, and but one true thing remained for
you to say....  'I think I shall not pass
this way again.  If there is something more
important here below than this love—very
well.  Let them have it who say so.  As for
me, I love you.  I think the great man who
said, "Give all to love," meant me.'"

"A thousand times I have re-pictured that
night coming into the court," he told her.
"Who would have thought of such a meeting
in the Gobi?  I once heard that it wasn't a
matter of place, but of time—"

The thought of Moira Kelvin had hardly
recurred with her in the room, and there was
something strange about this, considering the
proneness of the human mind to make
contrasts.  Moira Kelvin had been his
master—perhaps that was the secret of her falling
away so cleanly from his heart.  His first
thought that her capacity of appeal was so
largely histrionic, scarcely recurred in the
later days of their fortnight, and left only a
memory.  There had been an early sense of
her ruthlessness, but that had not lived out
their period.  He held her to splendour.
Finding her with Nifton Bend fastened it
forever in his mind.  Her quest was the certain
spirit of a man—and yet he remembered the
passion of her.  He felt that great natures are
built upon such passions, and considered it
nothing at all to his credit that he had held her
passion sacred since she had nothing else for him.

She had shown him in a thousand ways that
there is a new order of conduct in the
love-relations of the world—that man in general
is very much in need of learning to wait, to
hold and to serve.  He held Moira Kelvin
as a great friend now—one to reverence and
to rely upon among the rarest passages of his
life.  All that she had said had proven true.
He had brought Anna Erivan a different
treasure because of that meeting.  It had proved
an initiation, and the one dark moment of
Nadiram was his taking Anna Erivan in his
arms at the wrong moment.  He would pay
for that in good measure....

She had been silent, and spoke now as if
the words escaped: "Do you think that
because you were so ready—because you had
been waiting and had pictured the one
woman—that I more or less fell into it?"

He leaned forward longingly.  Her shyness
in asking such a question quickened her attraction.

"That first night—that night of fighting—I
thought there must be something insane
about me—to let you take hold so utterly.
Why, it was as if everything else were
done—a new era entered on.  The whole world
would say I'm yellow to stick here—instead
of pushing on for that which I was sent.  I
sat in the court during those nights apart from
you—or thinking I was apart on that
conventional thing—and felt Bamban, Nadiram, the
Big Three and all of New China pouring
scorn upon me.  Yet what hurt me more was
being apart from you.  You see, that seemed
a difference we couldn't overcome."

She seemed to be looking into his heart and
finding something there which had little to do
with his words.  She felt the silence again,
and it was plain to him when she spoke that
she had taken up some secondary matter less
hard to broach.

"I have sometimes felt that you were not
sure of the work you were on—as if you
doubted, perhaps, since you were out here, the
wisdom or the goodness of those who sent you."

Romney was startled at the foreignness of
the observation at this moment.  Nothing
seemed normal that had not to do with their
story.  He found himself telling her hastily of
the suspicion he had encountered in regard to
New China's idea of waging war—if she were
called to war; and also of the incident of the
Japanese spy.

"That was hard to take," he added.  "I
thought I was pretty well orientalised, but
the old western training cropped up.  I tried
to make myself believe that I wasn't responsible
for his capture, but I didn't make a very
good job of that.  I had run him down.
Perhaps they would have got him, but the fact is,
they got him where they did because of my
efforts.  It broke me for a moment—the little
man being put out that way at my feet—"

"You speak of things as they happened—not
making them less to save yourself," she said.

"That would be short-sighted and unsatisfactory."

"What must you have thought of me for
telling you an untruth to make you go on?"

"I didn't think of it as an untruth.  You
wanted me to go for the good of others—and
that way came to you—"

"But you would not have descended to such
a trick—"

"Trick!" he said impatiently; "don't speak
of it that way.  Who am I to forget what you
said—about the little ones needing a voice
and a sign? ... And I want to add about
the men who have sent me: they are pure.
They hold their own lives as cheap as those
whom they find necessary to put out of the way.

"They loved the little spy, too.  They have
a dream of a purer world.  I don't think
anywhere on earth the dream is so close to
coming true as it is in the minds of those men.
I am proud to serve them."

"I cannot see you running after the little
spy, through the streets—"

"I'm sorry you have to see it at all."

"I had to ask, as if its presence in your mind
made me draw it forth.  I will help you
forget it—"

"There's something very dear to me in
that," he answered.  "You—yes, you can
make me forget it."

There was a pause, and Romney laughed.
"I show you things I never could show any
one before," he said.  "Why, a man doesn't
talk of such compunctions.  I think we go
about the world without telling each
other—I mean the men we meet—any more than
the foam of reality.  A man's woman takes
everything—"

"A man's woman," she repeated.  "There's
something primitive in that—and something
that is ahead, too....  I don't know exactly
what thrilled me so last night as I ran after
you.  I believe that the patience and wonder
of your staying and coming to the court each
night had something to do with that primitive
thing which 'a man's woman' suggests....
And also with the big stories of men
and women as they will be lived in the
future.  The wonder does not pass.  The
thought was with me all night—as I watched
near you.  It made me want to ask something else—"

"What—?"

"It may make me seem less to you—"

"That cannot be."

"I never thought I would feel like this—but
I seem to feel her about you—some woman
you must have loved greatly—"


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Romney forgot the Gobi.  Rarely were they
altogether out of its influence in Nadiram and
this room, but the story that was called stirred
him to the old beat of the world.  He felt
distantly as he had during his tests in the house
of Minglapo.  This killed out instantly any
idea of policy.  The truth was all he knew,
but the truth here was a different affair from
dealing with Chinese who might take or leave
what he had to offer according to their whim.
Here was a tense face of a woman who had
crushed her pride to ask such a question....
He told her how the big devils and
virtues had opened in him from the
encounter with Moira Kelvin, what he had been
before the meeting on the deck of the
*Sungkiang*—and what he had been since.

He told her in ten minutes how he had cast
all into the Great Drift, and had been spared
in spite of himself—how the thrall of Moira
Kelvin had gone out of his heart, and how
he had met her again in the presence of her
mate.

"She made me know that there can be no
doubt in a great love-story," he added.  "She
made me know that there is no such thing as
a triangle; that a man or a woman in doubt
between two, loves neither as the world shall
presently know love.  She made me know
that love cannot be altogether on one side—that
mine could not hold because she had not
the same for me.  The mystery of its falling
from me in the Great Drift revealed that.
She opened my heart for the woman I was
to find.  I did not believe when she told me
that, but I have come to believe it.  After I
saw her behind the low shoulders of Nifton
Bend—I knew that my heart's desire was still
a-field, and that all she had said was truth.
The power of this truth was opened to me the
night I rode into this little court—"

Her eyes were turned out to the sunlight.

"It seemed that I had come home that
moment," he added.  "I did not want to leave
you that night.  I never did a harder thing
than to call for the camels the next morning.
And when you put your hand on the leather
at my foot—it was not until then that I knew
what our meeting meant to you.  Realising
that—the transaction was finished, so far as
I was concerned."

"I never thought I would feel like this,"
she repeated.

"It was like a review of all the hells," he
said, meaning the Drift.  "I look at the years
before that as a kind of semi-sleep.  I moved
about only partly conscious—studying,
watching, laughing at things, fancying I was
somebody, thinking I had done something when I
got into the pulse of China.  The fact is, the
Romney of those days wasn't ready to come
into the court of this little Consulate—"

Her face was still turned away.  Very
quickly the flaw appeared in his last sentences.
He was making very light of a wastrel period—a
period without will and organised manhood
of any kind.

"Don't think I fail to see the other side,"
he said hastily.  "Something of quiet and
power has seemed to come out of it, but it was
abandonment.  It was weak.  A better man
would not have thought of letting go as I did.
Even if he didn't want to live he would have
put himself out of the way in a clean-cut
abrupt fashion—"

She shook her head quickly, as if pained at
some picture in her mind.

"A real man would have done neither," he
added.  "He would have taken his medicine
and not thought of death.  There is always a
yellow streak in letting go....  I'm sorry
to bring you such a story.  It has no virtue
save that of being true.  Also it is back—finished."

Her silence was destroying him.  The
panorama of his abandonment rushed past in
a kind of red dark.  His voice had a whimper,
for his own ears, as he said:

"At least, it was all in the year.  I drank
little before, I drink nothing now."

The absurdity of it now prevailed.  His
story had taken her away from him.  Much
thinking had made him lose the ugliness.  He
had told her matters which were so horrible
as to break the spell between them.  She
seemed to be slipping away, and just now he
thought of the man in the Forward Room in
relation to that year in the Drift.  She was
not the first woman who had reached the end
of endurance in this business.  The laugh
formed deep within him—the laugh of a man
at the last ditch again.  What a fool he had
been to tell her what had happened—to forget
the part that this particular devil had played
in her life! ... He would go on to Wampli
now—without a woman waiting.  The laugh
was twisting in his lips, and he had the sense
that if it came it would slay the last hope.

Anna Erivan turned and started at the sight
of his face.

"I wasn't thinking of the months in which
you held yourself palms-up to death, and
drifted along the water-fronts," she said
quickly.  "Oh, any one could see that has
nothing to do with you now."

Romney gasped, and, leaning forward,
placed his wide-stretched hand near hers,
which went to it.

"I was thinking of the woman," she said
slowly.  "I never thought I would feel like this."

He was still shaken from the illusion he
had suffered, in high voltage.  It suddenly
occurred to him what it would mean if she
had brought a story of an affair with a
man—an affair that meant as much to her as Moira
Kelvin meant to him.  The very thought was
torture.  There is a touch of insanity in the
best of men on this ground.  Romney was
amazed at his own feelings and at his own
simplicity; and over all was a contaminating
something that seemed to emerge from his
deepest nature—a gladness for her primitive
emotion regarding him where another woman
was concerned.  He wanted to take her close
in his arms.  An uncertain memory of the
night before when he was half-asleep,
recurred queerly....  He had not spoken,
and yet he knew that in her case, he would
want to ask and ask—also that to ask questions
meant to bend a mighty pride.  He was using
his will to be fair—holding that woman is as
free an instrument in the world as a man.

"I love your truth," she said hoarsely.  "I
think that is all that saves it—saves me—the
sense that what you say is true."

"There is no more," he whispered.  "I have
told you all."

"I love your truth—but I hate myself—"

"Anna Erivan, you are superb to me.  I
think—there is a bit of madness or martyrdom
about two coming together this way.  I didn't
understand what my story could mean to you,
until I thought of it the other way—as if you
brought it to me—"

"I have nothing interesting like that," she
said with a smile.  "I think if I brought you
a story like that, it would change me in your eyes."

"I would not let it," he said.

"Your will could not save me," she
answered.  "A man might say and believe
(until his own heart was touched) that a
woman has all the rights of man to diffuse
herself before her mate arrives, but in his own
heart, he would see her differently if she did.
Oh, it is not the pressure of centuries of man's
possession of women—not altogether his
instinctive sense of conservation.  That's only
physical.  There is something back even of
the patriarch idea about women.  She cannot
give herself to one and be the same again—not
even in her own mind.  There is something
sacred about that, which men do not
know—and which only great women know—"

"Then you think a man big enough to place
a woman on the same moral footing as himself
has not come to the end of the subject?"

"I think when men are tolerant enough for
that, they will be great enough to accept
woman's idea of herself, which is greater still."

"What is it—can you tell me?"

"Just so long as a woman has not the spiritual
power to formulate her ideal of the one
man of her heart, she must accept the nearest,
the first or second or third, and must suffer
her horrors of mis-mating.  But all the time
her dream is forming, literally making the
one who belongs to her and no other.  It
builds out of her suffering.  It comes out of
agony and diffusion, even out of promiscuity.
It is the ascent of woman's character into an
integrity which can only be touched by one
human being.  It is not touched if he does not come—"

Romney stood before her, looking into two
flashing points her eyes had become.

"It does not play a fortnight—to find out
if the man is the one.  It does not play at all.
It does not suffer from waiting because it does
not live in sex.  It does not meet its own on
any basis of sex—not at first, even though it
has passions powerful enough to fire the
world—"

"Anna Erivan—have I lost you—am I too
far from the dream?"

She arose and came nearer, the table no
longer between them.

"I tell you I hate myself because this has
hurt me—"

"And I tell you that this morning I feel
abysses below you—that you are revealed to
me higher than I knew and dreamed."

"That first night, I thought it was he who
had come to me ... and last night,
running after you, I was sure—"

He started forward, his arms outstretched,
but remembered and fell back.

"I said I would wait until you held out
your arms—"

Her face turned a little to the side, and he
saw a smile suffuse with colour.

"I did last night," she whispered.


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That noon Bamban came and sat in the
court for a little period, awaiting any word
from his master.  It was in Romney's heart
to tell him that he meant to start for Wampli
to-morrow, and yet he had not spoken of that
to Anna Erivan since morning, and he decided
to wait until the last judgment of the woman
was heard.  Bamban smilingly departed, but
back of the glittering eyes of the little man,
the American fancied an expression:

"You are a tarrier with women."

An Oriental expresses his deepest scorn in
a statement somewhat of that nature.  It
touched Romney very lightly on this day.  He
was not himself—something lifted and
expanded far beyond the man he had been;
and yet apart from Anna Erivan he was but
a creature of listening and turning.  On this
day, Anna Erivan had entered a domain of
his heart which Moira Kelvin had not found.
A questing woman brave enough to wait, a
woman above playing with senses, who
required no experiments to uncover her own.
And her head had lain a moment on his
breast, her waist in his hard lean arm....
He wasn't untrue to Moira Kelvin in any
thought.  Even in the illumination of Anna
Erivan, there was still a laughing splendour
about the other.  He could view the yellow-rug
woman now with a man's generosity,
though he recognised that there was no
answer to Anna Erivan's point.  He was
proud to the very spirit of his being that it
was so....  They strode out into the desert
together, when the sun was at its highest.
She stopped and caught his arm.  It was
almost as if the cry of the hyenas had come to her:

"What is it?  What is it?" he asked.

"Was she very beautiful?"

Her art was somehow revealed.  Anna
Erivan had waited until they were far from
the village before asking that question....
He was almost well again—not so robust,
perhaps, as when he had come to Nadiram, but
healed and glowing to-day, as one filled with
light.  It was only gradually that he dared
let the full light in.  Sometimes he seemed to
be holding a door against it, lest it be too
much for his heart.  He had followed her
about the house that morning until he was
amazed at her power over him, and forced
himself apart in the room where he had passed
the long night.  He had waited with every
ounce of will-force, and holding was possible
so long as he heard her step, but the moment
she was silent he rushed forth as one coming
up from deep water.

The day was dazzling bright though the
heat was not dangerous.  She had never been
out of the court before in his presence, and
something of the gold-brown of the desert
came to her, as if all the wasted energy of the
sunlight, deluging fruitless rock and barren
sand, gathered about her to animate the
delicate promise of her being.  Desert gold was
in her eyes, and noon warmth in her cheeks,
her lips parted with joy and ardour and low
laughter he had never heard in the house.
Clouds were massed into gilded mountains in
the low west.  The dry heat came up from the
sand and the living heat pressed down from
the sun.  Nadiram was silent behind them,
their voices free now in the open, their hearts
drinking the power of the light.

"Think of it," she said halting, "think if
we should go on and on—you and I.  The
nights—"

"I thought of that before I came to your
door—on the road to Turgim.  I thought of
journeying on and on through the desert with
the woman waiting somewhere—"

"I should be dangerous in a desert-night—"

"Dangerous?" he laughed.

"I should be myself at last.  You'll find
that dangerous.  A desert night would set me
free.  Perhaps I should find a nature very old
and abandoned—"

"In me?"

"In myself."

"Suppose you should hear the cries?"

Anna Erivan laughed.  "There would be
no Forward Room out here.  It is the houses
and the presence of men that make me afraid."

... He did not care much to speak, but
regarded her face as he had never used his
eyes before.  Several times during the
morning, she had reverted in her talk to incidents
of the night before, when he lay in exhaustion,
with only a waver of consciousness from time
to time.

"Did you know that a woman finding her
beloved, looks for a man but finds a child?"

Romney peered closer, his eyelids all but
shut in the vivid light.

"This morning as the dawn came in, I saw
the child so clearly that I had to touch your
face.  I would have wept had I not run away
for a little time."

After a moment, she added in whispers and
falterings:

"Did you know, toward morning, but
before the light—when the cold came in—that
I was very close to you, leaning forward
under the edge of your blanket? ... You
were still.  Your breathing was like a child's.
And then I thought again of your coming in
the evening to the court—to the west wall.  I
don't know how I could have been so hard.
I should have broken down in fright, had
you not come."

"I only knew that I could not leave you,"
he said.

"But to-morrow morning—"

He was silent.

"We need not think of it now," she said
slowly.  "Not until to-night.  We shall know
best to-night—"

She was staring away into the gilded mountains
of cloud in the low west.  Romney's eyes
followed hers.  There seemed a movement
there, something filmy white like a great bird,
against the brilliant horizon.  He could not
get his mind away from Wampli.  Every
moment with her, and the parting seemed
harder.  The larger consciousness that had
come from her, at the same time bound him
to her....  Leaving her in Nadiram—alone
under the Russian flag.  It would take
seven days at least to get back, even if his
mission made it possible for him to remain as
short a time as a day in Wampli.  That was
not likely.  The chances were, if he were not
held there, his orders would be to push on.
The last packet of orders, designated for
reading in Wampli, might contain the open orders
for a farther journey of weeks.  Romney
shivered.  There was little mercy in the facts.
The great continent of Asia was like a dead
weight against him.  She touched his arm.

