“Oh, yes I will.  The satisfaction of cheating Death again.  You’ve been a great help these five days; for he had to have attendance constantly, and neither Wu nor I could have given that.  And yet, when you offered to help, it was what is to come that I had in mind.”

“To make him forget the knock?”

“Precisely.  I’m going to be frank; we must have a clear understanding.  Can you afford to give this time?  There are your own affairs to think of.”

“There’s no hurry.”

“And money?”

“I’ll have plenty, if I’m careful.”

“It has done me a whole lot of good to meet you.  Over here a man quickly loses faith, and I find myself back on solid ground once more.  Is there anything you’d like?”

“Books.”

“What kind?”

“Dickens, Hugo.”

“I’ll bring you an armful this afternoon.  I’ve a lot of old magazines, too.  There are a thousand questions I’d like to ask you, but I sha’n’t ask them.”

“Ask them, all of them, and I will gladly answer.  I mystify you; I can see that.  Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with the mystery.”

“All right.  I’ll call for you this afternoon when Wu is on.  I’ll show you the Sha-mien; and we can talk all we want.”

“I was never going to tell anybody,” she added.  “But you are a good man, and you’ll understand.  I believed I was strong enough to go on in silence; but I’m human like everybody else.  To tell someone who is kind and who will understand!”

“There, there!” he said.  There was a hint of tears in her voice.  “That’s all right.  We’ll get together this afternoon; and you can pretend that I am your father.”

“No!  I have run away from my father.  I shall never go back to him; never, never!”

Distressed, embarrassed beyond measure by this unexpected tragic revelation, the doctor puttered about among the bottles on the stand.

“We’re forgetting,” he said.  “We mustn’t disturb the patient.  I’ll call for you after lunch.”

“I’m sorry.”

She began to prepare the room for Wu’s coming, while the doctor went downstairs.  As he was leaving the hotel, Ah Cum stepped up to his side.

“How is Mr. Taber?”

“Regained consciousness this morning.”

Ah Cum nodded.  “That is good.”

“You are interested?”

“In a way, naturally.  We are both graduates of Yale.”

“Ah!  Did he tell you anything about himself?”

“Aside from that, no.  When will he be up?”

“That depends.  Perhaps in two or three weeks.  Did he talk a little when you took him into the city?”

“No.  He appeared to be strangely uncommunicative, though I tried to draw him out.  He spoke only when he saw the sing-song girl he wanted to buy.”

“Why didn’t you head him off, explain that it couldn’t be done by a white man?”

Ah Cum shrugged.  “You are a physician; you know the vagaries of men in liquor.  He was a stranger.  I did not know how he would act if I obstructed him.”