But he had seen a new woman, a new womanliness. He had seen the love as well as the pain on her face as she had bent down to the mangled baby out there under his window, and had gathered it up into her arms.
They two had been alone with the injured children a long quarter of an hour that had seemed longer, before the doctor had come, or even Kow Li, who had gone on an errand. Both had some skill at “first aid”—he much more than her—and he had seen the grit with which she had held the broken arm in place while he did the little he could for the crushed little leg; had seen the tenderness and strength with which she had soothed and controlled the pain-and-fright-broken mite; and had known that Ivy Gilbert’s “flaw” had been the unjust creation of his own crass stupidity.
Chinese omniscience has its human limits. Sên King-lo had learned that a woman is not necessarily unwomanly, or unloving of little children because she has little flair for blindman’s-buff and leap-frog, and even less for “I am, thou art, he is” and “three times three is nine.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Sên let himself in quietly; the doctors forbade knocking or ringing—Blanche might be asleep. His sitting-room door was open, and he glanced in cautiously as he stood in the hall, a little shyly—in case a girl dozed or lay on the chesterfield. Lady Snow had asked him to call here for her at three, and it was just on three.
No one was in the sitting-room. There was not a sound in the place.
So Lady Snow had succeeded in taking Miss Gilbert out for an hour, as she’d told him she was going to try to do. And only Kow Li was in there with Blanche, who must be sleeping, because she wasn’t talking and neither was Kow Li.
The door into the bedroom, his own room—but Blanche’s now—also was wide open. Sên tiptoed to it. He’d take a peep at the sleeping baby and beckon Kow Li out, if she hadn’t clutch-hold of his hands or his sleeve as she so often had. Sên rather thought he’d have to give Kow Li to Blanche next Christmas.
Sên King-lo paused at the sill of his bedroom door, rooted there by a force he never had felt before.
He knew.