"Look—"

What he saw presently, low upon the sand,
had the look of a turtle of large size, the head
uplifted from time to time.  The strangeness
of the creature and the way it moved stirred
him oddly....  The thing was yellow—the
noon light showed that, the deep satisfying
embrowned yellow of some object in which
the sun has sunk for ages and ages.  This is the
yellow of the Gobi at a certain moment of
evening.  It was the yellow of Moira Kelvin's
rug—and this was a robe of a Chinese Holy
Man.  In India they would have called him
a Sannysin.

Hastening forward, they saw that the head,
lifted from time to time, was shaven and
literally fallen in from emaciation.  The gray of
death suffused the brown skin, especially
where it was thinnest, in lip and temple and
nostril.  The creature crawled; his age must
have been very great, his grasp of life a
miracle, yet the robe he wore was woven from
the breasts of young camels and coloured, as
the priests would say, with God's own light.
This is a colour princes dare not wear.  It
trailed upon the sand and took no hurt or
stain; it was fine as leather can be, a protection
from the sun and a saving grace from cold.

"He is my Ancient!" Anna Erivan cried.
"He is the one who came to the court long
ago, and left me such strength.  He is very
dear and very wise."

This robe was first to show Romney the
quality of his guest, but he was soon conscious
of something beside, that made him very
tender, so that he knelt and gently lifted the
ancient ascetic by the shoulders.  The chin
now rested in the hollow of his arm.  The old
man leaned there as if in peace.  Presently
Romney's eyes were called back to the
town—a mere low jagged contour behind in the
blinding stillness.  Bamban was running
toward them.  At a little distance, he halted,
dropped to his knees, and thus came forward,
the expression on his face altogether new.
Indeed, it was dissolute with devotion.

And now the old Father appeared to sleep
in Romney's arm, and thus was carried
between the men, a light burden, back to the
Consulate in Nadiram.

They brought a cot to the living-room,
Anna Erivan joyously preparing food, filling
the begging-bowl with the choicest that her
house afforded.  Yet it was hours before the
old priest awoke, and during this time
Bamban never moved from his devotional posture
by the door of the court.  It appeared now
that the aged Buddhist had pushed his
austerities somewhat farther than usual, almost
extinguishing the flicker of life that remained
in his wasted breast.  His opening speech had
to do with the absolute rightness of all things,
especially with the excellence of the universe
and the exceeding rightness of right knowledge,
to all of which Romney attentively
agreed and Bamban degraded himself to
accept.  The Sannysin advanced deeper into
the thought, enunciating his conviction that
all was well in Nadiram and in the house.
He spoke briefly of his all-readiness for
departure from this life, saying that he had
been ready three days before in the desert,
that he was ready now to pass or presently.
Having impressed his readiness, he ventured
to add his personal point of view to the effect
that he considered it a misery to be called
back into life through the medium of strong
food, but qualified this opinion by inquiring
if he had not returned to the hideous pressure
of the flesh with some slight degree of
calmness and cheer.  Romney encouraged him to
believe this, hastily translating for the woman;
and Bamban projected himself in abasement,
whereupon the Sannysin slept again.

Toward evening, the ancient head was once
more raised into the hollow of Romney's arm.
Bamban had scarcely left the Consulate for
a moment throughout this extended interval.
The Buddhist raised his eyes to Romney's
face, saying that he was now acquainted with
the deep reason for his misery in being so
relentlessly called back to the coils of matter;
that he recognised in the white man a younger
brother, a true Brahman, whereupon he gave
Romney a small bit of parchment, the size of
three postage-stamps, upon which was written
a Sanscrit phrase, having to do with the
inspiration of the soul, and a few further
marks which even Romney, though he
deciphered them, could not understand.

Thus was the coming of Rajananda and his
passing likewise, for he asked that he be
carried forth at sundown, to the exact spot where
they had first seen the upraised head.  There
they placed the body upon the sand, accepted
a cold claw and a gesture to return to
Nadiram.  The Buddhist then slept, the
withered yellow cheek pressed upon the
breast of his old Mother, the desert.

The disquieting part of the whole affair was
that Bamban appeared to have acquired the
habit of abasing himself in Romney's presence,
though more than ever his eyes avoided
Anna Erivan's.  The three returned to the
Consulate in the early darkness and Bamban's
impulse to kow tow again asserted itself on
the flags of the court.

"Come, come, Bamban; get up and go to
the Rest House for your supper.  I'm the
same friend of yours—as always."

The Chinese obeyed, and Romney turned
from where he stood in the court, to the
door-way.  Anna Erivan stood there—as on the
evening of his arrival.


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They sat down together in the deep shadow,
for a time not thinking of talk or food.  Each
felt a singular relief with the passing of
Bamban, and the excellent calm that the presence
of Rajananda had left behind.

"Did you know he is not Chinese?" Romney said at last.

Anna Erivan shook her head.

"I just thought of it now—the name
Rajananda, the Sanscrit on the little parchment,
the character of his sayings, though he spoke
in Chinese.  Then he said I was Brahman....
There was much to say, much to ask
him.  I don't see how I could have let him
go without words—"

"One only thinks of listening when a holy
man speaks."

The man smiled at her.  "But the thought
comes to me again and again that he might
have put me straight on the mission—that he
is very high in power, possibly of the Inner
Temple—"

"You may meet him again—perhaps at
Wampli.  To-morrow you must go on—"

Romney did not resist the thought at this
time.  He looked about the low stone room,
at the forward door, toward the inner room
and at the door to the court....  It was like
a call, a trial of strength.  He had found his
own.  It would be weak to tarry with a task
undone.

"I will be safe," she said, as if following
his thoughts.

"I think you will see me differently—if this
thing is well done," he told her.  "I remember
this morning in our misery over the old story,
the need of doing some great thing to show
you that I was not that man now, but I didn't
relate it to going on to Wampli—"

"You are not the man of the Drift, as you
call it.  I see that, as you said—a quick review
of all the hells of life.  You needed it.
Nothing so low as that which held him—" she
pointed to the Forward Room, "—could hold
you....  You must go on to-morrow, but
the separation is not for you alone.  Perhaps
there is a dream that I must form in readiness
for action.  It is hard for you to go—but as
hard for the one who must stay.  No harder
thing could be called from us.  I think I
could not have endured it, except for the
coming of the Holy Man.  He brought me
strength before."

"But if, from the desert, that laughter
should come at evening—"

She knelt before him an instant.

"I shall think of you and Rajananda—of
your bringing back a sign for the little ones.
I shall think of the days ahead—our journey
out of the desert together—two on the
dromedary—the task done—Nadiram behind forever—"

The thought of the hyenas had unsteadied
them in spite of her courage.  Hyenas meant
Nadiram to Romney—and one white woman
alone in the midst of a town full of Orientals—bands
of desert men passing through—nothing
but a Russian flag.  He shivered.  Anna Erivan
arose to get supper.  They ate in silence.
The thought of to-morrow was like a gray mist
between them again.  They found themselves
very tired; the power of Rajananda slipped
farther and farther from them.  Often they
started to speak, but lost the impulse before
the words came.  Wampli was inexorable.
If Romney failed now, he knew he would find
himself less a man.

"It's no use.  It's got to be done," he said
impatiently at last, "but they seem to be
binding us closer to-night rather than making it
easy—"

"They?" she whispered.

"Did I say *they*?  I think I must have
meant the Fates or something of the kind.  It
isn't all wonder and exaltation—a meeting
like this—and yet if I fail to-morrow, I am
not what I thought.  My work seemed here
until you came to me—came running after me
last night.  Now that I have you, I know that
I must go—but there's something impassible
in the thought.  I can't get over it.  It's like
walking along the edge of a canyon—no
wings, no bridge—"

"You will go," she whispered.  "To-morrow
you will see the way.  It will come with
the morning sun.  We are very tired to-night.
We have been everything to-day.  It's like the
little picture of a whole life.  Why, think of
it—last night you were unconscious from
weakness....  You must go to your cot now—"

"Leave so soon—the last night?"

"We will arise early.  We are helpless in
the dark to-night.  We can't think.  We are
like two desolate beings, lost to each other....
I will call you early—"

"My God, don't go so soon!"

Romney didn't know his own voice, didn't
know the weakness that had come to him.
Her face seemed to be receding in the lamp-light.

"We are not sane!" she whispered.  "Have
you thought—that it is going to be too much
for us?  You must go....  Oh, what shall we do?"

"Let us sit in silence together," he asked
her....  "The last night—to go apart so soon—"

"Do you not see that we must sleep to be
sane?  You must feel as I do.  We are
wearing—wearing.  The day has been terrible.
This morning, as you told me of that woman,
I thought I should die.  Even my Holy Man
only healed me for a little while.  I think it
is a madness—a man and woman yearning like
this.  Words don't help.  I look at you—and
feel far off.  Your hand that I reach for only
tells me that to-morrow you must go.  It seems
nothing will do but—oh, I don't
understand—I want to lose myself in your arms.  It
seems as if all nature were driving me to
you—and that you were going away—"

He held her fast and understood it all as
only a lover could, for she seemed to be
speaking from his own heart.  Any separation
between them was poignant agony.  He
wanted to become identified with her—to
lose himself, as she expressed it—yet the
horror of the coming day prevailed upon his
mind, making thoughts and words and even
the movement of his hands an indescribable
heaviness.

"It seems there should be but two in a
world at a time like this.  Our walk in the
desert must have maddened me.  I want some
hill-country for our Meeting.  I want the
desert ... I must go.  If I do not sleep, I
shall not be strong."

"Do you think you can sleep?"

"I shall try.  Perhaps—we are so exhausted."

They stood apart as if by common impulse,
searching each other's eyes.  It was the deep
look that passes but once between a man and
a woman.  She drew back a little, saying
quietly:

"It is not our hour."

And then a sudden pity seemed to come to
her, akin to that which he had met the night
before—something from his face.  She came
to him.

"Oh, don't think it has anything to do with
the world.  I would have no mere man tell
us when we are one.  It is nothing like that.
Our marriage must be made in a better place
than earth—or else we are very far apart and
mad indeed.  No man—none less than a saint,
a master—could tell me when I am your
wife—oh, yes, our Holy Man—but I would not
wait for him.  But don't you see—this is not
the hour?  Our hearts are broken.  I feel
Nadiram heavy upon me like a low and
appraising eye.  This place is full of the *old*.
It belongs to the cries in the night—it belongs
to him of the Forward Room....  Listen,
to-night we must rest, or we will break
to-morrow.  I feel as if nothing mattered but
strength for to-morrow.  Go to your room—yes,
go to your room and bring your cot here—"

"Anna—Anna!"

"Yes, and I will bring mine beside it—here
beside it....  Yes, and we shall lie down,
hand in hand, and call upon our strength—and
rest—don't you remember?—like little
children—"

It was in a kind of ecstasy that he moved
about his room, making ready—the sweetness
of the woman overcoming every other
thought.  He was hastening, yet he knew she
would be longer in coming to the living room.
His love went forth to her, often his hand and
his step stilled to listen for her movement in
the house.  With a queer laugh, he realised
that she was calling forth from his heart a
force that could never come back to him—that
she was necessary for life, that his days
would be very few if she were taken.  He was
forced into the lover's establishment of every
thought on an immortal basis.  "Give all to
love"—he had not known what that meant,
even last night.

His hand touched something soft and clinging
in the saddle-bags.  He did not draw it
forth at once, but knelt beside it, covering his
eyes with his free hand.  It was the crumpled
bit of chiffon that he had carried so long and
forgotten so remotely of late....  He held
it in his hand.  It was very dry and thin—a
little dusty from the bag.  Many pictures
rushed through his mind—from Longstruth's
to the house of Dr. Ti Kung.  It had gone
down into the Drift with him, and come up
to this hour.  It was done.  It was good.  He
touched it to his cheek, and held it to the
candle-flame, breathing a blessing upon the
woman who had stood head and shoulders
above her beloved in the doorway of Minglapo's house.

He folded the blankets and carried forth
his cot to the living-room.  The little
dining-table was thrust back to the wall.  The open
fire was burning low, the lamp was set apart.

"I am almost ready," she called.

"May I not come to help you with your
cot?" he answered.

"In a moment.  I will let you know."

He went to the pitcher and drank a cup of
cool water, then stood motionless beside the
table until her trailing voice:

"Now you may come in."

It was a little white-washed room, a silver
cross on the plaster above her pillow.  He
dropped to his knee there for an instant, his
thought for her care while he was gone.  She
stood apart watching, her hands reaching
back against the wall, her eyes burning upon him.

He placed the cot beside his and turned to
the door.  She came forth, very little in her
bare feet and white robe, a shawl about her
shoulders, holding something in her hand.

Romney waited for her to come forward,
put out the lamp, and found his place.  There
was a moment of stillness, and then her hand
came forth to meet his, and he found that it
was the little silver cross that she held.

The door to the court was open, and the
moonlight lay pale upon the stones.

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Romney thought at first that it was a flutter
of wings that aroused him.  The room was
cool and touched with gray, not of moonlight.
Many vague images passed through his mind
before the actual realisation of the present.
He turned to find the pillow empty at his side.

He felt the cold of morning, and a silencing
dread.  A dark shadow hung before his eyes
like the tangible presence of fear, and then a
hand lifted from the blanket close to his breast
and patted him softly.

Now he saw her face, low in the cot.  It
was turned to him, and Anna Erivan slept.
He moved slightly and the hand patted him
again.  Romney then lay very still, reflecting
upon the miracle of her mothering instinct.
Without awakening she had felt his sudden
stress.  It was like a babe's cry, and her hand
had brought it peace.  The presence of her
soothed him again.  She was resting so sweetly
that he could not arouse her now.  Contemplating
the magic of it all in the thin dawn
light, he fell asleep again.

... Some one had come with a great
message—the perfect word for him.  The lips
moved close to his with the story—touched
his with a kind of imperishable wonder.  He
opened his eyes to the full sunlight, and Anna
Erivan's face was close to his.

"Take me with you!" she whispered.

She was dressed and kneeling beside him.
His arms went out to her.

"Take me with you!" she said again.

"It is done," he answered, yet even as he
spoke he felt that he would have to suffer for
that.

"You will take me with you—on your
camel—into the desert!"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it means?"

"Yes."

Again in his consciousness came the sense
that what he promised was a failure for which
he would have to pay.

She stared into the west.  "No one goes that
way from Nadiram," she said.  "I have been
here a year, yet Wampli is but a name to me.
Even you, coming from Peking, know that
desert bands watch the ways around Wampli.
We shall have no escort—"

"We shall pay the tariff demanded.  I have
credentials that worked before."

"The little parchment of Rajananda shall
help us!" she exclaimed.

"Also we have Bamban, a camel-tender,
good compasses."

"You think there is no danger of getting
lost?" she asked, and he did not search in vain
for her smile.

"I have been afraid to leave you here," he
said.  "There is danger, but it is here—it is
everywhere, in the desert and out—if they
want to bring us danger—"

"*They*—again," she whispered.

"I do not feel that we could be lost *together*.
Are you afraid?  Would you rather stay?"

She laughed and leaned toward him.
"Those who have met our kind of fears, are
not afraid of mere men and desert distances....
It will be—it will be almost too great
a thing—to leave Nadiram and all this—and
go out into the desert with you—"

He saw she had not said all:

"Yes—I would go without food or drink.
I would go with you—for you are all that
faith means....  Better and better I understand.
I do not think we are to die soon—but
if that is so—it will be together—a rapture in
that." ....

"I have thought every day of our going out
in the desert," he said.

His eyes kindled from her nearness.  "I saw
it the first night here—and every night as I sat
at the west wall—"

"We will start to-night!"

"Yes."

"I have tea nearly ready.  You will put the
cots back—and this—you know where it
hangs.  We will take it with us tonight."

She gave him the little cross.

"Hurry now and dress, and breakfast will
be ready.  Don't mind me.  I shall be at the fire—"

"I wonder that I did not waken when you
did—that I did not hear you."

"I was very quiet."

"I awoke once in the night—and when I
stirred, you patted me as if I were—"

"I was dreaming," she said softly, her face
turned from him.  "I was dreaming—and
once I awoke in the night."

Romney felt the very core of the mystery
now—his passion not to take or seize, but to
give her his life.  All the difference between
the old and the new was in this—the difference
between flesh and spirit, death and life.
The thought came that this which he now
knew had to do with the romances of the
coming age—the passion to give one's self, not to
seize something for one's own.  He wanted to
give her every beauty from his past and the
high conceptions from the future, one by one.
He had loved her spirit, her understanding
mind, her presence, somehow as detached
principles until this moment.  Now they
seemed one.  All had come to the very earth
of her being.  He had knelt to her.  The
touch of her lips was the whole mystery.
Nothing seemed impossible.  He went to the
door.  Her word "to-night" was ringing
through his whole being.

He sought Bamban early, to remark that
they would set out for Wampli at noon.

