Florence Gregory was a just and a good-humored mistress, not an indulgent one. And she was in no way of the class of women who court or accept the advice of their servants. Even in the days of her modest Oxford housekeeping, when her own youthfulness and the deficiencies of the vicarage purse would have made most girls so placed peculiarly vulnerable to the insidious encroachment of hireling “I wills,” and “I won’ts,” she had been truly mistress of that manse, adamant towards would-be familiarity. And that natural smooth caste hardness had not softened under the flux of travel or the sunshine of affluence. From their first quarter of an hour together she had commanded distinctly, and Ah Wong, without comment, had obeyed. During the last week Mrs. Gregory had leaned not a little on her amah, sensing in the Chinese woman, who too was a mother, a something of sympathy that even Hilda could not give her, but she had in no way abrogated any of her personal autocracy to Ah Wong or let the space of discipline between them lessen. When Ah Wong had exclaimed, “No, no, madame! Not go!” the first liberty Ah Wong had ever taken, the mistress had scarcely heard and had not heeded; but when, on their return to the Peak, the amah had again urged “Not go!” Mrs. Gregory had checked her sternly, and Ah Wong had known that it was worse than useless to repeat the entreaty. To appeal to any one else, against her mistress — to Missee Hilda, to the master, or even to John Bradley — never occurred to her. And she submitted silently, only venturing a piteous, “Me clome? Madame take Ah Wong?”
      “Of course,” Mrs. Gregory said, not unkindly. “He expressly said I should bring you.”
      That there could be no question between them as to who “He" was told clearly of how Wu Li Chang had gripped the thought of both these women, and (at least of one) had gripped also the imagination.
      At five o’clock — the hotness of the terrific day was scarcely waning yet, and Hilda and Tom in the darkened sitting-room were eating ices with their tea — Mrs. Gregory and Ah Wong went quietly out and took the next car down the Peak. On the level (such level as terraced Victoria City can show) the amah hailed two rickshaws, and they bowled inconspicuously to the water’s edge.
      They did not use the ferry. A little boat was waiting for them.

—

But presently her thoughts turned, as they always did, to her hero-the unknown but loved Chevalier of the Purple Mask. For years now all her girlish dreams had built themselves about this picturesque, romantic identity. She loved him. Girls often love so — exaggerating, of course, in their young unspoiled enthusiasm — exaggerating beyond all possibility of reality; but doing themselves less harm than at first thought might be feared; for they build up for themselves an ideal and a standard by which the man who comes to them with outstretched hand must be measured. “Kings they make gods, and meaner creatures kings.” And unless through love of his lady the real king can rise to a something of godship, the meaner creature to something king-like, he runs good risk of being sent a-packing.

It was in the garden, almost where he had seen her first, that the end came the first great punctuation in two lives. Tzŭ was sewing — she often sewed — sitting on an old bench, a little shaded from the sun, the flowers blazing for yards about her. The day was fiercely hot, and the few guests still remaining kept to the dimmer comforts of the house. But the Chinese girl loved the sunshine, and drank its hot wine as greedily as the flowers did.
      Lord Ashford was not looking for her when he came upon her. He had weighed it all — realizing his dilemma at last — and he had decided against it. That he believed as he did that Miss Ch'êng would repulse any suit of his but whetted his desire to urge it. He came of stock that took joy in difficulties, loved untying international knots with suave diplomacy, loved still better cutting them with a ready sword. He liked resistance — his metal rang to it. But he had himself in hand. And his judgment told him nay. Chêng Tzŭ had crept into his heart. He doubted if time or any other woman could ever oust her from it. Last night — balancing it all, fighting it out — he had sickened a little at the thought of life lived out without Tzů. His heart clamored for her. His arms ached for her. But, if life without Tzŭ seemed to him now a something of emptiness, and a pain, life with her he saw as a difficulty and a personal satisfaction embittered by much! That their marriage would be the social sensation of an hour revolted him, but it did not dissuade. For himself he desired this girl above all else on earth, beyond every other possibility of life. The soul-barriers between them he would risk. They might be absorbed and cease to be, in the intimacy of married companionship, begun in love and lived in loyalty if not, for him, her sweetness and her charm would be compensation enough. But for one thing, of which he tried not to think, Tzŭ was perfect in her lover’s sight. But his pride of race was a loyal devoted pride, not a selfish pride. As an Englishman he now saw no abhorrence in marriage with a Chinese wife. As a Selwyn he did.

