“But—it's our last evening—I've tried to be patient—it'll be all different at Shanghai—I can't let you.”
But she slipped away, leaving the youth whispering brokenly after her. He leaned for a long time on the rail then, looking heavily at the winking lights of the cruisers. It was a relief to see Mr. Doane coming over the deck. Certainly he couldn't sleep. Not now. His heart was full to breaking.... The fighting impulse rose. During this past day or so he had seemed to be losing ground in his struggle with self. The startling incident in Miss Carmichael's room had turned out, he felt, still confusedly, as a defeat. It had left him unhappy. This night, out there in the blossom-scented gallery, he had sensed the strange girl, close at hand, cool as a child, singing the old college songs with apparent quiet enjoyment, as an uncanny thing, a sinister force. Even when speaking to Hui Fei, her influence had enveloped him.... This would be just one more little battle. And it must be won.
Accordingly he told Mr. Doane the story. The older man considered it, slowly nodding.
“It is probably the fact,” he said, at length, “that she stole the pearls at Huang Chau. She was with Connor and Watson. But it is also a fact that she might have pearls of her own. And in traveling alone through a revolution it would be her right to conceal them as she chose. It is true, too, that unset pearls couldn't be identified easily, if at all. And she is clever—she wouldn't weaken under charges.... No, I don't see what we can do, beyond watching the thing closely. As for her threats against you, they are partly rubbish.”
But Rocky cared little, now, what they might be. Once again he had cleaned the black slate of his youth. His head was high again. He could speak to Hui Fei convincingly in the morning.
His excellency, alone in his cabin, took from his hand-bag the book of precepts of Chuang Tzü; and seated on his pallet, by the small table on which burned a floating wick in its vessel of oil, read thoughtfully as follows:
“Chuang Tzü one day saw an empty skull, bleached but intact, lying on the ground. Striking it with his riding whip, he cried, 'Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?—some statesman who plunged his country into ruin and perished in the fray?—some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?—some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?'
“When he had finished speaking, he took the skull and, placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and said: 'You speak well, sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these.... In death there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men can not exceed that which we enjoy.'
“Chuang Tzü, however, was not convinced, and said: 'Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth, would you be willing?'
“At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'”