"There is some extra baggage at the Consulate,
including some provisions.  We will
need an extra camel and driver.  In adding to
the provisions in stock, arrange for four
persons, Bamban, and don't spare on the little
matters of extra comfort and accommodation—"

"Four persons?" said Bamban.

"Anna Erivan is going with us to Wampli."

Romney had a peculiar sense of hatred for
an instant from his servant, who a moment
before was inclined to prostrate himself, at
least in effect.  Bamban's hands were lifted,
his head thrust forward from his shoulders,
thin lips protruding, and a kind of dusk about
his features.

"It would be better for us to return with her
to Turgim in case she is not safe here, rather
than to have a woman on the next part of the
journey.  Any delay is better than taking a
woman—"

"I think we'll be able to manage according
to the plan—"

"You will forgive your servant, but our
mission is endangered by this plan.  The
solicitude of those represented by the master
who came yesterday is withdrawn from any
party which contains a white woman.  It
would be wiser for you to give up the mission
and return to Peking—"

Romney coloured a little.  "The master who
came yesterday is friendly," he said.

"I am afraid you are taking the woman to
her death—to say nothing of your own."

"Bring the camels toward the end of
afternoon, Bamban."

Romney turned and walked back to the
Consulate.  He had met nothing of this sort
before from his most excellent *boy*; and the
fact that Bamban's resistance tallied with a
fear in his own mind, added to the coldness
with which he regarded the venture.  He
recalled his first swift rejection of taking Anna
Erivan forward on the mission.  So utterly
had he put the thought away that it had not
returned even in the great stress at the thought
of separation.  Yet when she asked to go, there
had been no question; only the instant sense
of warning which he had put from him
steadily....  His step quickened.  The
braver way would be to change now—to
explain his fear and ask her to remain.  The
force to accomplish this, however, did not
arise in him.  He had always been stubborn.
He regarded his stubbornness now as
something before which he was powerless....
She had asked to go.  He had agreed.  She
was preparing even now.  The journey to the
desert was a part of her dream—their dream.
It called him now.  Rajananda—a queer sense
of the old priest's love and tenderness and
guardianship came to mind.  Romney shared
with Anna Erivan a horror for Nadiram.  He
did not accept the thought that he was taking
the woman to her death, yet an icy draught
came to him somehow from the thought, a
certain grim finality.  He did not know how
he loved her until he was near the court.  A
gust of warmth, an indescribable elation,
swept over him, as he perceived her against
the doorway.

"You are pale," she said.

"It is a strain to be away from you," he
answered.

"Bamban is Chinese.  He does not understand,"
she said, with a touch of mirth.  "I
knew he would do his worst to make you go
alone."

Romney found that he had hoped she would
change of her own accord, but this was out of
the question.

"I have locked up all his papers, and locked
the Forward Room.  My bags are almost
ready—and yours.  I helped a little in your
room.  I could not miss that thrill....
Ah, do not be troubled.  I would die here....
Bamban does not know everything.
Perhaps I will be a good omen, instead of
evil.  I think Rajananda would not make me stay."

"Now that's queer; I had the same
thought," said Romney.

Anna Erivan was standing by the table,
waiting for him to come to her.

"There should not be any mission—any task
at this time," she said strangely.  "There
should be only two in the world—two and a
desert—"

"They have given us power," he answered.
"All these obstacles make us only cleave
together more furiously.  I think I could not
have known you as I know you now, if everything
had been smooth for us.  Perhaps it is
in the Plan.  There are always rapids where
two rivers come together."

For an instant her eyes burned passionately
into his.

"You are wise," she whispered.  "You fill
a woman's dream.  Last night you were like a
priest.  To-day you are like an adventurer—"

"To-night?"

"To-night—who knows what the desert will do?"

The camels came when the shadows were
long.  Bamban's face was wistful....
Romney's lips moved as one wonder-struck,
as Anna Erivan emerged a last time from her
room in riding-garb—starry-eyed and silent.
They saved their words for the desert.  Vile
Nadiram was in a sunlit stupor, and did not
stir as three camels crossed its face like
insects—a dirty face in the late day....  They
looked back.  Nadiram lay still in the midst
of thin sharp shadows, not a voice, not a
movement—just a sprawl of lifeless browns and
thin dark lines, and all around it the desert
in the gold of sunset.

The woman spoke:

"A good-bye to that—the rooms, the beds,
the streets, the Chinese," she whispered.  "Oh,
how I have hated it all—but a good-bye to that!"

They halted soon for supper, glad of the
fire in the quick chill of dusk, glad for the
cheer of the kettle and food.  Bamban and
the camel-driver sat apart.  Romney raised
his hand and his servant approached.

"We will set out as soon as the moon rises.
And, Bamban, fill the water-cans now,
and all you need from the water-hole."

This was done, and Romney led Anna Erivan
to the water, and drew apart, waiting.  The
dusk crept in, and he thought of Bathsheba
taking her bath in the fountain on the
roof-tops....  All the magic of the old East
opened again as he waited, but the moments
were unbearably slow.  His heart quickened,
as after months of separation, when she
appeared from the hollow—exquisite to the
finger-tips, even in the desert.....  The last
of their fresh milk was used in that supper,
and they fared very well indeed with perfect
tea and dried fruit and loaves of her own
baking at the Consulate.

"Are you rested for a hard night's
journey?" he asked with a laugh.

"I have not been so rested since a little
child," she answered.

... They were standing in the darkness
by the camels, all prepared for departure,
when there came out from the darkness of the
desert that insane laughter, the mouthing of
stones in thick wet glass.

She caught her breath and clasped his arms.
She was laughing, as one who has been
drenched with cold water.

"I had forgotten," she said.  "It's quite all
right, only I had forgotten.  I'm not afraid at
all....  Why, they are nothing more than
jackals—"

The moon was two-thirds full and in
meridian.  Three nights—and moonlight all the
way.  Ahead, in the east, the great planet
arose.  Her eyes were lost in that rising.  It
was then Anna Erivan sang her song, like the
ancient Deborah at the end of conquest:

"A star in the East—" she whispered,
leaning back to him.  "Our quest—by swiftest
camels....  I love it.  I love the night and
the cold wind—-the smell of the desert and the
smell of the camels.  This is our flight—and
what is at the end, Beloved? ... You
know, you know, what it is we journey to by
swiftest camels—the risen star before our eyes—"

"A little child," said Romney.

For a moment, she clung to him.


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   16

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They were in a country of rocks.  It was
late afternoon of the second day's travel, and
Bamban had just found a suitable place for
camp.  Anna Erivan's eyes had been turned
toward the south for a moment.  Now her
hand pressed Romney's sleeve.  He followed
her eyes and discerned a black movement in
the distance.

Silently they watched a single black figure
which presently appeared more clearly, not
on account of an approach, but because of
an eminence gained.  They saw a signal as of
a wind-blown cloak.  A moment later a party
of horsemen appeared upon the slope of a
rolling waste of sand, halted before the figure
that had signalled—then all were in the
saddle and sweeping forward.

Romney's eyes turned to Bamban.  The
little chap was kneeling in the midst of the
camp-kit, but watching the horsemen.  Similar
parties of horsemen had been met on the
out-journey, but there had not come to
Bamban's face before quite such a look as now.
He stepped forward to Romney.

"It is the Dugpas," he said.  "They are devils."

"I think we'll take care of them all right,"
Romney said lightly.

Anna Erivan fixedly regarded the approach
of the desert-men.  There were a dozen or
fourteen, riding at a gallop in a semi-circle
about their leader—the faces bent forward,
their black cloaks blown full behind.

"We met this sort of thing coming out,"
Romney explained.

His hand crept under his blouse to the place
of the little parchment.  She did not answer.
There were no further words between them,
just her quick look, haunting and tender, and
his movement slightly nearer.

"Greeting—*Amitabah*."

Romney's salutation was returned by the
leader.  He came forward alone.  He was
old, very lean and sharp of face, singular in
his preservation of wiry strength.  His face
was a surprise, also, since it might be called
cruel or kind, according to the moment; but
it was in no wise heavy with brutality.  The
ponies were given over to the charge of a
third portion of the party and were left some
distance from the camels.  The relieved
riders came forward in twos.  The significant
thing to Romney and the woman was that
these were mainly men of years, a queer
phantom grayness about them, gray in the black of
their skin, a touch of gray in the dulled red
of their lips.  Life had shown them more
than comes from mere desert-riding.  Bamban
strode in closer.  The leader loosed a strap
at his throat, the black cloak falling back
from his shoulders.  It was retained at his
hips by a girdle.  He shook his arms with a
queer spasmodic movement, as if to straighten
out a cramp of hard riding from his muscles.
There was a thin line of white foam on his
lips and he spat twice—pointing first to the
woman, then to the camels.

"He does not want her here when we talk,"
said Bamban.  "I will take her there."

He was back in a moment.  The usual questions
as to direction and motive of the journey
were passed.  Romney was then informed
that he would not be allowed to go on to
Wampli.  The American drew forth the
usual passports, also Anna Erivan's credentials
from Russia, and had them thrust back into
his hands unopened.  The native leader spat
again.  Romney now offered the parchment
from Rajananda.  The other took it in his
two hands, pressed it to his lips, then turned
away, bowing his head close to the paper.

At this point, Bamban undertook to say
something to his master, and called upon
himself a look of peculiar ferocity from the
second in command.

Now certain of the followers came up with
long sharply-pointed poles, which were driven
into the ground in the form of a square.
Before the final stake was driven, Romney
and the woman were bundled in.  The whole
enclosure was then woven with leather thongs,
and the sides covered with skins and cloaks.
Soon all was quiet about, the chill of night
increasing.

Romney called.  Bamban was summoned
from the camels to interpret.  The white man
asked for his blanket rolls.  Bamban was
allowed to serve his master to this extent....
In the early darkness, a twist of dried
goat's-flesh and a tin of tea were passed over
the pickets.

Romney was quiet many moments, subdued
with reflections of his own stubbornness.  The
woman's hand had come forward from the
dusk, touching sometimes his hand, sometimes
his knee, or patting his cheek.  At last she
spoke:

"I know that you are thinking that you
might have done differently.  You are
troubled that this happened with me here,
but really I do not mind.  I have been many
times more miserable—ah, night after night,
when you came to the west wall, scores of
times before you came to Nadiram—much
more miserable.  This that has come to
us—somehow I cannot lose the great joy and
beauty of our meeting and mating.  I cannot
think steadily of these lesser things.  They
come to mind, but this wonderful thing we
have known routs them forth—"

"You do not falter," he whispered.  "You
rise and rise, Anna Erivan.  I should not
ask more of the Gobi, or from Earth itself,
than this meeting with you.  You said days
ago that this was but a place of meetings and
departures—perhaps you were right.  But I
had glimpses of a longer journey than
this—that is all."

"That will come to pass—if not to Wampli
and beyond—then a still longer journey
together....  I am very close to you.  We
are warm.  The thongs give easily to one's
back.  Will you not lie down a little?"

... His head was upon her knee, her
hand lightly touching his temples....
Full darkness had given way to the moon-glow,
but the orb itself had not risen for them
to see.  They heard a sudden restlessness from
the picket-line of the horses, a movement as
if the natives had started up quickly from the
fire—then the soft tread of camels and a hail.
The coughing snarl followed from their own
camels, as the stranger-beasts came to a halt
near-by.  The desert greeting, "*Amitabah*"
from the Dugpa leader now reached their
ears.  Another desert party had joined the camp.

For a long time the leaders intoned by the
fires; then voices dwindled and the
flame-shadows on the picket-wall died to the red
glow of embers....  Romney was wondering
if the parchment would be of value....
Anna Erivan was not asleep.  The slightest
movement of his hand and her pressure
answered.  She was so frail and yet so strong;
absolutely courageous, yet so tender.  This
fragrance that came to him from her was like
a breath from home.  He was not ready for
the end.  He wanted earth with her, more
than heaven; yet the sense of peril was somehow
lost in the peace of her presence, and the
madness of any human adversary was less than
her power....

Romney's eyes stung with the dawn.  The
cloaks had suddenly been removed from the
pickets and he was staring straight into the
rising sun.  He turned softly to greet the
woman.  She sat up laughing like a child.
The morning air was keen and bright, the
wood-smoke fragrant.  Nothing from these
black strangers appeared to dismay her,
though the impending evil became acute in
Romney's mind.  The party of later arrival,
consisting of a dozen horsemen, was already
prepared to depart, standing at the head of
their mounts, with the exception of the older
men who were conferring with the leader of
the original party.  Bamban had been called
into this conference.  Romney saw him bow
his head and hold his palms out, a matter of
uncertain significance to the white man,
though the suspicion arose that the *boy* was
expressing himself to the effect that he had
done his best to prevent the woman's coming.
Queerly enough the whole spell was broken
for an instant as a pair of horses, belonging
to the original party, stretched their tethers
too close to the camel pickets.  There was a
tangle, and vicious squealing of beasts,
through which Romney observed that his
camel driver conducted himself with singular calm.

"What a perfect night's rest," said Anna Erivan.

Romney regarded her with awe.  She held
up her frail arms to the light and smiled.
Her girlish breast seemed moulded of new
wonder for that day.  It was only in detached
fashion that Romney could *take* the facts.
Neither of the parties seemed to have the
slightest concern about food.  The halting
place of the night was clear of unpacked
provisions of any kind.  Apparently Bamban was
not permitted to serve his own.  The sun was
rising.  The rock-strewn desert was like a
dream.  The sand was drinking in its false
life; the rocks were touched with morning
red; the horizon was a ring of pearly azure
with one flaming jewel of rose-gold.  Romney
turned his eyes from that rising radiance to
the woman, and touched her hand.

The leader of the first party and two others
now approached.  Romney realised that talk
was finished; that what was to be done was
to be done now.  Then like a thrust their
purpose came to him.  It was like a physical
horror crawling nearer and nearer.  Anna
Erivan was not slower to grasp the meaning
of the approach.  Her arms went to him, her
face close to his:

"They can only separate us a little.  I am
yours, body and soul, remember
that—yours—yours—my Beloved."

The full madness really came to him when
he understood that the woman recognised as
coming to pass that which was the most rending
fear of his life.  It happened very quickly.
Two of the pickets were pulled out, the
thongs slipped, and the leader stepped back,
bowing his head in sign for them to come
forth.  Romney was first to obey and was
ordered to stand with the two desert-men at
the right of the opening.  Anna Erivan was
beckoned to the left by the leader's side.  They
moved forward, not largely separated, but
Romney was halted—a brown hand on each
arm—by his own camels; and Anna Erivan
was led forward toward the second party of
horsemen, which stood in readiness to mount.
Whether it was the restraining hands or the
obedience of the woman—her face turned
back to him—which broke Romney's control,
he did not know himself, but leaping forward,
he was caught and held, and the battle was on.

He heard her voice.  Nothing that he did
prevailed; nothing that a white man could do
with his body counted against this silent pair
of spine-twisters.  Knee or knuckle, he could
not tell, but it seemed a steel bolt was hurled
into his back.  He sprawled like a frog, her
face and a certain amazement at his own
futility queerly blended in his last flash of
consciousness—his open mouth pressed into
the sand.





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.. _`RAJANANDA`:

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   PART THREE: THE GOBI


.. class:: center large bold

   RAJANANDA

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   1

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At times Romney thought he was
insane.  There were stretches of
desert miles, and hours of travel in
which he knew only the waver of
a brassy film before his eyes—no sand, no sky,
just a slowly moving brazen curtain that was
like an emanation from burning metal....
He had awakened to the rock of the camel,
and day was high.  Bamban was nearest,
beyond him the Dugpa leader and six of his
party.  They were on the western trail.
Vaguely to Romney's mind came the word
"Wampli."  Bamban waited for him to speak.

"Did the other party give her the third
camel to ride?" Romney asked.

"Yes.  Also one driver is with their party."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know.  We turned out of the camp
before they left.  I think they went back
toward Nadiram."

"Was she hurt?"

"No.  They treated her with every care."

"Did she say anything—after I fell?"

"No—only for me to take good care of
you.  She covered her face.  After that she
was calm."

"Do you think they will do her harm?"

"No.  They are not like that."

"Is it a matter of ransom?"

"Not in this case.  They greatly reverence
the little parchment from Rajananda.  They
gave it to me to restore to you."

"Did you tell her I was not hurt?"

"I could not.  I did not know what had
happened.  It was at the very worst, when
she seemed to know the feel of fresh power."

"You were with them, Bamban, when they
made the plan to separate us.  What brought
it about?"

Bamban's whole concern seemed to be to
answer in a way that would be exactly true
and at the same time relieve his master's
agony.  "They asked me many questions as
to our work in the desert—why we had come
west from Nadiram.  I told them of the
mission as I know it—of the waiting leaders in
Peking.  Then they asked me about the
woman, and I said that I was not in the
knowledge of your concern with her.  They asked
if the woman had come from Peking with you.
I said no.  They asked where you had found
her.  I told them in Nadiram.  They asked
what I thought of your bringing the woman
with you on this mission.  I said I was your
servant and that I had no authority to think.
They did not make their plans regarding the
separation in my hearing."

"Thank you, Bamban."

