But Lin Fo’s face was set.
“No!” he declared. “We are in America. Pau Tsu shall be attended to by your physician.”
Adah Raymond was about to protest against this dictum when the sick wife, who had also heard it, touched her hand and whispered: “I not mind now. Man all right.”
So the other girl closed her lips, feeling that if the wife would not dispute her husband’s will it was not her place to do so; but her heart ached with compassion as she bared Pau Tsu’s chest for the stethoscope.
“It was like preparing a lamb for slaughter,” she told her sister afterwards. “Pau Tsu was motionless, her eyes closed and her lips sealed, while the doctor remained; but after he had left and we two were alone she shuddered and moaned like one bereft of reason. I honestly believe that the examination was worse than death to that little Chinese woman. The modesty of generations of maternal ancestors was crucified as I rolled down the neck of her silk tunic.”
It was a week after the doctor’s visit, and Pau Tsu, whose cough had yielded to treatment, though she was still far from well, was playing on her lute, and whisperingly singing this little song, said to have been written on a fan which was presented to an ancient Chinese emperor by one of his wives:
“Of fresh new silk,
All snowy white,
And round as a harvest moon,
A pledge of purity and love,