revealing a locket which had lain hidden in her bosom. The locket
contained the face of her mother--all the family album she had. She
studied the face and tried to visualize the body, clothed in the
dress which had created the spinsters' astonishment. Very well.
To-morrow, when she returned to Hong-Kong, she would purchase a
simple but modern dress. Anything that drew attention to her must be
avoided.

She dropped the locket into its sweet hiding place. It was precious
for two reasons: it was the photograph of her beautiful mother whom
she could not remember, and it would identify her to the aunt in
Hartford.

She uttered a little ejaculative note of joy and rushed to the bed.
A dozen books lay upon the counterpane. Oh, the beautiful books!
Romance, adventure, love stories! She gathered up the books in her
arms and cuddled them, as a mother might have cuddled a child. Love
stories! It was of negligible importance that these books were
bound in paper; Romance lay unalterably within. All these wonderful
comrades, henceforth and for ever hers. She would never again be
lonely. Les Misérables, A Tale of Two Cities, Henry Esmond, The
Last Days of Pompeii, The Marble Faun ... Love stories!

Until her arrival in Singapore, she had never read a novel.
Pilgrim's Progress, The Life of Martin Luther and Alice in
Wonderland (the only fairy-story she had been permitted to read)
were the sum total of her library. But in the appendix of the
dictionary she had discovered magic names--Hugo, Dumas, Thackeray,
Hawthorne, Lytton. She had also discovered the names of Grimm and
Andersen; but at that time she had not been able to visualize "the