“Yes. I've read it.” She was oddly, happily relieved at finding him.
“You shouldn't have come.”
She had no answer to this. It seemed hardly relevant. She smiled, in the dark.
They fell to walking the deck. After a time, shyly, tacitly, a little embarrassed, they went up forward again.
The ship was well out in the Yellow Sea now. The bow rose and fell slowly, rhythmically, beneath them.
Moved to meet his letter with a response in kind, she talked of herself.
“It seems strange to be coming back to China.”
“You've been long away?”
“Six years. My mother died when I was thirteen. Father thought it would be better for me to be in the States. My uncle, father's brother, was in the wholesale hardware business in New York, and lived in Orange, and they took me in. They were always nice to me. But last fall Uncle Frank came down with rheumatic gout. He's an invalid now. It must have been pretty expensive. And there was some trouble in his business. They couldn't very well go on taking care of me, so father decided to have me come back to T'ainan-fu.” She folded her hands in her lap.
He lighted his pipe, and smoked reflectively.