“No, not even signaled yet, dear.”
Sên looked about the pretty room as he lit her cigarette. They had finished their tea.
“Ruby,” he said, as he gave it to her, well and truly lit, “I believe you’d make home out of a soap-box and an old coffee sack.”
“I’d try for you, Lo,” she told him.
“I’ll match this against any room on the island,” he added.
“But you furnished it,” his wife reminded him.
“Yes—by wire. But I didn’t make it. You did that. I didn’t rearrange it. I didn’t put those flowers in that vase or Ruben’s picture in its lacquer frame—” Sên broke off, silenced by a sudden grinding thought. He had seen and understood the look in Chinese eyes when they first had seen that photograph, had seen and quickly looked away. Ah well——
“But,” he added, “I did bring the one perfect thing in the room, and put it here.”
Mrs. Sên looked about her drawing-room in surprise. What had Lo actually chosen and bought that was here! Not the cabinet, not the screen, not the quaint and costly teapot with a writhing dragon for handle and a slender snake curled up asleep on its top, not the lovely cups with butterflies poised on the delicate rims and a dear little red “ladybird” inside each fragile cup. What—then she understood and giggled again—a pretty sound from her, if not a pretty word, and shook her clasped hands at him in the pretty Chinese way he’d taught her.
But not even for such a compliment (and they’d been married almost five years now!) would she ask the question he was waiting for her to ask.