He saw the veil of white and pink its blossoms scarfed upon the grass. He saw the little wild flowers blowing near it—the June wild flowers of Virginia, and he remembered. He saw love’s confession and its shyness come in a girl’s dark English eyes. He held her surrender and her dearness in his arms.
He knew that he would remember this old apple-tree, its courage and its beauty, this one, selfsame apple-tree, in China and Virginia, with its rosy, hopeful, perfumed signal on the ground, its sturdy triumph of endurance and persistence in prostration, its dual message and its dual memory, the little wild flowers smiling at the ferns beside it; he saw in it a token and a commandment, and he knew that it would live with him while he lived and that living it would link—in his spirit—East and West.
He laid his hand upon his wife’s.
Ruby stirred to the touch and let him lift her to his arms.
“It’s my head,” she told him, choking back her sobs. “It has ached all day”—as indeed it had. “I wish you hadn’t found me while I was so foolish.”
“I am very glad I did,” he answered.
“The pain made me cry,” she whispered brokenly. “I won’t cry any more.”
Sên King-lo had never seen her cry before. But he only said quietly, as he soothed her hair, “Cry it out, dear.”
But she was made a little of his own metal, and she laughed through her dwindling sobbing and dried her face upon his sleeve.
He held her close, and she seemed glad to nest so. And they stayed together in the quiet, while a squirrel bounced softly back and looked them up and down.