It was the white man who had been born in China and had lived all his life there; the one who had so held Jeanne’s attention and had all but drawn from her the secret of the three-bladed dagger and the chest of Oriental embroideries. Surely here was some one it was hard to overlook. The tone in which he spoke was matter-of-fact. Yet a strange light shone from his eyes.
There are meetings that appear to have been ordered by some power outside ourselves. The instant the thing has happened we know it. With a simple flash of an eye one soul says to the other: “We are kindred spirits. We were born to be friends.”
“Where—where did all this come from?” she asked rather breathlessly.
“All this stuff, the idols, the trumpets, the tapestries?”
“Yes.”
“From China. Much of it from far back in the interior, even in Mongolia. I—I had a hand in gathering it. All came from temples, ancient temples—hard to get at times.”
The man, who was quite young, spoke with a curious accent.
“You are not American?”
“I belong to China.”
“But you are not Chinese,” she laughed.