Romney could not feel his real life.  The
pain across his chest had returned.  At
intervals he talked with the *boy*, who answered
patiently, but could give no more than has
been said.  The white man felt the repetitions,
halted in shame, remembering suddenly that
he had asked in regard to certain matters
many times before—yet his mind would come
up from its black depth with the same
question again.  At times he was childish.  He
would have taken Bamban's hand if it were
night.  He thought often of Nadiram as a
safe place.  It would be heaven to ride on to
Wampli—if Anna Erivan were safely back
in the Consulate.  He had not been strong
enough to leave her there! ... Now Anna
Erivan was in the hands of the Dugpas, at
the mercy of a desert band—carried away by
dark men who frothed at the lips....
Often his face turned back.  Once he broke
out laughing.  It was toward the end of the day....

Bamban talked to him after that—told the
story again and again without questions,
making him listen.  Their little band halted for
the evening.  They meant to reach Wampli
the next afternoon.  The sun was down, but
the sky filled with afterglow—the south still
brazen, the east dull, the west ablaze, the
north a cool blue-green of pasture-lands.
Many times Bamban asked his master to sip
the tea.  Food was not to be thought of.  At
last the servant followed the white man's eyes,
which were lost in the south.

"What do you see?" Bamban whispered.

"It has the look of a low-flying swan to me."

Bamban saw the flash of white against the
sky.  It was like developing a plate.  A
superb camel cleared in the heightening glow,
all shadows and distances falling away—a
mighty dromedary, pure white, lean and tall
in dull gold trappings.  Bamban could only
think of the words of his master—a low-flying
swan.

The Dugpas arose in strange formation.
Straight to them that long snarling head—then
the voice from the basket, the halt, the
kneeling....  It was a huge round basket
like a bowl.  The driver touched his forehead
to the ground before them, then toward the
east, then toward the camel.  He arose and,
stepping lightly with bare foot upon the
shoulder of the dromedary, glanced with
deepest reverence over the rim of the basket.
At that moment, Romney saw again the
shrunken, shaven skull—touched with evening
now, the eyes lifting dully from deep sleep.

"It's Rajananda," eagerly whispered Bamban.
"It's quite all right now for us.  It's as
I thought—he is the master of all in these parts!"

"Rajananda—" Romney repeated.

The driver, still standing upon the camel's
shoulder, caught the hem of the great yellow
robe in his hand and beckoned the American
to stand beside him and take the other.  It
was thus that Rajananda was lowered to the
ground in his blanket—very gentle that
delivery, as two storks would perform upon
unsuspecting parents in the stillest hour.

It was the hollow of the white man's arm
that presently took the chin of the Ancient,
who spoke at once of the Five-fold Reason
and the Nine-fold Order, cosmic and terrestrial;
the plan of the Universe admitting of
no imperfection, and the absolute rightness
of right conduct and right emotion—all of
which Bamban accepted as if eating from the
ground, and Romney took with impatience
until he could speak of the woman.

Rajananda was coming closer with the
thought.  All was well with Turgim; well
with Nadiram; the desert slept in its great
peace.  Alone of the earth, the heart of man
faltered and fell short of perfection.  Black
misery brooded over the heart of man; soon
he, Rajananda, would pass forth from this
misery, but the sufferings of the sons of men
swiftly again would call him back.  This
coming by camel was but a symbol of his
entrance by the dark way of woman's womb
into the world of men again....

Romney heard the words.  It was that
queer listening on his part, to meanings that
would unfold and become clearer afterward.
Something of beauty and order came to him
from the old master's presence.  Rajananda
now appeared to see the white man as one
detached from the rest.  Romney bent closer
to the face in the hollow of his arm.

"There was a woman," the saint observed.
"Once, before you came, she rested my head
and filled my bowl in the stone square at
Nadiram."

"They have taken her away from me.  It
was this morning, Father, two parties separating
after the halt in the night.  It was the
hour of our mating.  We were journeying on
to Wampli together—"

Romney spoke softly.  His voice surprised
himself, for it was steady and sane.

"I am listening, for you to help me," he
added in the silence.

Rajananda seemed to sleep.  Romney held
himself with such tensity that sweat came to
his face.

"You have met.  You will meet again.
Nothing is lost.  Man cannot put asunder that
which Holy Breath has joined together.  Man
goes alone to the Sanctuary, and woman waits.
In going alone, the man is strengthened; in
waiting, the woman is purified....  And
now you will sleep.  Rajananda, your father,
will be here beside you, and these, my desert
children, will watch over us through the night."

The ancient withered hand swept slowly
from one to another of the Dugpas.  All had
turned at the sound of Rajananda's voice.
Each man bowed low as he was designated.
Romney felt that sleep was utterly gone from
him.  And yet the night passed without
breaking him—a kind of passage from one numbed
dream to another....  Rajananda journeyed
on with them the next morning, the
dromedary abreast, held to the slower pace
of the white man's beast.  Questions came
often to the white man, but his awe of the old
priest forbade.  Rajananda talked when he
was ready.  As the day rose, Romney met the
brazen curtain again.

The picture of yesterday's dawn recurred at
intervals with unabating horror; and the
steady consciousness that he was moving
farther and farther from his own.  Sanity was
difficult in this suffering, but always as it
reached a certain pressure of destructiveness,
its voltage seemed queerly lowered, and he
lost the sand and sky, and travelled through
the deadly glitter that had neither surface
nor line.  This emerging at the moment of
shattering always had to do with Rajananda.
Somehow the old master would break the
spell, and Romney would hear voices and feel
again the swing of the camel's tread.  Presently
all would sink away but the voice of the
Ancient, who affirmed again and again neither
the past nor the present, but what was to be:

"Your work is not done.  This is the stone
death that you feel.  It comes to ease the pain,
and the pain comes from the red of flesh.
When you have faith, all will be well—"

"They tore her from me!"

"All is well with her.  You have chosen
the way to God through a woman.  It is the
harder way.  When you love enough, you
will find peace—"

"It is because I love her that I suffer so—"

"My son talks as a child.  It is because you
do not love enough.  In the great love there
is no separation, save that of limbs and lips
and hands.  You have been taken for a brief
season from that, in order that you may rise
to the great love which laughs at death and
distance and the intervention of men.  Long
ago you learned this, but my son has forgotten.
The woman will remember more quickly and
wait with serenity.  Hold your hands to
the sun.  Rise to the love of the Long Road—and
the lesson will soon be finished.  She is
waiting—"

"Where—"

"In good time you shall know."

"Is there not to be a love on earth?"

"Yes; the great races of the future—the
races that shall heal the world—are to come
from the love of earth—"

"I want her here on earth.  We had only
met when she was taken away."

"You cannot know the blessedness of the
valley until you have crossed the heights—"

"But we only just met, Father.  All our
lives we were apart."

"There is another range of hills for you to cross—"

"But she saw me carried from her as one dead—"

"Even so, she is at peace in this hour.  The
faith of woman comes more quickly than the
faith of man.  She is one of the mothers of
the new race.  Her children cannot be borne
alone among the little valley shrines of men.
Her children must breathe the strong air of
the hills."

"But tell me, shall I meet her again here—down
on the good earth?"

"Your master cannot speak of that.  If I
should tell you what you ask, you could not
turn your eyes upward from the dream of the
valley-shrines....  Hold up your palms,
my son.  Master the red of flesh that will not
let you wait in peace.  So long as you can be
destroyed by that, you are not ready for the
greater meeting with the Beloved—"

"I could die, but it would not be better
than this—"

"The true Brahman speaks in that saying.
We shall not know the Holy Breath in death,
if we fail to find it here in the life of flesh."

There were hours of this—backward and
forward.  Rajananda, who seemed hardly
strong enough to hold his life to the withered
body, could speak and answer tirelessly
through the blinding day.

"But tell me," Romney asked at last, "has
she a master to make easy these hours—a
master to tell her the way to meet this hardest
of all lessons—to wait?"

"She has a master," said the mystic, "but
not an old man like Rajananda.  She does not
need to be reminded by a voice from without.
It is easier for a woman to wait, my son.  The
faith of woman comes more quickly."


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   2

.. vspace:: 2

At Wampli that night, Romney read the
last of the documents given him by Nifton
Bend, the one designated to be opened at this
point.  As he had dimly anticipated, the
papers concerned Rajananda who proved to
be the power of the Asiatic section in the East,
the guardian of the Eastern Gate to the
alleged Inner Temple, and the highest of the
forces in touch with Peking, politically.  Of
all the Gobi hierarchy, Rajananda was alone
in retaining a name and personality used in
the outer world.  How close he was to the
great Lohan, Romney's information did not
even hazard.

The American was ordered to await the
coming of Rajananda in Wampli, to place his
case before this priest and to accept the
judgment of the latter as to whether he should
journey on farther for the ultimate decisions.
In a word, if Rajananda cared to close the
issues of the mission, either for good or ill,
so far as the Big Three were concerned,
Romney's out-journey was ended.  On the
contrary, if Rajananda refused to act, and
advised him to carry his plea for the new
party in China still higher, Romney was
commanded to accept the advice and to continue
his advance into the desert as directed.

There was a singular nobility about the
second paper, which contained the story of
the dream and forming structure of New
China.  Romney was familiar with this study
of the coming civilisation, and felt the mighty
and beloved spirit of Nifton Bend in every
line of the writing.  The China which the
Hunchback pictured for future years carried
the wisest and most modern conceptions of
super-national development and the brotherhood
principle in the comprehension of
apostles of the new social order.  Romney was
asked in a personal note to place the salient
points of this document before Rajananda,
one by one.  This he was prepared and, in
fact, eager to accomplish.

The third enclosure contained a sealed
envelope which the American was asked not
to open for the present.  The accompanying
sheets of this document had to do with the
menace of Japan.  The peril of the Japanese
aggressiveness was traced, during the past two
decades, to the present snapping point.  Japan
was shown in her position toward China and
the other powers, in relation to the present
world-war.  The Japanese ambition was set
forth from both the conservative and the more
perilous angles.  Nifton Bend erected in
rousing outline the future of Asia under Japanese
dominance, in contrast to the vast yellow
peoples gathered in a fabric of fraternity and
turned outward in benevolence toward the
other races of the world.

There were moments in which Romney
forgot his own tragedy.  The old power of
Nifton Bend returned to his heart, the deep
thrall of service under him.  Something of
the breadth of force that comes from
self-immolation touched his zeal afresh and
brought nearer and clearer the dimension of
faith and divine fire which Rajananda had
laboured all that day to impress upon his torn
and fevered heart.  Romney was confronted
with the need of drawing upon some higher
potency to endure these hours.  He could not
change the facts of yesterday.  He could not
turn back until the old master and his desert
children made the journey possible.  In
justice to Anna Erivan, he could not cease to
live unless death came to him from an exterior
agency, and he was sufficiently imbued with
the mysticism of the Orient to believe that
death, self-inflicted, would not entirely release
him from the struggle and agony of the present
separation.  Again that night came the
queer impulsive passion to transcend these
limitations—instead of to bow before them;
and more clearly that night he realised what
Rajananda had repeated so often through the
day: that the limitations were set upon him
for the sole purpose of forcing him to rise in
his strength and transcend them.

... Nifton Bend had found his own in
Moira Kelvin, but only after he had given
himself utterly to the service of a foreign
people....  Romney turned back to his
reading.  Bamban was watching him from a
shadow—that strange and sleepless *boy*
farther from the white man's comprehension
at this moment than when they had set out
together from the house of Minglapo....
Just now, Romney encountered a personal
note in regard to the sealed envelope:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "My dear Romney: The contents of
   the final envelope which is sealed are
   matters which need only be used in case
   Rajananda or others higher inquire
   regarding the specific means by which our
   new party plans to overcome the
   aggressiveness of the Japanese in case of their
   war on China.  We know that this is
   uncertain ground for you personally, but
   trust that in case you are called upon, you
   will open this letter and state the contents
   to the religious masters, without bias.
   Perhaps you will be surprised to find
   that they who hold all life dear, having a
   deeper knowledge of the meaning of life
   than we are given to know, will look with
   philosophic calm upon the methods we
   plan to use, to overcome the strength of
   this young and brutal people.  Our whole
   case is in your hands.
   
   "You will be interested to know that I
   had intended to take this journey into the
   desert.  I felt that my services could
   well be spared for so important a mission.
   The change of plan came as a result of
   that extra case against you in the police
   station.  During the hours that elapsed
   before we could secure your freedom
   (after we had accomplished your release
   from the first charge) conditions arose
   here that demanded my remaining in the
   vicinity of Peking and Tientsin
   indefinitely.  Had the Chinese officials turned
   you loose when we expected, your service
   for us would have been carried on in
   Japan instead of the Gobi.  As it stands,
   we are all breathless for the issue of your
   travel.
   
   "A last word: If our methods of
   dealing with Japan in case of war are not
   asked, do not open this envelope.  I
   would spare you from it personally.  On
   the eve of your return journey, whether it
   is successful or not, burn the envelope
   unread, and hurry home to us.  There is
   much for you to do here.  Men of your
   class are rare.  The woman who has
   come to me, bringing the full cup of life,
   has quickened our spirits toward you
   afresh, and you know how animate we
   were before...."

.. vspace:: 2

Romney brooded long.  He could feel the
world a little—the different pulse that the
Gobi had made him forget.  He felt his
relation to the Big Three and the world at large
once more.  The timeless repetitions of
Rajananda came and went in his brain like
the sounding of breakers; the letter from
Nifton Bend contained intrinsically the
fervour and courage that he held most dear from
men of the world.  He was called to a longer
view of life than this present pit afforded.
The great plan of it appeared.  Out of the
sorriest fall of his life had come the great
meeting with his own woman.  He pictured the
wastrel in flapping white clothing that had
sunk into the stoke-hold of the *John Dividend*
in Manila Harbour.  Upon that day and that
ship depended the night of the Cross in
Nadiram and the night of the Crown in the
desert—upon that darkest of beings,
McLean, hung an issue of starry light, for had
he not borrowed five pounds from that
fence-faced marine, he would have been sent to
Japan instead of the desert, where his woman waited.

It was only the Terrible Now....

Romney slept.  Anna Erivan came and
went in his dreams.  Once she was singing her
*magnificat* in the hill-country....  The
next day, Romney told the story of his mission
to Rajananda.  For many hours they sat
together on the mud-floor of the clay-walled
and palm-thatched hut in Wampli.  Rajananda
lay covered in his yellow robe and listened,
marking the symbols of God and the
Holy Breath upon the dirt of the floor with a
finger-nail like a twisted kernel of dried corn.
Toward evening they broke their fast
together, and Romney covered his face in his
hands as he listened:

"My son, you are strong.  Yesterday you
wanted death, but knew too much to die in the
midst of gray hate and red desire.  All is well
with you to-day.  Your eyes hold the light that
sees afar off.  That which you bring to me
from the capital of the Empire is too great for
the like of Rajananda whose thoughts are of
God and not of men....  I see strange
things.  I see the empire of brotherhood as
your white master envisions it, but it is not so
near as he thinks—and his figure is not in the
midst of it.  We will journey on and place
our story at the feet of Tsing Hsia, my stern
brother in Rhadassim—a journey of five
camel days into the west.  Your heart is
strong, my son.  Your woman waits for you—"

Five camel days....  There was an
instant in which Romney almost asked for
mercy.  He would have done this the day
before, but somehow he had turned back from
the last ditch once more, clutching the very
substance to live on from the Unseen—a
bigger and silenter man than went out from
Nadiram....  He asked the stars if his
woman still lived.  The next morning as the
sun came up, he saw himself in the tin water
basin—a darkly-wasted face, beaked like a
Hindu of caste, and the eyes asked the same
question.

"Five camel days," he muttered.  "Romney,
they don't give you a chance to choose or
to fight.  You've either got to go on or lay
down—and you can't lay down...."

He turned a look back to the East as the
camel knelt for him, and sent forth the best
he had of love and courage to the woman.  So
much surged from him that moment that an
answer seemed to come back—nothing he
could be sure of, nothing that had to do with
actual words, perhaps illusion altogether, but
his face wore a thin smile, and there was a
humming about his heart.

For another whole day at Rhadassim,
Romney talked, and the next day Rajananda
offered his observations.  All the time the
stern and stolid Tsing Hsia listened, and at
the end announced that one more Father
should be called to the matter—Chi Yuan of
Kuderfoi, a three days' journey westward by
camel....  Romney felt in this accession
that his last debt was paid to life....  It
was Chi Yuan, on the second day after the
arrival at Kuderfoi, who asked by what means
the new Chinese party planned to make
Japan sue for an early peace in case of
struggle with China.  Romney asked permission
to withdraw for an hour.  It was granted
and he read the sealed letter from Nifton Bend.

... For a long time he sat in silence.
Ten minutes was all that the reading required.
He rejoined the three Holy Men, no longer
impassioned for the cause of the Big Three,
but merely to state the case without bias, as
Nifton Bend had asked....  Romney
always remembered the three bowed heads,
as he entered the little tiled court where the
yellow lilies grew.  This was the end of his
out-journey.  He knew it now and was very
calm.  That for which he had been sent would
be answered this day.  The rest was but the
return of the message—then Anna Erivan, if
grace were still in the world for him.

