“So am I,” he replied; “and I was glad to get out of that palace, which I never entered again.  From that day I began to grow old as fast as I could.  My hair and beard became very long; I ate but little; I stooped more and more each day, and walked with a staff.  I began to be very forgetful when people asked me questions.  About a year afterward the queen saw me.  I was in the crowd near the palace, where I had purposely gone that I might be seen.  She looked at me, but gave no sign that she recognized me.  The next day an officer came to me, and roughly told me that the empress had no use for dotards in her dominions, and that the sooner I went away the better for me.  I afterward heard that the execution of two strangers had been ordered, but that a certain superstition in the mind of the empress had prevented this.  She had heard, through persons who had met the Nestorians, that people of our country were protected in some strange manner which she did not understand.

[Illustration:  “‘And roughly told me.’”]

“Rina and I could not leave China, for I had now no money; but we went to a distant province, where I lived for more than ten years, passing as a Chinaman.”

“And Rina—­poor Rina?” asked Mrs. Crowder.

“She soon died,” said her husband.  “She was in a state of fear nearly all the time.  She could not speak the language, and it may be said that she gave up her life in her pursuit of knowledge.  In this respect she was as wonderful a woman as was the Empress Woo.”

“And a thousand times better,” said Mrs. Crowder, earnestly.  “And then?”

“Then,” said her husband, “I married a Chinese woman.”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, her eyes almost round.

“Yes, my dear; it was a great deal safer for me to be married, and to become as nearly as possible like the people by whom I was surrounded.”

“But thee didn’t have several wives, did thee?” asked Mrs. Crowder.

“Oh, no,” he answered; “I was too poor for anything of that kind to be expected of me.  When an opportunity came to join a caravan and get away, I took my Chinese wife with me, and eventually reached Arabia.  There we stayed for a long time, for I found it impossible to prosecute my journeying.  Eventually, however, we reached the island of Malta, where my wife lived to be over seventy.  Travel, hardships, and danger seemed to agree with her.  She never spoke any language but her own, and as she was of a quiet disposition, and took no interest in the things she saw, she generally passed as an imbecile.  But she was the first Chinese woman who ever visited Europe.”

“I guess thee was very sorry thee brought her before thee got through with her.  I don’t approve of that matrimonial alliance at all,” said Mrs. Crowder.