This was the very question Herrick wished she had not put. It required such a definite answer. To say "yes," to say that the marriage could be prevented at this eleventh hour, meant an act Herrick did not have the courage to perform so abruptly. The issue would be nothing less than throwing over the past thirteen years of his life. After so grave a breach of custom as the deliberate insult to the t'ai-t'ai's family in stopping a marriage on the verge of consummation, Chinese life would be impossible to him. The memory of Nancy's perjured troth would haunt the rest of his days. His only recourse would be to return to the West he had disowned. For his own sake, Herrick dreaded the thought; for Nancy's sake, Herrick groped for the strength of will to make the detestable change. But Nancy gave him no help. She did not weep, she did not shake his heart with sobs for pity, she did not stimulate the sapped vigor of his courage. At the moment when his heart cried to his daughter, by the sight of her uncontrolled weakness, by terror, misery, any violent agony of passion, to make him be brave, she would only put this candid question, which had to be answered so definitely by yes or no.
"I'm afraid it can't make any difference," he admitted after a fearful pause, "things have gone so far."
"Because I don't really wish to be married at all," said Nancy perversely.
Her father's raising a question which he himself now confessed was not the least likely to have any practical bearing upon her fate stirred up a sudden gust of anger, till she was unready to leave him the comfort of thinking she was happy. But Herrick, far from accusing himself of any fault, saw merely a freshly irritating symptom of the waywardness which had vexed him several times in the past.
"Why must you say that now?" he demanded. "How can I ever satisfy you when you ask for a thing at one time and then, when it is too late, tell me you don't want it?"
"It doesn't make any difference, anyway," said Nancy. "I was just answering your question."
"It does make a difference, a tremendous difference," the father cried. "Do you want me to throw over this engagement, to tell the t'ai-t'ai you won't marry her nephew, to bring everlasting disgrace on our heads?"
"No, we can't do that," replied Nancy, not permitting herself time to toy with the notion.
"It would mean the end of our life in China," added Herrick.
"Yes, it would."