ornament tea houses."

"Very remarkable," Dunsack returned imperturbably. "We never see them.
How did you manage a go-between, and did you send the hour of your birth
to the Calculator of Destinies? Then there is so much to remember in a
Chinese wedding--the catties of tea and four silver ingots, the earrings
and red and green silk and Tao priest to consult the gods." Gerrit heard
this with a frowning countenance. If Nettie were not there he would put
Dunsack forward with the hypothetical crew to which he belonged. He felt
as sorry for Nettie, he discovered, as ever. It moved him to see her
vivacity of life, her appealingly warm color, slowly dulled by Salem and
the adventitious circumstance of her birth. What a dreary existence she
led in the harsh atmosphere of her grandfather and the solemn house on
Hardy Street! At one time he had fancied that he might change it... when
now here was Taou Yuen, detached and superior, waiting in his room at
Java Head.

"I stopped for a moment to look at the ship," he said, with the trace of
an ungracious bow, "and must get back." The sunlight flung a warm moted
veil over Nettie Vollar. She gave him a startled uncalculated glance of
almost desperate appeal and his heart responded with a quickened thud.
Edward Dunsack was sallow and enigmatic, with thin pinched lips.




V

"The stupid bruiser," Edward Dunsack declared in a thin bitterness that
startled the girl at his side. "The low sea bully!" He was gazing at the