The China that Doane had so long known, that had, indeed, for better or worse, been woven into the fiber of his being, was turning suddenly incredible. He stared, more intently than he knew, straight down at the slim little figure—for beside his own huge frame this tall girl appeared as hardly more than a child—at the unadorned face that was softly girlish, at the Mack hair waving down over the pale forehead, glistening in the moonlight.
“They mean to confisca'”—she left off, in her eagerness to explain, the final te—“all his property. Tell me, Mister Duane, can they do that—all his property?”
He reflected. There would be vast areas of tea-lands and rice lands, almost innumerable shares in these new corporations, the famous collections of jades, paintings, carvings and jewels. Finally he inclined his head.
“I'm afraid they could. It would be an outrageous act, but the government now, I'm sorry to say, is in outrageous hands. If the empress is determined, as apparently she is, there are ways enough of getting at all his possessions. Even through the banks.” His heart was full, his voice tender; but he could not deceive her. He added a question: “Does his excellency, your father, know all this?”
She nodded. “I have tol' him. But I can no' make him see it like me. Oh, we are so differen'. I am, you see, an American girl. I am free here,” she laid a pretty hand on her breast. “When I try to think of all these dreadful things—of these wicked eunuchs an' the empress who is like thousan' of years ago—blin', childish!—an' the people who can no' yet see it differen'—I get bewilder'. You un'erstan'. You are an American, too. I can speak with you. That is well, because there isn' anybody else I can speak with. An' my father admires you. If you will only speak with him—if you will only help me make him think differen'!”
Doane wondered what he could do, what she imagined he could do, without influence or money. He quite forgot, in this matter of influence alone, the significance of the viceroy's courtesy, as of Sun Shi-pi's appeal to him. For a little too long he had been a beaten man. It was becoming dangerously near a habit so to consider himself. And now, to make active clear thinking impossible, emotion flooded his brain. Gently he asked her what she would have him do.
“My father will no' listen when I speak, He is ver' kind, ver' generous. He has made me an American girl. That is one of the things they say is wrong. Even for tha' they attack his good name. But when I ask Him no' to do this, no' to die so wrongly, he speaks to me like an ol' Manchu of long ago.”
“He is between the worlds,” mused Doane, aloud.
“Yes, it is that. An' I, perhaps, am between the worl's.”
“And I.”