She broke the silence with a question about the revolution. It is to his credit that he talked, stumbling only at first, clearly. And as the strain of the meeting gradually relaxed, he became aware of her sobered but still intense absorption in the struggle; aware, too, increasingly, of her strong gift of what is called personality. Her mind was quick, bright, eager—better, it seemed (he had to fight bitterness here) than his own. And she was impersonal to a degree that he couldn't yet attain—couldn't, in fact, quite understand. He had to speak slowly and carefully; feeling his way with a dogged determination among uprushing emotions, moved as never before by the charm of appearance and manner and speech of which she was so prettily unconscious.... He had come—perhaps with more than a touch in him of (again) that Western histrionism, the intense overstressing of the individual and his feelings—as a man who was effacing himself that the woman he loved might be happy with another man. Confused with this wholly unconscious call upon the sympathies, undoubtedly, was an unphrased incredulity that she—so strongly a person, fine and courageous and outstanding as he knew her to be—could accept this being almost casually left as part of a legacy to that other man. It was incredible. Unless she loved the other man.... So he came around again to the personal; unaware, of course, that he was feeling inevitably with his strongly individualistic race. Even when she dwelt on race, a little later in their talk, he found no light. He couldn't have; for the American seldom can see what lies outside himself.
“I don' know yet what I can do,” she was saying, very honestly and simply (they hadn't yet mentioned Mr. Doane). “Of course I'm a Manchu, after all. An' blood does coun'. I feel that. A good many people to-day talk differen'ly, I know. We saw a good 'eal of Socialism at college. The idealists to-day—the Jews an' Russians an' even some of our Chinese students—the younger men—talk as if race doesn' matter. But of course it does. It will ta' thousan's of years, I suppose, to bring the races together. An' maybe it's impossible. Maybe it can' be done at all. I think tha's the tragedy of so much of this beautiful dreaming.... An' here you see I'm a Manchu, an' yet I wan' the Manchus put out of China. Because they won' let China grow. An' China mus' grow, or die.”
He was moodily watching her; head bowed a little, gazing out under knit brows. “Do you know,” he said, “it's a queer thing to say, of course, but sometimes you make me feel terribly young.”
She smiled faintly. “You are—rather young, Rocky.”
He closed his eyes and compressed his lips; his name, on her lips, was dangerously thrilling music to him. After a moment he went doggedly on.
“The crowds I've gone with at home haven't talked about these things. They wouldn't think it good form.”
“I know,” said she. “They woul'n'.”
“I'm beginning to wonder if we're—well, intelligent, exactly. You know—just motors and horses and girls and bridge and 'killings' in Wall Street.”
“Killings?” Her brows were lifted.
“Oh—picking up a lot of money, quick.”