“I’m sorry,” she faltered, twisting and untwisting her little handkerchief—Wu was fanning himself again, slowly, contentedly—“not to appreciate it more. You must please forgive me,” she pled, “but I am so dreadfully overwrought.” She turned to him with a wan smile that tried to be confident, but failed, and with a brave attempt to appear at ease that was sadder than her tears would have been, “Now, Mr. Wu, please tell me. Where is my son? What do you know about him? Oh! if you only understood a mother’s anxiety!”
Wu Li Chang looked into her eyes with a narrow smile that was half a taunt, half a caress. “Ah!” he said, laughing a little, “the old, old mother-vanity. Why is it, I wonder, that motherhood lays claim to all the love, all the tenderness, and to all the misery of parentage? And it is so, world-wide. Our own women are so. But”—his voice grew stern—“fathers feel too! Fathers love their young. Fathers dote, brood, fear, suffer.” He ended with a slight, bitter laugh that was a sneer and frightened the woman oddly, and then he added smoothly, imperturbably, “I was about to say, Mrs. Gregory, that that music, performed in your honor, is one of our classical love-songs.”
“Really,” she responded lamely. “Well, I hope your love-making is not so——” She broke off, painfully at a loss, and turned her head away.
Wu, still standing, leaned towards her, resting his hands on the table between them. “Not so—violent?” he suggested with a leer, “Displeasing? Passionate? What was the word you were about to use, Mrs. Gregory?” He almost whispered her name.
“Oh! Mr. Wu!” Florence exclaimed, rising hysterically—the torture was telling on her cruelly now; the handkerchief was torn and knotted—“please have mercy on a mother’s agony!”
Wu Li Chang bent down, across the table still, and laid a hand very gently on hers. At his touch her self-control, already worn to a thread, snapped, and she screamed violently. Wu moved his fingers softly across her wrist, and smiled down at her amiably. “I’ll scream the house down!” she gasped pantingly. Wu looked at her calmly, shook his head deprecatingly, and folded his hands upon his arms beneath his sleeves. Nothing answered her cry of terror—unless the absolute stillness of the garden did, or its rich, penetrating perfume. “I’m sorry,” she murmured distractedly, recognizing her mistake, and that to show fear would both affront him and invite annoyance. “I didn’t mean that,” she said, choking back a second scream; “I only mean that—oh! I’m tortured by all this suspense.” In spite of her new resolve, a low sob broke from her, and she huddled down upon the stool again, crying like a tired and frightened child.
The man stood a moment watching her grimly. Her head was bowed and she could not see his face. There was bitter determination on it, remorselessness, but no desire. He moved slowly across the room and closed and fastened the thick screen-slide of the window that looked upon the garden. And now again, except for the high narrow window, through which no one could look out or in, the room was shut and barred from all the rest of the world.
They two were entirely alone.
The mandarin moved slowly back until he stood beside the woman. “Pray compose yourself, dear lady,” he said very quietly. “That weakness was unworthy of you, and hardly complimentary to your host.” He took her hand quietly in his, and she made no remonstrance, made no attempt to draw her hand away again. He put his other hand on her arm, and pushed her gently down upon her seat, and released his hold.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said brokenly, brushing her hand across her eyes. “I—I am not myself. Please forgive me.” Wu flicked that aside with a courteous gesture. “And now,” her voice was little more than a whispered gasp, “Mr. Wu, please tell me——”