“I know,” Sên said as they sat together for an hour—the only hour that Ruby left him till he died—“that you will do all you can for Ruby—always.”
Her kinsman nodded.
“But there is something I am anxious to say to you. I cannot lay the burden on Ruby, and I cannot lay it down. I must pass it on.”
Snow held out his hand.
“Keep Ruben and Ivy in England—always—if you can. Build up to that. Life will go hard with them. They must pay the price I owe! But I believe that it will be a lighter price, and less galling, if they never know my people or my country. I wish that I might hope that neither my boy nor girl would marry.”
That was the strangest wish a Chinese father ever framed.
But Charles Snow understood, and again he merely nodded.
“ ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’ ” Sên King-lo quoted sadly. Then he said, “I fear least for Ruben, but I fear—terribly—for them both. Ruben is Chinese. He looks English, but he is thoroughly Chinese. If he marries, he should marry a woman of our people, a Chinese girl whose parents live here, just possibly. That will be so more and more, I believe. But I wish earnestly that he may not marry—or Ivy either. You know why. Teach Ruben to worship his mother, to garner his heart upon her, to live for her. It will not be difficult, I am sure, since his instincts are so intensely Chinese.”
Snow wondered if his cousin herself might not marry and hated himself for letting the thought come to him here and now. She was still so young and so full of life and of beauty.
But Sên King-lo knew that Ruby would be Sên Ruby while she lived. He knew.