"You are sent to that Inner Temple?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes."
"To bring forth a sign for the people of Young China?"
"Come to think of it—it is something like that."
"And you let me delay you this morning?"
"I had not thought of it as a bringing forth a sign," he mused, watching her, "but that is really what it amounts to. If the new social order in China is recognised by the Inner Temple; if its dream of progress and power is found to be a true dream by the Holy Men of the Inner Temple—don't you see, the support of all the people touched by this religion will be turned from the old to the new?"
"They chose a white man, an American, for this mission—and I am delaying him?"
Still Romney evaded the issue.
"I always thought it queer that they chose me," he said. "These Holy Men are free from racial prejudice. They are said to be super-national. Our leaders in Peking felt that if they sent a Chinese, the Holy Men might see in him one nation's ambition, but if they chose an Occidental who was called to the struggle of New China because he had found it the purest dream for all Asia; one also who could place before the wise men the position relatively of other nations—"
"What an equipment!"