see you again." Her hand was cold and still. "Dunsack, too."

"I am obliged to you for my chest," the latter told him, unmoved by
Gerrit's quizzical gaze.

"Glad to do it for you," the other replied; "it came ashore with my
personal things, and so, perhaps, saved you something."

"Perhaps," Dunsack agreed levelly.

Looking down at the cob filling of the wharf, Nettie Vollar said, "You
came home married, I hear, and to a Chinese lady."

Gerrit assented. "You'll certainly know her, and like her, too. Taou
Yuen is very wise and without the prejudices--" he stopped, conscious of
the stupidity of his attempted kindness. Nettie looked up defiantly,
biting her lip--a familiar trick, he recalled. Dunsack interposed:

"You will find that the Chinese have none of your little sympathetic
tricks. No foreigner could ever grasp the depth of their indifference to
what you might call humanity. They are born wise, as you say, but weary.
I suppose your wife plays the guitar skillfully and sings the Soochow
Love Song."

Gerrit Ammidon studied him with somber eyes and a gathering temper: it
was, however, impossible to decide whether the implication was
deliberately insulting. He wouldn't have any Canton clerk, probably
saturated with opium, insinuate that his affair was on the plane of
that of a drunken sailor! "My wife," he said deliberately, "is a
Manchu lady. You may know that they don't learn dialect songs nor