Doane brought himself, with difficulty, to utter the blunt word. “Suicide, in China, is not always cowardice. Often it is the finest heroism—the holding to a fine standard.”
“Oh, no! It wouldn't ever—”
“Please! You are a Westerner. Your feelings are those of the younger—yes, the cruder half of the world. I must still ask you to try to believe that there can be other sorts of feelings.” Again the great hand rested solidly on the young shoulder; and now, at last, the boy became slightly aware of the suffering in the heart of this older man. Though even now he could not grasp every implication. That human love might be a cause he did not perceive. But he sensed, warmly, the ripe experience and the compassionate spirit of the man.
“You have stepped impulsively into an Old-World drama,” Doane went quietly on—“into a tragedy, indeed. No one can say what the next developments will be. You can win, if at all, only by becoming yourself, a fatalist; You must move with events. Certainly you can not force them.”
“But I can take her away,” cried the boy hotly; finishing, lamely, with “somehow.”
“Against her will?”
“Well—surely—”
“She will not leave her father.”
“But—oh, Mr. Doane....”
He fell silent. For a long time they sat without a word, side by side. Here and there about the junk sleepers awoke and moved about. A few of the women, forward, set up their wailing but more quietly now. The craft headed in gradually toward the right bank, passing a yellow junk that was moored inshore and moving on some distance up-stream. At a short distance inland a brown-gray village nestled under a hillside.