Romney felt aged like the three.  A little
spray moved a pool of water before them.
The lilies were lotus-sweet to the white man's
nostrils after an eternity of desert-sand.  The
green cooled his brain like a dear hand.  He
stood with bowed head, a little at the side, and
waited for them to turn from their meditation.

"Speak," said Chi Yuan.

"The new party of China is prepared to
fight Japan with pestilence.  Their plan is
complete.  Their chemists have been working
for several years.  I have the data here to
outline to you how the servants of the Empire
expect to meet the landing forces of Japan,
as well as literally to impregnate the Island
Empire with the germs of incurable disease—"

"The outer world of men is truly crushed
in the coils of matter," said the gentle Chi
Yuan.

"It is the darkest hour," said Tsing Hsia,
the stern.  "The dawn might be hastened by
the innovation of this demoniac contrivance.
Japan is young-souled.  If allowed to master
China and rule Asia, Japan would bring into
the world a repetition of the pitiful and
unholy civilisation which is destroying itself
in Europe now.  On the contrary, these men
of New China appear to be pure.  As I
understand, they mean only to defend themselves
and their country in case of Japan's insistence
for war.  I believe that their messenger
should carry back from us written word of
our good will—the message that we are
watching with great ardour their sign of Empire,
and that if they preserve their sign in purity,
more and more will we carry to them the
strength of the Inner Temple.  In a word, I,
Tsing Hsia, perceive nowhere the promise of
national exemplarship for the new order of
humanity as in this dream which the white
man brings—"

"But warring with pestilence—" said Chi Yuan.

"It is but bringing a greater destructiveness
than fire and steel," answered Tsing Hsia.
"War will end when its full hideousness is
perceived by the many.  Pestilence will but
hasten the day."

Romney was amazed that these saints who
would not have crushed a worm, who knew
not the taste of red meat, could thus sacrifice
an empire for the good of the future as they
saw it.  Awe held him, at the completeness
with which they ignored the individual life
personally and nationally, regarding spirit
and not flesh in every thought.  They had not
even asked for the details which had so
harrowed his own heart.  To them, the globe
was the plane of a spiritual experiment, and
not property for a group of divided peoples.

Rajananda seemed very little and dry.  His
hand came out to the American.  He asked to
be lifted a little nearer the pool.  He dipped
his hands in the pure water and covered them
again in the Sannysin robe.  The faces of the
two brethren were turned to him, waiting for
him to speak.  After long preliminary, he
said, perceiving only the future as was his
fashion:

"The dream is in the world.  Man will
unite with his brother, race to race; and war
shall be no more.  Nowhere in the world has
this dream, that broods upon the planet, come
nearer to finding its expression in action than
through the labours of this party of which our
son brings tidings.  But this party shall pass
without knowing the material fruit of its clean
desire.  Its business has to do with conception,
not with birth.  The time of birth is not far
as men reckon years, but it is not so near as
these dreamers and toilers of New China
believe....  They shall pass.  The ancient
order of Empire shall overpower them.  Even
now they are in the folds of the night that still
lingers upon the face of the world.  Asia shall
be richer for their thought, but from others
shall come the action.  Carry to them, my son,
by word of mouth the message of peace and
good will from the desert.  Our approval in
script may find no hands to accept it, at least
no party to profit by it."

Rajananda now spoke directly to Romney:

"Our westward journey is ended.  To-night
we depart once more, each for his own
country.  It has been good to see these
brothers again in the flesh.  In spirit we have
been one these many years....  Chi Yuan,
will you see to the preparations for travel, for
the night is coming quickly.  Our messenger
must make haste in returning or he shall not
find ears to pour our blessing into.

"I will return with you to Rhadassim," said
Tsing Hsia.

"And I," said the plaintive Chi Yuan,
"shall sit many days by this pool, meditating
upon the coming and the departure of my
beloved companions."

... That night, Romney smiled into the
starry dark.  The great northern stars burned
near—Vega, Arcturus, Antares, Altair.  No
Inner Temple, no arcanum; just waiting and
travel, broken sleep of nights and unbroken
journeys by day; no phenomena, just sand and
sky and low villages, flat upon the desert and
burned gold-brown; no miracle but that of
love, no mystery but the deep mystery of life.
The white dromedary sped forward in silence,
making the pace for the rested camels....
It was all haste now.  The old master paused
not.  His desert children had been repeatedly
enjoined for more rapid speed on the way to
Rhadassim....  Romney's mind sped forward,
beyond, to Wampli, almost to Nadiram
ten days away—to the point in the desert
where the Dugpas had divided, where his
heart had met the hardest human test, and
pulsed on.


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   3

.. vspace:: 2

The speed of the journey had not abated
after Tsing Hsia was left behind at Rhadassim.
A different party of desert men met
them for conduct to Wampli, and the journey
that had required five days coming out was
made in four on the return.  Rajananda's
hand was seldom raised above the rim of his
basket during the hours of travel.  Steadily
Romney's wonder increased toward the old
ascetic, his place and power.  It was he at the
last who had spoken regarding the mission;
it was Rajananda to whom all the leaders
and forces of the desert bowed in reverence
and fealty.  Rajananda concerned himself not
only with the Peking business, the worship
and well-being of the Gobi tribes, and the
races of the world at large, but had time and
authority for the direction of a white man's
romance.

The old master seemed anxious for the
Big Three to have his word in the shortest
possible time.  Romney was worn to the
bone.  Every hour devoured him as they
neared Wampli.  To his surprise, Rajananda
did not remain there, but signified his wish,
after a few hours' rest, to continue toward
Nadiram with the American.  The utterly
emaciated old body seemed to hold its
ultimate force together quite as easily *en route*
as during a period of rest in one of the
settlements.  In fact, it appeared to Romney at
length, that Rajananda had somehow learned
to master the elements of his physical being;
that death would not be accidental in his case,
but a kind of relinquishing sleep—a passing
forth, in order and without pain.  This was
only a thought, but many strange powers were
glimpsed from time to time in this companionship.

The Ancient was the cleanest of men.  His
bath each day was a desert rite, and, like all
else that touched him, the food that he
partook of was kept with holy care by his servant.
There was not the faintest taint of senility
about the old body.  It was withered and dry
but like sun-dried fruit.  Romney often
recalled the impression that Rajananda had
made upon Anna Erivan when he first came
to the court of the Consulate—the strength
that had come to her from his passing.

Romney lived in this strength.  He had
need of it.  More and more he realised what
Rajananda had meant in this crisis, and how,
first and last, his reliance for the care and
welfare of Anna Erivan was held to the
authority of the old ascetic.  Somehow he
believed that the priest had been aware of
the separation of the lovers before his arrival.
No word was spoken regarding this.  Two
new camels were supplied at Wampli for
Romney and Bamban, but the white dromedary
continued the journey.  The full day's
work of even the tawny Bikaners did not wear
down this priceless beast.

The party was rejoined at Wampli by the
old Dugpa leader and a dozen followers, and
the journey eastward continued.  Romney
realised that the first camp out of Wampli
would be made at the point in the desert on
the road to Nadiram, where the separation
had taken place.

He did not sleep during this night of travel.
He did not ask what was ahead, but he heard
the break in his own voice when he spoke to
Rajananda of other things.

... Romney stood alone the evening of
the day following at the place of the square of
stakes....  Bamban called him in for tea
at last when the quick dusk dimmed the faces
around the fire.  Rajananda had been let
down from his basket in the yellow robe, and
the withered old arm raised to beckon the
white man near.  For many moments Rajananda
ordered his consciousness by prayer
and the repetition of mantras, at last coming
close to the matter so heavy upon Romney's heart:

"My son longs for his beloved as the heart
of the *bhakti yogin* yearns for union with God."

"The days have been many and long,
Father, nor did I leave the loved one in peace.
Without you, I should have awakened from
that first unconsciousness—to resist again and
again until death."

"That would have been failure, my son."

"Yes; but we are not trained in the Occident
to accept the tearing away of our women
without resistance."

"In spirit you are true Brahman—very far
from the Occident in ways of thought and life.
That is why you are tested here.  Had you
not been ready to accept the healing of
Rajananda, he should not have come to you.  Our
disciples are not tested more greatly than they
can bear.  The world had ceased to interest
you.  You had won the cold laugh.  Only the
woman of the heart could be used for lifting
you to the plane of power.  The plan is not
to inflict agony upon you, but to burn and
refine and whiten your soul.  Only the woman
could be used for that—"

Romney's face paled under its weathering
and his lip hardened white.

"I would not make a woman suffer to test a man."

"You have a lingering of the Occidental in
your idea of compassion," Rajananda said
softly.  "You have met a woman who does not
need sparing from the truth.  What you have
won from these days, she has won, too.  Your
rising into the breadth of spirit and power has
been her ascent also.  Compassion does not
mean to spare the beloved from ordeals.  The
thing called happiness so often means that
content which is a kind of neglect by the gods.
There is a right and a left hand to compassion.
It is a unit made of the sternness of
Tsing Hsia and the gentleness of Chi Yuan.
It dares to wound, but it bathes the wound it
makes.  It loves, but always constructs.  My
son, you came to the desert for a greater thing
than to carry a message back to your leaders—"

"I think I came for the meeting with Anna
Erivan.  I am here again after many days,
at the point where she was taken from me....
I have been able to live through the
recent days because of you, because I have put
my trust in you.  My Father, I feel that I
cannot go much further without word from her—"

Darkness had fallen.  The old hand came
forth slowly from the robe.  Romney's sped
forward to take it.

"I have lived in your devotion and it has
been a holy thing, my son.  You love well.
She has become more than an earth-woman to
you.  She has become the way to God.  It is
the true *yoga*—this love of yours, when it is
lifted from the lust of the flesh.  Where there
is love like yours, there is no lust.  Without
these trials you could not have known so soon
the love you will bring in good time to her
breast.  The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink
into commonness soon—the dull and dreamless
death.  It is those who are kept apart,
who overcome great obstacles, who learn the
greatest thing of all—to wait—who touch the
upper reaches of splendour in the love of man
and woman, and thus prepare themselves for
the greater union and the higher questing
which is the love of God together."

Romney bowed his head over the aged
hand.  Even in this hour, Rajananda had
made him forget himself once more.

"You—" he said haltingly, "you, who have
never known a woman—how can you touch
the arcanum of romance?"

"The seer must know the hearts of men.
Knowledge of love is the knowledge of God.
Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy
Breath that turns the Wheel.  The seer is far
from ready for his work in the world, who
has forgotten from his breast the love of
man and the love of woman.  And then, my
son, we are almost at the end of the night of
the world.  The builders are coming in to
take the places of those who have torn down
with war and every other madness of self.
These builders must be born of men and
women—the new race—but of men and
women who have learned what great love means....

"So you have come to the desert for a greater
message, my son, than that which you carry to
the waiting ones in Peking—"

"I hear your words.  They always come to
me again and again afterward.  Do not think
that I miss what you say when I bring the
thought down to the personal thing that
tortures me.  Tell me: am I to see Anna Erivan soon?"

The last sentence was hoarsely uttered.

"My son, is there doubt in your heart in
regard to Rajananda?"

"No."

"Do you believe in my love for you, as
master to disciple?"

"I do not understand it.  I do not feel
worthy to be your disciple, but I have every
reason to believe in it."

"Will you do as I ask—a hard thing?"

Romney felt himself smothering close to
the ground.  He arose to his feet.  There was
red before his eyes, a breaking tension in
his throat.  The strongest thing about him—the
control of his temper—was stretched to
the snapping point.

He paced a moment, with clenched hands,
before speaking:

"You mean to ask me to go back to the Big
Three without Anna Erivan—?"

"Yes."

"I cannot....  I cannot!"

"Come to me, and take your father's hand."

Romney sat down in silence.  Something
flooded over him that broke down all his
resistance.  He wanted to weep like a young
boy who was pressed too hard.  Instead, he
laughed—his old trick when hard driven.

"I forget that I am powerless," he said
bitterly.  "Why do you ask my will in the
matter?  She was taken by force.  I do not
know where she is.  I am in the hands of your
men.  I must do their will or yours.  You say
that I have gained great power by this
separation, but it had nothing to do with will of
mine—"

"You have accepted the destiny imposed—that
is enough.  It honoured you in being as
great as your strength.  A weaker man than
you would have fallen—"

"But you ask my will now, when I see that
yours is greater than mine.  My will is to go
to Anna Erivan now—to-night!  She needs me—"

"Do not speak bitterly, my son.  We will
abide by your will in this thing—"

"You mean that?"

"Yes.  But first I will tell you that it is not
the greater way."

"Why?"

"Any delay on the road to Tientsin now
endangers your chance of seeing your leaders
in life again.  You accepted their mission.
It is the work of a true *lanoo* to fulfil it."

"You think I did wrongly to delay in Nadiram
on the way out?"

"I have never chided you for that.  Others
felt it failure, but they did not understand.
You did not fail there.  There were three,
my son, who went to the Manger on swiftest
camels, bearing gifts to the Child whom they
found; and another who found his quest by
the way, and when he was old and the last of
his quest finished, he met the Master face to
face....  It was Rajananda who made his
desert children understand about your
tarrying in Nadiram and who made my son's
servant understand.  But that is finished.  It is
different now.  Delay now will leave your
mission unfulfilled, and that, my son, would
not leave the future shadowless—"

"But Anna Erivan—in the hands of
strangers—thinking me dead.  If she still
lives, I must go to her.  A day, an hour—"

"My son, what words were the last that you
heard from the lips of this woman you love?"

"She asked me to remember that she was
mine—body and soul—"

"Have you faith in that?"

"Yes—but the desert-men—"

"They are my children."

"But she has not had you for strength."

"She has not needed me for strength.  My
son, her faith is above yours.  A woman rises
into her faith more quickly than a man—"

A kind of moan came from the white man's lips.

"You mean she is at peace—that she is not
crying out for me?"

"I mean that she is well and content to wait
until you come.  She is holding up her
arms—for the white fire.  When a woman is great
enough for that, my son, her arms do not long
remain empty."

"Do you mean to tell me that Anna Erivan
would have me go to Tientsin and report this
mere verbal intelligence—before going to her?"

Rajananda took his hand from Romney's
and fumbled in his robe for a moment, drawing
forth a little leathern packet pinned with
a seven-fold swastika of gold.  From an inner
fold of this he drew out a paper which Romney
took with a thrill of passionate joy.  He
had never seen Anna Erivan's writing, yet
he knew that this was penned by her own hand:

.. vspace:: 2
   
..

   *My Beloved: Finish your mission and
   hurry back to me.  Carry forth your sign
   even though it seems to fail for the time.
   I am waiting for you in the hills.  They
   will show you where I am.  Remember
   my last words.  All is well.  My love
   stands above all.  Come swiftly to*
   
   *Anna Erivan.*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   4

.. vspace:: 2

The dawn had come.  Romney and
Bamban were to go forward alone to Nadiram,
the servant to remain there for his master to
return from Tientsin.  Rajananda's province
did not include Nadiram, and in thinking
of this, the American recalled that the famous
white dromedary had not entered there.
Twice, at least, he had appeared in Nadiram
as a begging Sannysin....  The desert-band
drew apart, all the animals in readiness for the
trails; even Rajananda's servant removed
himself to squat a short distance from his
day-star.  The old man lay upon his yellow robe,
adoring his God with many perfectly
appointed sayings.  Romney bowed before the
mystery.  At last, words were brought to
matters of the hour:

"... In a few weeks, my son, you will
come again to this place—this man with you,
for he is a good servant and will not be parted
from his master after his return from the
province of the Capitol."

Rajananda indicated Bamban, who stood at
a little distance, and quickly turned his face
away as his name was spoken.  More than
ever Romney realised that blackness was
ahead for the Big Three, at least for
Minglapo.  It had never been far from his thought
that Bamban would return to his former
master after the Gobi mission; in fact,
Romney had thought at times Bamban was
absolutely Minglapo's, even in his present service.

"... First to Nadiram," Rajananda
intoned, "then the long road to Turgim, and
the travel lines again to Tushi-kow and on
to Peking....  You have breathed again,
my son, and strength has come to you.  You
will set your face firm to the distance, knowing
that the plan of life is for joy and for the
evocation of divine spirit through the human
heart.  You shall know through nights and
days that the woman you have found is in
Sanctuary—that man goes alone upon his
mission and that woman waits.

"... Listen, my son: in the elder days
men put away their women to worship God.
The prophets, the seers, the Holy Men walked
alone, and left the younger-souls of the world
to bring forth sons.  The time was not ripe
for the race of heroes, therefore the mere
children of men brought forth children.  And all
the masters spoke of the love of God for man
and the love of man for man, and the love of
woman for her child, but no one spoke of the
love of man and woman.  All the sacred writings
passed lightly over that—even the lips of
the Avatars were sealed.  But now the old is
destroying itself in the outer world; the last
great night of matter and self is close to
breaking into light; the time for heroes has come,
my son, and heroes must be born of this sacred
mystery—the love of man and woman.  So all
the priests have this message now, all the
teachers and leaders of men, even I, old
Rajananda who speaks to you and who has never
known the kiss of woman—all are opening to
the world the great story, unsealing the
greatness of the love of man and woman....
For the builders are coming—coming to lift
the earth—the saints are coming, my son—old
Rajananda hears them singing; the heroes are
coming with light about their heads and their
voices beautiful with the Story of God.