—

Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the rest of the world put together, or had until recently — but after him her keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of nice girlhood — perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but always felt and delightful to feel.
      Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and quiet arrogance.
      Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. / 1920

—

Rukh swept his eyes over her slowly, as she stood before him — she had risen at his entrance — and then he said deferentially, “I trust my Mistress of the Robes furnished you with all you required?”
      The Englishmen frowned a little at his question — they did not dare go beyond that — but Lucilla smiled gravely, and told him brightly, “With all and more than all. She offered me quite a bewildering array of gorgeous apparel.”
      “Oh, I am glad.” There was just a caressing note in the Raja’s voice, more than a hint of velvet, as there so often is in the high-bred Asiatic voice when it speaks a foreign tongue. And again the long, closelidded Oriental eyes swept her slowly with a something of appraisement. Traherne saw it, and chafed, but what could he do? — “I had hoped that perhaps your choice might have fallen on something more —” his eyes indicated “décolleté” even more than the graceful gesture of his slender olive hand. It was delicately done, but his unspoken meaning was unmistakable. Traherne threw an ugly quick look to Major Crespin, but Crespin had strolled to the loggia opening, and seemed to have seen or heard nothing. Had he gone to be nearer the big wine-cooler? Traherne wondered viciously. But again what could Crespin do? Nothing that would not aggravate their peril. “But no,” the soft silken voice said on, “I was wrong — Madam’s taste is irreproachable.”

—

In spite of the cold, they rode slowly now and then. For the winter-kissed waysides were indescribably lovely, and Sên King-lo could not pass that loveliness quickly by. To him it was as if God had painted in silver and white and black the long out-rolled picture of the inimitable landscape’s scroll; painted and limned it, and breathed His high living message into it more supremely, more beautifully, than ever even the master-brush of great Ma Yuen had. They spoke to Sên King-lo and tingled his Chinese soul : the long sweeps of glorious panoramic beauty, with each tiniest black leafless twig softened by cuddling little drift-patches of spotless snow and sparkling with diamond dew-drops of ice. To the English girl it looked just fairyland, exquisitely beautiful, quite unreal and she heard no message. Such the difference of her Western spirit and eyes and his of the East. She saw it a wonderful spectacle and was glad she’d come; he merged in it, and forgot self — and was silent. And from his silence, the far-look in his eyes, the slight flush on his face, she caught something of his mood, too, perhaps, just a something of his spirit. They never before had been so close or so far. She echoed his pleasure, but could not share his absorption; she alien here, in the white Virginia woods, with snow and thin gleams of ice where ice and snow come but rarely, the white passion of December rapturously calling Earth its bride. Sên King-lo felt at home; for the hour, no longer afar from China. Not once in many years does winter show so in England. In his Chinese home Sên had seen winter so a thousand times.

It was many moons — moons of Chinese hospitality and overflowing kindness — since Tom Drew had thought of any countryman of Ya-ling’s as a “Chink.” He was sharply stirred. A something of self that he did not understand or suspect, a part of self that never had asserted itself before, was up in arms. Tom Drew had not been so angry since the night in Flanders when he had seen a Hun slash a bayonet into a comrade’s brain — a boy from Detroit — and laugh when the blood and gray had spurted out. The German had not laughed twice. Tom Drew had got there.

      There was music on the water; delicate Chinese music. There was barbaric Chinese music. There were wide spaces of silence with only the dip and drip of their own poles to hear, if they listened.
      They rarely spoke.
      The English girl looked to him with a smile now and then, a smile that was a “thank you.” And Man Ling smiled back at her, a smile that told her that he was glad that she was pleased.
      A great many Western women, here in China and in their own Western lands, had talked to Man Ling. A woman rarely was at a loss for something to say to him. He recalled few pauses in the speaking of them to him, some of it light enough, some of it serious and would-be serious. Almost every woman he met found a great deal to say to Man Ling. Nothing a woman had ever said to him had flattered him half so much as did the frequent silences that fell between him and this English girl; never one of them awkward, always a mark of their companionableness, more and more often — as the days slipped away — a something of intimacy.
      They never before had been together so long without speaking to each other, as they were now. Once he put back the light scarf that fell from her shoulder, twice he readjusted a cushion; they both knew that he knew that she knew that he did, but she did not thank him; they did not speak. Twice she pointed to something that amused her, once to a sudden view that stirred her; Man Ling smiled at her; no word between them.

—

...had a thing she did not share with me, even a fancy to eat of a strange grain she has not tasted, kept from me a thought, had a wish that was not for me, a thought for even a small pleasure of her own.”
      “Everyone who lives has that — a something of their own, a wish for self.”
      Pang Soo paid no attention to what Shu A-fah said. It was not her way to heed.
      “It stung me! After, I was glad. I am glad that she desires a thing for herself. Rice! I will get my mother-...