"To Hankow."
"It's like a fairy-tale—a young man going to Hankow to seek his fortune—"
"My father does not like me to read fairy-tales—"
Paul's eyes were full of pictures. Romney did not hear what she said to that, but circled the little deck again, thinking of her eyes and voice. They went with the yellow rug. As Romney returned, the child pulled back from the woman, announcing:
"That's my father."
And now for the first time Romney's eyes and the woman's met. The child had pointed his way, though the missionary was behind him. Her look came up with something that seemed to say, "I beg of you—don't disappoint me." Then Romney forgot the peculiarity of that, in the sudden sense that she was like the blood-sister of some one he had known. At the same time flat in his consciousness was the fact that he had not known any such "some one." She was young, but this was not the look of a girl at all—the look of a hungry imperious woman who had known love and been denied—adult understanding, the shoals of cheap illusion passed. She was looking beyond him at the real father of Paul.
Under his own calm, Romney was intensely sensitized. Something had happened to him from her eyes. He felt he was out somewhere in the deep waters of life wherein she sailed—the shallow problems already put from them, all decoration, convention and imitation thrust aside. The missionary and the little boy had passed. And now Romney did a very good thing for him, and something that he would not have thought possible before this day. He drew a chair close to the yellow rug, saying:
"May I?"
"Yes."
... They talked of Paul, of missionaries, of Asia, travel. Her manner was easy and genuine, her observations wise and humorous, but her eyes full of challenge. There was tenderness in them, and something that for a better name he called deviltry. He felt himself in the presence of a big nature, whose sweep was from the primitive passions of birth and death, of fear and hunger, to some consummate and mysterious ambition. He could not tell what she wanted; and at the same time her thrall was stealing over him, preventing him from seeing her the same at different moments. He felt that her sweetness could be unfathomable to one she loved. She was exquisite in every detail—lip, nostril, finger-tip, hair, figure, voice, manner, wear—all as perfect as the yellow rug. Yet it was beauty, rather than loveliness, something to fear about it.