"... And now I must sleep.  I go to
my daughter, who waits for you....  Once,
before you came, she rested my head and
filled my bowl in the stone square at
Nadiram.  Even now she waits for you in the
hills of my country—not far from this place,
my son—"

The withered hand came up a last time.
Rajananda's servant hurried forward, and
Romney helped him.  Together they lifted
the master in his perfect yellow robe,
lowering him over the rim of his basket.  The
camel-driver took his place at the head of the
kneeling dromedary, and his eyes shone with
the risen day....  Another desert party had
ridden in; they dismounted now in a
half-circle opposite the escort from Wampli.  It
was like a pageant—the desert-men a circle of
devotion.  Romney watched the white camel
rise and depart, the two desert-bands
following.  Then he called for his camels, mounted,
and rode away toward Nadiram in the great
wash of light.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HUNCHBACK`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART FOUR: TIENTSIN


.. class:: center large bold

   THE HUNCHBACK

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   1

.. vspace:: 2

Romney connected with Peking by
telegram at Tushi-kow, and was
ordered to report at the Hotel
Nestor in Tientsin and to inquire
for Dr. Ti Kung.  At least, this was the
information he drew from a long, vague and
rambling telegram, the direct meaning of
which was veiled, doubtless for political
reasons.  The whole affair was strange.  He
recalled how Rajananda had enjoined speed
for his return, and how the aged one had been
unable to see Nifton Bend in the big
reconstruction activity of the East.

He reached Tientsin late at night, asked at
the desk for the Doctor, and was taken
upstairs at once, a boy leading the way.  Several
knocks brought no reply from within.  At the
desk again it was reported that no one had
observed Dr. Ti Kung to leave the hotel—that
his key was gone, that it might be well
for the visitor to sit down and wait.  Romney
had his bags taken to a room.

It was midnight.  For an hour the messenger
from the Gobi sat rigid as an Oriental.
It was not through effort or tension—this
stillness of the American's.  He had learned how
to wait.  He kept his back straight and his
hands and head still, because he forgot them
and turned his thoughts within, quite as if he
sat in meditation upon a mat of *kusa* grass.
He had to protect himself from the preying
of the city—from sounds and odours and the
shatteringly low vibration of massed human
beings out of peace with each other.  He had
come from the silences, which he had mastered.

He fell into the very deeps of himself,
deeper than the desert mission and the
cause of the Big Three, to an area where
Anna Erivan alone could reach.  For thirty
days he had been apart from her.  Sometimes
he felt, as now, that it was too great a wonder
ever to come into her presence again, at least
on earth where perfections are not by any
means guaranteed.  He felt that such a
mating enforces in the human mind the sense that
mystic love goes on and on....  Yet his
eyes stung often with the thought of being
with her again—if not on desert-sands,
anywhere with the good brown earth under their
feet.  He loved her spirit, felt some miraculous
union with it; but he loved her step
beside, her movement in the house, the touch
of her hand and the lift of her breast; loved
her lips and eyes, loved the dream of a child
of her body and soul.

From the beginning to the end (sitting rigid
near the desk of the Nestor) he went through
the precious scenes of his romance—all the
words and pictures, the meeting, the Forward
Room, the hyenas, the kiss and the quest, the
cots and the cross, the camels and Rajananda's
coming, the desert and the dream of a child,
the desert-men and the thonged stakes, until
that moment of horror—separation—that
would never subside.  This last invariably
shook him back to the dull drag of earth again.

It was the litany of a lover.  When he
looked at the clock it was one in the morning.
He went to his room, leaving word for Dr. Ti
Kung to call him if an interview was
advisable before morning....  Romney felt
himself fixing for a sleepless night.  There
was a curious heat in his heart at the thought
of meeting Nifton Bend again.  Was he in
Tientsin?  Would Ti Kung take him to
Merchant's Square and the house of
Minglapo in the morning?  Where was Ti Kung
to-night?  Perhaps some call to conference at
the dais—perhaps the Doctor had given up
hope of his arriving to-night.

The Big Three drew a certain love from
him.  They were men.  They rang true.
They had trusted him and been lenient in
regard to his tender-heartedness in the case of
the little spy.  Nifton Bend had been
splendid about that....  Romney never ceased
to wonder that three wise men in the desert
had not agreed with him about the spy's death
being an atrocity, or about the questionableness
of the sacrifice of Japan for the greater
good of Asia.  Perhaps it was his own limitation,
that he considered so strongly the personal
side in all things.  Perhaps a man
impassioned with the glory of the future, who
reckons not with the lives of his brothers, his
enemies or himself in order to promote his
dream of coming days into action, has the
greater human heart.

Now the picture of the Island of Pestilence
took sharper form and clearer colour.  It
literally hurtled into his mind....  They would
have sent him to Japan had it not been for his
delay in the Chinese police-station.  Doubtless
that mission concerned the Chinese agents
there.  The myriad Chinese working in the
Japanese financial world were possibly lined
up in the cause he had touched; perhaps they
were bound together in Young China's system.
They would have to leave Japan in case of
war, but their work might be done before they
left....  There was nothing missing from
Romney's idea of the plot to end war in the
world by making it too hideous even for the
militarists.  His present conception covered
every fact.  Each part fitted perfectly.  He
saw it far more clearly than when he outlined
the form of it to the sages of the Gobi....
Ti Kung, working in the laboratories of the
West, had brought back methods of producing
and propagating the cultures of all the
plagues.  Perhaps the packet Ti Kung had
thrust upon him, to carry from Shanghai to
Minglapo, had contained directions for
producing certain cultures, or added information
for spreading the most loathsome infections.

Romney felt the sweat start from his brow
and throat.  Sleep was farther and farther
away.  When his head started to work at a
pitch like this—it had to wear itself out, a
process requiring many hours....  The
plan would stop war, but the Japanese nation
would pay the price in extermination.  The
strike would come possibly before the soldiers
took the field; agents of the Big Three would
start to distribute infections among the
crowded myriads of Japanese, among women
and children—typhus, yellow fever, cholera,
bubonic plague....  A few hundred of
agents might ravage the entire island in a
night's work, and that which they carried
would require no more space than a surgeon's
bag.  Was this what Dr. Ti Kung called using
mind instead of muscle?  There would be no
heavy war engines—no noise, no reek of
powder, no twelve-mile projectiles.  That
was innocent boys' play.  Taking a citadel
with charges of infantry under the cover of
silencing batteries—a mere sport of picked
sides! ... Yet this thought held him: In
the greater economy of civilisation and the
future of mankind, was it not a fair price to
pay—to sacrifice one nation for the elimination
forever of the international curse?

Romney smiled.  He could see it, but
acting on it was out of his dimension.  When it
came to putting even a spy out of business, he
had quailed....  Hours passed, sleep
coming no nearer.  Once he lost himself in the
possibilities of waging war upon the country
of an enemy by means of spies alone.  Every
power had great systems of espionage at work
in all rival centres—enough to ravage the
land of an enemy with plague.  Nations
would have to protect themselves from each
other by the establishment of an unalterable
peace.  There was a lift to the vision, but
carrying baneful cultures of epidemic was no
job for one Romney.  Sorting the pastils—not
for him.

... The room was breathless.  At intervals
from the hall he heard the creak of a
board, as of some one's slow weight pressed
upon it; and twice he tiptoed to the window
imagining at least that he heard the soft pad
of a native foot on the iron balcony.  After
the second glance into the outer darkness, he
shot the casement bolt, and the stuffy smell of
the Chinese house thickened.  Toward morning
he really tried to sleep, but at the first
departure he would meet a cloud of hideous
rousing dreams.  He was abroad early and in
the street, a certain reality and grip of things
returning with the movement and daylight.

Romney's heart was pumping rather fast
for him.  At the desk they declared that Ti
Kung had not come in.  His own message was
uncalled for in the Doctor's box.  The
room-key was still gone.  At breakfast he waited
for word, watching the door of the dining-room.
An hour later, Dr. Ti Kung not having
joined him, he could no longer delay in
carrying out the plans which had occurred in
the night.  No change at the desk, and he
ventured to send a house-servant to Ti Kung's
room.  The *boy* returned saying that repeated
knocking at the door had brought no answer.
Romney, now convinced that something of
grave importance had happened, insisted for
the *boy* to try again.  For many moments he
was gone, before the *Nestor* people
reluctantly whispered that Dr. Ti Kung had been
found dead in his room.

In the street, Romney's quick step halted,
his perturbation strangely broken by the
personal issue.  It was like the beginning of life
again.  He saw the passage into the desert as
nearer than the night before.  The Post Road
from Peking was a portal to life of higher
scope—romance with Anna Erivan instead of
the romance of an ambitious Empire—love
of woman instead of the old loves of men,
peril, intrigue and adventure....  Now he
wondered that he could be so heartless....
A hand touched his sleeve.  Romney recognised
one of the house-servants of Minglapo.
He was led by him hastily to a second
rickshaw.  The coolies were bade to run.


.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   2

.. vspace:: 2

Nifton Bend met him at the door of the
shop, which was not yet opened for the day.
The slim cold hand turned in his, and Romney
felt as if it clutched at some inner part of him.

"Have you seen Ti Kung?".

Romney reported in swift brief terms.

.. vspace:: 2

"You did not sleep?" the Hunchback asked
in a queer way.

"No."

"Neither did I sleep," he added slowly,
"but our good Minglapo slept."

Nifton Bend touched his hand, led the way
to the second floor, and entered there an
apartment that was like a throne-room.  In
the centre was a huge canopied couch.
Romney's eye sought the heart of this even before
the lifted finger of the Hunchback directed....
The knees of the occupant were drawn
up against the abdomen—this fact obvious
before the cover was pulled back.  The great
face had taken on its ultimate gray and
yellow; the wide mouth that had laughed so
wonderfully was twisted in torture.  Romney
did not look far enough to ascertain the means
of death.

"Fat men sleep so soundly," repeated
Nifton Bend.

"But Ti Kung could not have been caught
sleeping.  I reached the hotel between eleven
and twelve last night, and sent up word of
arrival.  He must have been in the room
then—the thing already done."

The objects in the great room were lost for
the moment in a brown mist before Romney's
eyes.  Then he saw that the wolf-hound
head of the Hunchback was close to his own
breast—the face turned up to his own face.
His arm went around the low shoulder.

"The spirit of the little spy will rest easier,"
he whispered.

"You mean—"

"I was expecting this word from the
*Nestor*.  I expected them to find him—like
our master here.  As for me, I did not
sleep—"

"That was my trouble last night," Romney said.

"They may not have wanted you."

Romney recalled the creaking in the hall
and the fancied step upon the iron balcony.

"You think they have not finished?"

"I am sure they want *me*," the Hunchback
said, his burning eyes upturned to his countryman's
face.  "We will have a cup of tea
together—not here.  Come—"

For a moment Romney thought they had
turned to the room of the yellow lamplight,
but this was not the plan.  They entered the
apartment which Romney himself had used—the
same silken hangings so absurdly peopled
with pink embroidered storks and lavender
fishes.  The Hunchback rang for a servant.

"I see that you have not brought all that
we hoped for from the Inner Temple."

"I think they saw something of this day
from the distance of the Gobi," Romney
answered.  "They bade me hasten back, as if
the time were most precious—as if they
wanted their servants Minglapo and Ti Kung
to get their blessing before last night—"

"Their servants—?"

"They spoke of you and the two who have
passed with love and reverence," Romney said.

Quickly he told the story of his meeting
with Rajananda, Chi Yuan and Tsing Hsia—how
they were gathered together at the pool
in Kuderfoi, and how they listened to his own
story of the work and the dream.

"They were more inclined to take your
view of methods than mine," Romney added.
"They did not quibble about the death of
individuals, nor the manner of defense planned
by Young China in case of aggression by the
Japanese.  They said Japan is young-souled
and, if allowed to master China, would bring
into the world more of the horrors known as
*civilised*, which are destroying themselves in
Europe now.  They saw that you were pure.
It was not necessary for me to impress my
own conviction of that.  In fact, the three
Holy Men united in the belief that nowhere
in the world was there such a promise of
national exemplarship for the new order of
humanity as in this beginning under your
hand.  They saw very far and very deep.  I
wish you could go to the aged arms of
Rajananda now.  He seems pure power to me.  He
bathed his hands in the pool and spoke at last,
saying that you have brought the dream into
the world.  I think at times he saw you
alone—the others only helping.  He saw ahead that
the time would come when man would unite
with his brother, race to race.  But he said
that it was not quite time—that nothing of
your work would be lost, but that your work
had to do with conception rather than with
birth—"

"Then he saw that we are to be overpowered?"

"Do you believe that you are to be
overpowered?" Romney asked slowly.

"It is practically accomplished.  Old China
has already mastered us, but the vision
cannot be covered long.  The vision is in the
world."

"Rajananda said that.  He saw your work
lost in the folds of the night that still lingers
on the face of earth.  That was almost his
expression....  He bade me hurry to
carry his blessing with the others to you—a
message of peace and goodwill from the Holy
Fathers of the Gobi.  He said they were
watching and waiting for the dawn, that they
could not give you their approval in script,
since it might find no living hands to accept it,
no party to profit by it."

A servant had come to the call.  Nifton
Bend sent this one to find his own personal
servant....  The former returned, saying
that the General's *boy* had been sent on an
errand into the street.  Nifton Bend called
for tea.

"... They saw a great deal from a
distance—those three wise men," he added
thoughtfully.  "I should have been glad to
go to them....  And you say they saw us
as belonging only to the dream and not to
the action?"

"Yes.  That is what was said by Rajananda."

Nifton Bend's face was calm, something
almost boyish in his smile.

"I should like to have my young men about
me in this hour.  I should like to tell them
to watch for the working out of the great story
which I shall not be allowed to see....
*Story*—I think of everything as a story—a
man's relation to his work and to his woman....
Romney, she thinks much of you.  She
will be alone.  I'd like to live.  She makes
every day a quivering ecstatic thing.  I used
to think that death was the best thing that
could happen to a man, but death is different
now.  Let me talk a little English and laugh
with you....  Yes, death is different.  I
would rather be in hell with her than in
heaven without.  But, of course, everything
is ordered better than I could do it.  I think
I shall be *asleep* when she comes.  I was never
a good sleeper here.  I shall sleep well for
a little—until she comes and wakes me.  For
she will come.  I'm tired.  I'm bending to
the ground....  I talk to you of this sacred
thing—"

His head came very close to Romney, but
his eyes were mild and boyish....  "I liked
you because you had an Occidental heart—a
place for a woman.  If my young men were
here they would sit and talk with me about
China.  I love them.  They are passionate
countrymen—but I have finished with China.
Only the woman is left in my heart.  And
you—you are a white man who can understand—"

"Yes, I can understand—" Romney whispered.
"Where is Moira Kelvin?"

The Hunchback pointed forward toward
the apartment where Romney had seen her in
the yellow lamplight.

"You think there is danger, and you sit
talking with me?"

"She sleeps.  She knows nothing of these
things.  She sat and read to me all night....
She is young.  She is so beautiful.  I
put her to sleep against her will....  You
will see her to a ship.  You will tell her that
I had but one thought—that all dreams were
merged into one—that I sat at the last
contemplating her beauty and the tenderness—"

The tea was served before them.  The
Hunchback thanked the servant and bade him
go.  Romney absently reached for his teacup,
but Nifton Bend's hand touched his:

"Don't drink that.  My passage out is
doubtless in it, if not yours.  I don't think they
want you particularly, though they would, if
they understood....  Ah no, they have
doubtless murdered my servant.  No one but
his master sends him on an errand into the
street—"

Now the pinkish storks of the portieres
had real moisture about their lower joints, a
faint but veritable mist rising before them.
Smoothly Nifton Bend had allowed the
steaming contents of his cup to soak into the
wall-hangings behind his chair.  He did the
same with Romney's cup.  The fabric slowly
sucked in the liquid....  The thrall of
the great man deepened in Romney's heart.
His own romance was near and vibrant in the
room; yet he was touched by a dread which
the other did not share, apparently had not
thought of....  Was Moira Kelvin safely
sleeping after her night of devotion to the
sleepless one?

"Is it the Japanese secret agents that
became active last night at the *Nestor* and
here?" Romney asked quickly.

"No.  Our work never appeared to get to
them—thanks to your part with the little old
spy whom you liked so well.  It is China
punishing the younger generation."

"But did he not work in the laboratory—that
same spy?  I saw him coming up from
there—a trap-door—"

"Only for a day or two, at the last.  We
were watching him before his knee-cap
snapped.  He could not have gotten in his
report."

These were old matters.  Romney was
troubled about the woman, and burned with
the peril of the man before him.

"Perhaps they do not want you," he said.

"Our enemy is in this house," the Hunchback
answered.  "I shall not be allowed to
leave.  At least, not to go far—"

"Do you think you would be molested if
you walked out now—with Moira Kelvin and me?"

Nifton Bend seemed thinking aloud:

"They may have but one agent working
here, but ten men, one after another, would
die gladly for my life.  They are not afraid.
If it is not this tea, it will be another way and
soon.

"They will watch....  But we have
touched the vision.  The young men will
carry it through.  What are three lives
compared to starting the races of the world into
a new wisdom, a new comeliness?"

"While you live, *you are Young China*—and
what of the woman?"

"Ah, don't, Romney—"

"Is she safe?"

"What?"

"Are you sure that she will not be wanted?"

"China would not touch her—yet how
strange I did not think, even of the thousandth
chance!  Still, don't you see, I carry to her the
menace of myself.  Romney, you must help me—"

Romney was hushed by the spectacle of
Nifton Bend's sudden dread—and this from a
man scarcely capable of fear for himself.  He
saw the great constructive worker for
mankind turning helplessly to cope with a
personal issue.  He pressed the General's hand.

"You can count on me," he said quietly.  "I
don't think the game's up—"

"Romney, you bring me back the old
romance of America—"

"Let us think....  Have the police been
notified in regard to Minglapo?"

"No."

"If the police were called here, the work of
any secret agent in our case might be complicated—"

"Vulgar detentions—a day of questions—a
day lost—our enemy to organise.  Remember,
these killers are ready to die themselves—"

"Then let us go forth now—"

"Go forth into China?"  The question came
mildly.  "Any rickshaw coolie—"

"To the American Consulate—" Romney
interrupted.

The answer remained in Romney's mind as
one of the high moments of life.

"I would not accept sanctuary from a
country from which I have withdrawn my
allegiance."

"Then I'll stay with you here, but I think
we had better join the woman—"

"Yes—"

"Just a minute—wait," Romney whispered,
touching the other's sleeve.  "Let them think
that the tea did it.  Walk heavily, on my arm,
through the halls.  Let your legs reel a bit.  It
will give us time—"

"Yes, it might give us time—"

The utter hopelessness of Nifton Bend's
repetition of his words brought to Romney
something like an expression of Fate itself.
The Hunchback, in accepting China, had
accepted the code of her servants.  The
condemned never resist death.

But Romney did not share the attitude.

"Listen," he added.  "They will be
watching.  They will think you dying from the
poison—if they really fixed this tea.  They
will leave you alone in your rooms—possibly
for hours.  I'll go out and get your young men
together.  Don't you see?  I am one of them.
You are the Cause while you live.  We'll
come again and take you out—"

The expression upon the Hunchback's face
deepened with pain.

"I love the thought.  It is brave and
strong—as young men are.  But it would mean the
deaths of all who came—yours and the others.
My young men cannot be spared.  It would
not save me.  We are in China....  There
is this that you can do—I was almost forgetting.
Here are two packets of papers.  It is
the whole affair that you hated so—the plan
and all, in case of aggression by Japan.
There is only one safe place for these, in case
our cause is lost—the bottom of the sea.
Certain of these parchments are fire and
acid-proof.  It's the work of years of Ti Kung and
others.  Japan would use them quickly
enough against China.  You must take care to
prevent all that.  Don't dare to die with these
papers on your person, Romney....  And
now may we go to her?"


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   3

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There was a smile back of the tortured eyes
of the Hunchback as he reeled through the
hallway, holding heavily to Romney's arm.
The latter caught a trace of the humour of
the thing.  He could not have reached this
smile had it not been for the days in the Gobi.
A man who had had his own loved one torn
away, who has been forced to take his faith
from the substance and place it upon the spirit
of things, does not easily find himself denied
a laugh afterward, when the world is at its worst.

There was another urge to realisation that
came in that brief and laboured walk to the
room where he had seen the woman and her
own in the yellow lamplight.  It seemed the
nexus to an ampler power and a broader
wisdom.  Nifton Bend's part in Young China
was already done.  To a material mind, it
was the darkest hour, but Romney lived and
moved that moment in a larger world where
brave unselfish thoughts have immortal
potency.  He saw that no task is finished with
the conceiver—that Nifton Bend was merely
the drawer of plans, that the builders must
come, that matter must obey since the plan
was in the world.  He saw also a new power
in the quick refusal of the Hunchback to
bring his young men into this house of secret
death.  The dreamer would spare the builders.

The door was opened instantly.  Romney
stepped behind the Hunchback to keep the
eyes of the hall from observing the change,
for Nifton Bend was himself at the turn of
the knob.  Such men cannot be relied upon as
actors....

"I have brought you back an old friend,
Moira," he said.

Romney pushed the door shut behind him
and stepped forward to the woman....
They did not speak.  Nifton Bend asked with
concern:

"You did not sleep?"

"I was asleep when you sent the tea."

The Hunchback's face was turned from
her.  Romney saw the broad bent shoulders
sag a little.  The woman did not see that, but
sensed the recoil of the tragic shaft that had
entered her lover's heart....  Her eyes
instantly left Romney's face.  She turned,
almost running—her hands to the low
shoulders.  She was never more beautiful....
Nifton Bend lifted the little teapot
from its wrapping in padded silk.

"How long since this came?" he asked.

The voice was calm again, but the tone was
hollow.

"Don't drink that.  I'll get some fresh for
you both," she said.  "It must be a half-hour
since that came—"

"Moira ... don't call for more now.
We will sit down together—we three.  Romney
has brought us the voice of God from the
desert....  I hoped you would rest a little
more.  I was thoughtless to let them waken you—"

Romney could scarcely credit his listening.

The woman spoke:

"Indeed, I never felt more animate.  I was
fathoms deep when the knock came—deep,
deep and dreaming.  The knock must have
repeated several times, for it became a part of
my dream, before I awoke and answered....
The *boy* said that you were having
tea and had sent some to me.  I thought you
would soon be coming, so I drank as I dressed—to
be ready for you.  I began to feel more
joyous and light—like a little girl combing
her hair for a great day.  It was like a day of
something-to-happen.  It must have been
your coming, Sir Romney.  We hoped to see
you last night—"

There was a blithe richness of vitality, a
sparkle that made him remember the wine at
Longstruth's, the Chinese girls twanging the
*vina* in the bamboo clumps by the river....
Wine and song at Longstruth's, and a score
of other thoughts, light and indistinct as the
trailing movements of a vagary—with this
concrete enormity in the room.

Romney suddenly whipped in closer to
reality.  His mind had been trying to hold off
the truth from itself.  Moira Kelvin turned
to her mirror.  The Hunchback, glancing to
see that his face was out of range of the glass,
directed one slow terrible look into the eyes
of his friend.  Romney took it all.  For an
instant there was an indescribable tightness
across his chest and a sense of inadequacy to
bear the drama.  Nifton Bend had already
accepted the death of his beloved.  He would
spare her from all knowledge of it.  There
seemed a dull gray shine about his face.  The
long hands were lifted a little, but steady.
The face did not implore; it commanded
Romney to be calm, to help in bringing
happiness to the departure.

Romney was continually swept by surges of
incredulity—that this thing was working out
under his eyes.  In another way it was like
the last moment of a tragedy which one knows
is coming.  He wanted to leave before the
end.  He felt himself an inadequate third in
this great hour....  He heard his own
voice, telling of the three sages at the little
pool of the lilies in Kuderfoi....  He was
describing Rajananda....  She laughed
and came close for an instant to listen.  She
caught the same magic that had been so dear
to Anna Erivan....  He remembered a
similar look from Moira Kelvin, though
more imperious and passionate, when he told
her of Nifton Bend and Young China....
He caught a glance of calmness and
commendation from the eye of the Hunchback
now....  He pictured the tranquil and
compassionate Chi Yuan, the firmer and more
balanced Tsing Hsia to whom the sureness of
the retributive forces of life were as inevitable
as gravitation.  He spoke again of the little
withered master lying between them—so vast,
so calm and inclusive....  Always Romney's
own story came in with its wonders and
pictures, but he did not let them reach the
point of words.  His romance was something
he might have brought to Moira Kelvin alone,
if there had been hours.  He longed for her
sanction and to show her how wise and deep
in life she had been, since all that she had said
came true; he wanted her word on the chance
of finding Anna Erivan again—to help his
faith.  There was none to whom the story
belonged as to her; but it was not for Nifton
Bend in this hour....

He repeated instead what the three sages
had said of the dream which was Nifton
Bend's—what they thought of him ... and
how the picture of Nifton Bend and herself,
together in the lamp-lit room, had stayed
with him through the days and nights of the
desert riding.

Her movements were swift, her laugh sweet
and low, her love and joy on the wing....
For a moment they forgot the Hunchback....
Something had come to them from
their fortnight—something that had to do
with the moths and the rice fields and the tea
among the pyramids.

"You are wonderful, Sir Romney.  You
change so rapidly now....  You are
sun-darkened.  All waste seems burned away.
You bring the breath of the desert nights—and
something else.  Your heart has known
some great replenishment, and some great
terror.  I see the man who was a boy when I
first looked....  All happens where
Nifton Bend is.  I think it must be the ignition
of his mission and his service.  The world
will never know the wonder of him.  Every
one changes who touches him—the young men—"

He had followed her eyes to the
Hunchback, who had poured a cup of tea and was
drinking leisurely.

"You said you did not want tea," she
ventured.  "I could have had it fresh.  That
must be cold and bitter from standing."

"I like it strong," said Nifton Bend.

Moira Kelvin was speaking on, but Romney
only heard the murmur of her voice.  The
picture of the next hour came to him—that
all was done.  There was something like a
cry in his heart for the end of the mystic.  And
poignantly the sweetness of the woman before
him returned—the last moment by the river
when her fervent impulse to give him a token
expanded his nature to its broadest reaches of
emotion.  Her splendour was lifted now, her
whole being crowned with the spirit that can
only come to one whose quest has ended....
The Hunchback came toward them.
The calm that Romney saw upon that face
was marmoreal, the calm of one whose circle
is almost finished.  He led her to a chair which
the yellow rug covered, and sat before her
upon a cushion, his arm across her knees.

"You are young, but very old," he said.
"You are a child, a girl, a woman all lavish
in her love, but more than all a mother.
This—this Romney—is like a son to us—and those
brave young men—our sons.  We are ancient,
Moira.  We shall end our work to-day and
depart.  We have known the cities of men,
and the fruitful valleys have been our
meeting-places.  To-day we shall go to the hills.
We have talked much of the world.  To-day
we shall talk of God.  Our work is finished.
This is one of our sons who will carry on the
work here.  It is good that he is with us....
Moira—Moira—what a love it is."

She bent forward, listening, her face in a
kind of noon glory.

"What has come to us?" she whispered.
"Has Sir Romney brought us magic from the
desert?  Does he carry with him some power
from the Holy Men? ... I think I was
never so happy.  All things that I have
thought undone seem accomplished.  Are all
the rest of the days just for you and me?
Shall we walk together—our tasks all
finished? ... Ah, you have always had so
much to do.  I have been wasteful in the
waiting hours.  I have seemed always waiting for
you to come to me—"

"I shall not leave you again," he whispered.

"But your work—"

"My work is finished."

"I thought when I found my own, that it
would be like this—everything pushed away
for our being together—and now it has come....
Listen, I have hated her, when you
found her so very beautiful—"

The Hunchback turned with a smile to Romney.

"Her rival," he whispered.  "She means
the old Mother China—"

"She has taken you away from me—days
and nights.  I am terrible in waiting.  You
will go to her no more?"

"No more," he answered.

"Did she cast you out?" she asked softly.
"Is it because she will not have you that you
come back to me?"

"Yes," he said.

She thought he was carrying out her own
whimsicality.

"Fancy my rival turning you out!  You
would not have been called to one so bereft
of reason and vision....  I know *you*!
No one knows you as I do....  I knew
something of you when Sir Romney first
spoke your name.  It was a call to me.  Did
I not answer it?  Did I not come at
once? ... And you—when I came—what a
moment!—that look that flashed between us
like light across the world....  And your
hand as you said, 'Come in!' ... your hand.
It is the same now....  You are so powerful!
Your touch brings me to the earth—"

"It is for you," he said.

"Is it not strange?" she was whispering.
"All is changed in a day....  You know,
in a way, it was Sir Romney who brought me
you, and now he has come again bringing us
our true life together....  I thought when
I found the one, I should rise and compel all
things.  Instead I bowed and listened.  You
never knew how terrible it was to have you
so lost in affairs—even of an Empire.  But
you have come home to me....  My
thoughts are going away.  Why is it?  Closer
to me—"

Romney was nearer to them.  The Hunchback's
left hand was thrust back.  It closed
upon his in an iron clasp, commanding silence
and peace.  There was an intensity of power
in the long gray face—an expression of
invincible conquest that to Romney was like
the mastery which the men of the future are
to know.  He was holding pain from her by
his force of will.  The instant Romney
realised this, it became actual.  Her cheek was
upon his shoulder now, her eyes like a drowsy
child's.  Often she touched the face so close
to hers, once with her lips.  Once her eyes
fixed for a moment on Romney's.

"Forgive me, my friend," she said with a
smile, and added as if confident he would
understand all: "The day is strange.  I must
be very happy....  You are a good omen,
Sir Romney—"

There seemed a certain wickedness, apart
from time and motive, in the destruction of
such beauty.

"Oh, I know!  I know now! ... You
are putting me to sleep again—"

"For our journey!"

And then Romney heard:

"... We are one.  We will go on.
There is no end....  I thought I was a
terrible woman out in the world.  But I was
only a little girl looking for her true
companion....  I came to him and he knew.
We are mated and he is putting me to
sleep....  It is deep, deep sleep, and he
will be with me.  Yet I almost hate to go.
Beloved—your head a moment on my breast.
I know only love....  Ah, closer to me....
He will not mind....  He, too, is
searching for his own—"

It was her theme.

.. vspace:: 2

Nifton Bend did not arise from his cushion
at her knees.  With his free hand, he drew a
purse and a pistol and a packet of bank-notes
from his coat, and then he spoke:

"You will go now.  You will rush forth
into the hall as one maddened by pain.  You
see, I use your plan.  They have seen me.
I think you will be able to reach the street.
Inasmuch as you are stricken, they will call
their work done.  But do not let a servant
approach you.  Be wary in the street, should
they care to follow.  The papers must be
dropped into the sea—and then you have
finished....  Use the pistol in the hall if
necessary—all the chambers.  But I think if
they see the end upon you, they will let you
die outside."

The free hand was raised to Romney, who
bowed to his knee before the man and woman.

"You mean beauty and manhood to me—you
precious two," he whispered.  "The
packets shall be sunk as you say.  I have been
proud to serve you both.  Always I shall feel
you above and beyond."

"Ah, America—so often you bring her
home to my heart.  Godspeed to you, Romney.
All is well with us.  All is better than
the best we could know or ask for....
We will be alone together.  We shall have
silence here....  Yes, that is well.  Toss
the yellow rug about us.  Now we shall know
the deeper dreaming."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HILL COUNTRY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART FIVE: CONCLUSION


.. class:: center large bold

   THE HILL-COUNTRY

.. vspace:: 3

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   1

.. vspace:: 2

With his hand on the knob of the
door, Romney looked back.
The whole hour he reviewed in
a rush.  He had not been heroic,
nor even uncommon.  His story had been
stammered.  There had been nothing to tell
such a pair, lost in each other.  Even the
cause of China seemed little and unsubstantial
compared to the splendour of their relation.
The courage of Nifton Bend should
always mean the arrival of man to manhood
in Romney's thoughts.  The far roving
spirit of the quest-woman come at last to the
home-nest of a great man's heart was a sort
of pattern for the world's romance....
She who had been the ruling imperious
mistress of a few flashing days of his own life,
was a child, utterly feminine and receptive in
the presence of the greater force.

The big secrets of life had come to him in
this hour, to be unwoven and unfolded during
the years that remained.  Just now Romney
felt himself small in that he had risen to no
part to help or spare them.  He forgot that
the revelations were for him alone; that he
had furnished complete understanding; that
his own soul carried forth the message of their
end.  In this sense he was chosen.  No man
could have done better.  He would have been
crude, indeed, to resist their way.  He had
entered upon the heroism of abnegation.

The hush of their great story was in his
heart as he stood by the door....  The face
of the Hunchback was upturned to the bowed
head of the woman.  There was no sound,
no movement.  The leaves of an ancient
mulberry tree lay tranced against the leaded
window.  The yellow rug was folded close.  The
lords of life and death were in that shadowed
room.

An ironical smile came to Romney's lips as
he turned the knob....  He was meeting
the little world of men again.  He must act.
He must go on with his little part, after
dwelling in the presence of those who were
great enough to show the world their own
immortal selves....  He must fight for his
own life—what a travesty.  How little were
the herds of mere men moving to and fro on
the broad back of ample mother earth.  For
a little time longer he, Romney, must play his
part—or die.

A last devoted look back, even as the
substantial wonder of his own life recurred.  To
Anna Erivan now.  Nothing but distance lay
between—the task accomplished....  It
seemed an unreckonable length of time since
last night when he threaded the litany of a
lover in the lobby of the *Nestor* waiting for
Dr. Ti Kung....

He plunged into the hall—left hand to
his brow, knees tumbling, his right hand in
the loose pocket of the corded blouse he wore,
the pistol in his palm.  A pistol always made
him laugh, gave him the sense of being less
than a man....  No, the task was not quite
done—the yellow packets to put away....
And a woman waiting in the hill-country.
In that instant of outward bewilderment the
reality of Anna Erivan was very close....
A servant with a tray met him in the hall near
the stairs.  Romney veered by, and turned
quickly.  The yellow *boy* had placed his tray
on the floor and followed as if to assist a guest
in the house.  His face was troubled but innocent.
Romney staggered on.

The broad curving stairs were empty; the
lower hall.  The white man saw a shadow
move on the polished floor beyond the
half-drawn portieres that led into the shop of
Minglapo.  Romney's way told once more.
No hesitation, a leap through the curtains.
The servant there stepped back in surprise,
his hands quite empty.  The other joined him
behind.  Their heads bowed together as if to
consult as to the best way to do their duty by
a totally incomprehensible guest.  It was
with difficulty that Romney held to suspicion
and the part assigned....  The great
front-door had not been opened to the Square.
Romney reached it but stood aside:

"Quick," he called in Chinese.  "Open.  I
go to a doctor.  I have made a mistake and
fear death."

He leaned his back to the sash, while they
unfastened.  There appeared to be no thought
of detention.  One of the servants was sent
to call a 'rickshaw-coolie, another to explain
his hurried departure to Minglapo.  Romney
merely wanted them away from the door as
he passed....  He was in the street, and did
not wait for the 'rickshaw.  He had no panic,
in fact, marvelled a little at his coldness,
under the play of dissolution conducted
exteriorly.  The street brought a sudden
bewilderment.  He could not hold it all at
once—Minglapo, Ti Kung, Nifton Bend, Moira
Kelvin—and he who had served them,
unscathed, unmolested, so far.

Yet foreigners in his case saw a drunken
stranger or thought they did, and the Chinese
watched in their queer way expecting
anything....  Now he was in China, as the
Hunchback had said.  Any one of the
hundreds of natives near him and in sight—merchants,
students, coolies, boys or scavengers—might
be the one deputised to get him.  He
crossed streets in the midst of Chinese.  They
searched his face, keen looks, glances of scorn
and covert amusement.  He had never felt a
native throng so powerfully before....

Doubtless he was followed.  Doubtless they
let him alone, believing that the assassination
principle was satisfactorily at work....
The brush of a wadded coat against his own
stung him strangely.  He remembered the
absolute acceptance of death on the part of
Nifton Bend.  There had not been the slightest
expectancy of escape in that strange
far-seeing intelligence.

The same calmness was Romney's now, and
the realisation that he had passed through an
episode that would ever increase in importance
so long as he lived.  He had been with
the heart of new China when it ceased to beat;
more than that, he had lost a man of his own
heart and a woman who had shown him the
way to power and glory....  From the
first moment he had been drawn to the
Hunchback—a kind of passion that seemed
to awaken potentialities of his being, starting
within strange premonitive urgings, that left
him more and more dissatisfied with the smug
and the small things of life.  As for courage,
he had seen much of the courage of the open
with its laugh and flaunted arms, but this at
the last of the Hunchback broke all the
former models....  Romney halted
wondering.  He had passed days with Ti
Kung and Minglapo.  The former had lifted
him from the wash of the gutter literally; yet
all of the night's close-running horrors
centred about the death of this white man and
woman—and they were one.  A grandeur, an
isolation about them.

... For a moment he had forgotten himself.

His body straightened, his face upturned
to the morning sun.  Suppose he had brought
Anna Erivan to Tientsin—to the house of
Minglapo.  He might have left her with
Moira Kelvin when the tea came.  Yes,
it might have happened just like that....
The old sage Rajananda must have felt the
flood of love that poured forth from the
American's breast that instant.  Where did
he stand that he saw all this? ... Only the
papers now, and the journey to the desert.
He must watch.  He must be sleepless.  He
would not be safe until he reached Nadiram,
at least.

A deep sense of weariness gradually
oppressed.  He felt his own weight and the
misery of life.  The world seemed mad to
him—his heart thirsting for the beauty and
peace of a woman—and his master.  Somehow
he wanted Rajananda once more before
the ancient one passed.  Distance and time
only increased the richness of this relation.
He felt the hated packet against his breast.
If it were found upon him, it would prove
enough forever to rob him of peace, even if
the assassin failed to strike.  Romney smiled
again at his own weakness in the midst of
recent great affairs.  He knew best of all his
own inconsequence....

His hand touched the purse in his pocket,
and he drew it forth.  It was heavy with gold.
The note-case contained English and native
money to a large amount....  Now it came
for the first time—the possibility of his arrest
in connection with the deaths of Minglapo
and Nifton Bend.  The servants would report
his presence in the house.  His steps
quickened.  Everywhere was the native crowd.
His slightest movement toward making away
with the packets would be noted....  He
was hastening to the water-front.

He hailed a native rivercraft, pointing to
one of the farthest of the ships lying at
anchor.

In the middle of the stream, his back
turned to the boatman, he drew the packets
from his pocket, and loosening the long string
that tied them, he fastened the small,
blunt-nosed automatic pistol Nifton Bend had given
him, to the papers.  This was the only heavy
object within reach.  Then, as he directed the
eye of the native to a ship at right angles to
the present passage, he dropped the packets
and the weight overside.  The sense of
ceremonial did not come to him until the papers
had sunk from sight in the yellow Peiho.
After that for a moment the American lost
all interest in the finding of a certain ship, but
as the boatman turned back toward the city-front,
Romney encountered a peculiar dread
of entering that crowd again, and at the same
time remembered that the ship he had ordered
the native to punt for was flying Blue Peter
at the fore, and also that her lines had a
strange familiarity.

He was thinking rapidly now.  The
packets were safely out of the way.  He had
tied them tightly to the weight, making a
satisfactory use of the bit of a mankiller, its
chambers all unused.  Perhaps they had
followed him to the water-front watching even
now for his return, or some word from this
boatman regarding him.  Romney turned and
scanned the river harbour again.

There was Blue Peter surely enough, and
the rusty tramp that queerly filled his eyes a
second time.  Now Romney laughed aloud.
As certainly as he lived, it was the *John
Dividend* at this instant drawing up her huge
barnacled hook.  His voice whipped the
boatman about and with mutterings anent the
proverbial insanity of foreigners, which the white
man was by no means supposed to understand,
the native began poling once again toward the
smoking craft....  It meant down the
river anyway and giving Tientsin the slip.
If the tramp were headed south he could
make the shore at Tongu at any rate and catch
the Chinese Eastern across Shantung Province
in the general direction of Tushi-kow.

There was no ladder overside.  Romney
had to shout, and this was hard for him.  He
did not know his own voice, and could not
remember letting it out in this way since a
boy.  It was like calling up to an uninterested
some one in a third floor window.  The "old
man" showed himself, spat overside, narrowly
missing the lesser craft, and appeared to reflect
whether he cared to be bothered or not.
Perhaps he needed a hand.  In any event the
ladder came down, and Romney, grateful for
the thickness of the *John Dividend* between
him and the keenest possible eye on the waterfront,
ran up the tarred threads calling the
boatman to follow.  The latter obeyed,
though his expostulation was high-keyed.

The "old man" went on with his clearing.
Romney had never had any truck with this
person and did not care to begin now.  He
was aboard and the *John Dividend* was
getting into the down-channel under her own
steam.  Straight to the engine-room where he
had once trafficked with coal against his will,
Romney made his way now and presently was
measured head to toe by a single and most
calculating gray eye.

"Where are you heading, Mack?" he asked.

"Tongu.  Chifu."

"Take this river-coolie in charge.  I'm
healed.  I go to Chifu with you.  I want him
to go too.  Cut his boat loose from the ladder.
I'll pay him for it.  I'll pay him for his time
and passage back.  I'll pay you for managing
the job....  How much?"

He felt light and fine toward McLean.  If
it had not been for that loan, he would have
gone to Japan instead of the Gobi.

It was not a matter in which McLean was
accustomed to make haste.  He did not
appear disturbed by the outcries of the
Chinese, who thought the American was
interceding with the engine-man to pay for
his passage out from the water-front....
Presently the fence spoke.  Romney would
have paid many times the amount for the
service.  He found the steward and a berth....
They were three miles below the city
when he went on deck.  The ladder had been
drawn up.  No native craft was trailing....
The river boatman was easily placated
later from the purse.  Tongu was passed
without misadventure.  Presently the *John
Dividend* was tumbling around the capes in
the Yellow Sea, and Romney with quickened
pulse, five days later, started inland from
Chifu to Tushi-kow.


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   2

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Romney was changed.  The thing called
civilisation settled back.  Only the spirit of
that which he had passed through remained
with him from past days.  All seemed closed,
integrated.  He travelled light.  There was
no menace, no apparent pursuit.  He could
not hold the continual wariness.  Fear slipped
from him before he rejoined Bamban at
Tushi-kow.  They were on the road to
Turgim with two camels and one driver with
provisions.  Romney leaned forward.

Sometimes it was like a terrible thirst.
The pictures of the past no longer fed his
heart.  They too were completely integrated.
He wanted the living woman again—her
voice and hands, her sweet and sacred
mysteries.  He was burned with waiting.  The
actual resistance of the miles of sand and rock
against the tread of swift camels was a
peculiar and persistent deviltry.  His sleep was
brief and fragmentary.  Only lovers and
great workmen can endure such sleeplessness.
Many times each night he awakened to see
the greater stars moved but a short step
westward....  Turgim, that had meant so much
in approach, was nothing but a night-camp
upon arrival.  Ahead was another long barren
stretch to Nadiram; every hour had to be
wrestled back.  His images all had to do with
a certain coming hour.

From a white man's standpoint he had little
to count on.  His woman had been torn away
by a desert-band—only the promise of a
withered ancient creature whose next breath
was less than a good gambling chance, yet
Rajananda had bulked mightily in his heart.
In his best moments he had faith—a priceless
winning.  From a white man's standpoint,
he was on the longest possible chance, but
only in the darker and more terrible passages
could Romney accept this....  There was
one moment of starlight, the last night of
riding between Turgim and Nadiram, when he
really had a great moment.

It was in solitude, as all such visitations
arrive.  Bamban was on the other camel with
the driver, since provisions were down to
small compass.  He had fallen into a deep
reverie and came-to with his hands out, palms
stretched upward, eyes turned to the stars, his
lips moving with a sentence like this:

"It's the love of the Long Road.  I have
found her.  No man can spoil that.  I will
find her again—if not now, when the time
comes—if not here, there—"

Romney laughed at the stars.  He had been
listening to his own soul, perhaps.  It was
stronger than he.  He wanted her here and
now; but the fact that the sentences had come
through to his brain, had a significance that
he was deeply-grounded enough in life to
understand.  And his palms had been
stretched out.  That meant submission, the
world over.

He laughed again.  He was very far from
the world just now.  Cities—even China—had
distressed him.  He must reach calm on
that.  He must go back and master that terror
of men.  The desert had given him a tithe of
her mysticism and power.  He would have
to go back and make it tell among men.
Would he have to go back alone?

Nifton Bend had mastered himself in the
midst of men.  Romney gripped a fuller
understanding.  The Hunchback had passed
this barrier—after that his mate came to him.
They were a completed circle—one even in
their dying....  He would love to tell
Anna Erivan that story....  In the very
strength of his submission, his faith grew.
The word of Rajananda returned.  There
had been no doubt in what the old master
said.  Anna Erivan was to wait for him in the
hill-country.  All that Rajananda had said
about other things had been fulfilled....
And Nifton Bend had followed his own into
the deeper dreaming.  What did he mean by
that?  He seemed so glad to go, even though
their lives were most beautiful together.

The next day Romney squinted up at the
sun.  Something of the same power came to
him again.  There was a cross in the blinding
light, and after that a full sheaf of golden
wheat.  Of course it might have been only the
glare in his eyes, but he felt very strong and
that he would bring something of different
manhood to the woman who waited for him.

Romney leaned forward.

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Bamban accepted him.  There were no two
ways now.  He had bowed in silence long
after the story of the end of Minglapo, even
lamenting a little that he had not been there.
But Rajananda had somehow put a seal on
his service to the white man.  Romney
regarded the *boy* as he had never been quite
able to do before, and respected the nature
capable of such awe and reverence for the
holy man.  More especially admirable had
Bamban proved on this last swift lonely
journey....  They sat together during a
long evening in the stone court of the
Consulate at Nadiram (the door shut, the pole
empty where the Russian flag had hung, and
the hyenas whimpering afar off).

"I'd like to go on to-night," Romney muttered.

"It would kill the camels.  They have been
pressed as never before."

"Did you ask if there were two new camels
here—exchange or rent?"

"Nothing of the kind."

"I shall wait."

"My master is parched," said Bamban.

When his servant went to the Rest House,
Romney remained to contemplate his world
a little from the west wall where he had sat
so many nights.  At last he arose and went to
the door where she had stood—the place of
their first meeting—and knelt a moment on
the stone.

Even the next day the camels travelled but
slowly.  The same pair had come from
Tushi-kow and they needed the rest of many days.
From Nadiram to the place of the thonged
stakes required two full days' travel; indeed,
the night had fallen before they reached this
point on the road to Wampli, and no desert-band
was encountered on the journey....
The night was very still and hot.  For two
days a south wind had blown, and they
breathed now the burning of the lower
borders of the desert.

A deserted world.  Romney could not eat.
With deep strange kindness, the *boy* pressed
him to drink his tea.  The white man had
come and there was no sign.  His head was
heavy on his breast.  When his thoughts
became too swift and torturing for stillness,
he arose from the fire and walked to the place
of the stakes.  From there he followed the
way to the point where he had fallen in his
revolt against the natives....  They had
taken her on from this point—just here he was
carried to the camel....  The sentences of
the old master on that last day recurred
persistently now.

"... He said that man goes alone on
his mission and that woman waits.  He said
that the woman I had found was to wait in
sanctuary....  He seemed to love her, too,
Bamban—"

"Yes, he called her his daughter, and spoke
twice of her filling his bowl in the stone
square at Nadiram—"

"He said that he was going to her,"
Romney went on, his words heavy and slow, "—that
she was waiting for me in the hills of his
country—not far from this place."

"He will come soon," said Bamban, who
was stretching out the blankets.

"He said there must be a new and different
love between man and woman in the world.
But, my God! they die!  They seem to die
when they love like that—"

"I do not understand," said Bamban.

"Why, I saw such a love—but there was no
child.  They died—in a room at Minglapo's
house....  They did not have time—"

"You mean the General—"

"Yes—"

"His work was finished."

"But his woman wanted a baby.  She told
me long ago—"

"Perhaps she saw at the last that it was
better to go—"

"I am afraid—afraid to-night—tired and
done.  I won't fail.  I won't lie down—but
I thought he would be here to take me—"

"He will come," said Bamban.

Romney was looking up at the lustrous film
of night.  His lips moved again:

"He said the builders were coming to lift
the earth—that the saints were coming, for
he could hear their songs—that the heroes
were coming with light about their heads,
their voices beautiful with the story of
God—that they must come from the love of man
and woman here—but they reach that love
only to die—"

"My master must sleep," said Bamban.

"I am very far from sleep," said Romney;
but the other pressed him down, and the small
hard hand was in his, and there was no
yellow and white between them.  And almost
instantly, Romney slept.

He awakened in a smoky red light, started
up to see the heads of camels and horses
against the east; then a voice:

"My son, all is well.  You will arise and
go to the beloved who waits for you in the
hills of my country—not far from this place."

The ancient shaven head emerged from the
yellow robe, so near that Romney had not
perceived it until after the distance had unfolded
its objects.  Romney leaned forward and took
him in his arms.

"Tell me again—is she well?  Is all well
with her?"

"Yes—her face turned to us.  And now
arise and break your fast, my son, for you are
worn dark and dry from much fasting.  I
have brought you milk and fresh fruit, such as
the desert does not furnish."

Straight north they travelled until noon was
high.  The white dromedary had an escort
of eight camels, including Romney's pair,
and some twenty desert horsemen.  They
were entirely off travel lines, and Romney
realised that the way was kept closed to
commerce between Nadiram and Wampli by the
desert-parties, chiefly to protect this northern
way to the country of Rajananda....  In
the afternoon they followed for two hours the
path of an ancient river-bed, and entered,
when the shadows gathered, a land of rocky
hills—the beasts quickened their pace under
the scent of water....  At sunset, by a
spring, Romney's camel kneeled.  The escort
vanished.  Bamban unfolded fresh white
clothing.  Romney was granted the luxury of
a bath.

Ahead was verdure and a temple.  It was
low, and there was a walled garden to the
side, the green foliage hanging over the stones....
Beyond was a village that looked as
if it had been born again from a ruin.  It was
strange as a dream—cattle feeding peacefully
in the dip of land between the temple and the
town.  Night was creeping in.

Even Bamban had vanished.  There was
silence.  Romney emerged from the
sheltering leaves of the spring, his eyes fixed upon
the temple....  There was a voice:

"Ah, do not keep me longer from him!"

... A strange altering of time and
space—a wavering brightness in the dusk—a
woman's figure in the gateway of the garden
wall.

"My man!  My man!"

She was running to him, her arms held
forward.  His own limbs stumbled, for the
full power of his life went from him to her
breast....  They were alone....  They
entered the garden of the temple together....
Her arms did not leave him, yet they
were about his knees, and words came to him
leaning forward:

"... Remember—that night as we
journeyed forward by swiftest camels—the
risen star in our eyes—the quest in our
hearts?"

Romney caught her up in his arms and
stilled her whispering lips against his own.

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   THE END.

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