“It is hereditary, of course,” said Desire calmly.

The professor jumped.

“My dear girl!  What an idea.”

“An idea which I could not very well escape.  All these things tend to transmit themselves, do they not?  Only not necessarily so.  I seem to have escaped.”

“Yes,” shortly.  “Surely you have never supposed—­”

“No.  I haven’t.  That’s the odd part of it.  I have never been the least bit afraid.  Perhaps it’s because I have never felt that I have anything at all in common with father.  Or it may be because I have never faced facts.  I don’t know.  Even now, when I am facing facts, they do not seem really to touch me.  I never pretended to understand father.  He seemed like two or three people, all strangers.  Sometimes he was just a rather sly old man full of schemes for getting money without working for it, and very clever and astute.  Sometimes he seemed a student and a scholar—­this was his best mood.  It was during this phase that he wrote his scientific articles and taught me all that I know.  His own knowledge seemed to be an orderly confusion o>f all kinds of things.  And he could be intensely interesting when he chose.  In those moods he treated me with a certain courtesy which may have been a remnant of an earlier manner.  But it never lasted long.”

“And the other mood—­the third one?”

“Oh, that Well, that was the bad mood.  If it is a disease he was not responsible.  So’ we won’t talk of it.”  Desire’s lips tightened.  “He usually went away in the hills when the restlessness came on.  And I fancy Li Ho—­watched.”

“Good old Li Ho!”

Desire nodded.  “I think now that perhaps I did not quite appreciate Li Ho.  I should like to know—­but what is the use?  We shall never know more than we do.”

“Not about Li Ho’.  He is the eternal Sphinx wrapped in an everlasting yesterday.  I suppose he did not have even a beginning?”

Desire smiled.  “No.  He was always there.  He is one of my first memories.  A kind of family familiar.  Sometimes I think that if he had not been away the night my mother died she might have been alive still.”

Spence hesitated.  “You have never told me about your mother’s death, you know,” he reminded her gently.

“Haven’t I?” Desire was plainly surprised.  “Why—­I thought you knew.  That is a queer thing about you,” she went on musingly, “I am always thinking that you know things which you don’t.  Perhaps it’s because you guess so much without being told.  My mother died suddenly—­of shock.  Her heart was never strong and the fright of waking to find a thief in her room proved fatal.  It happened one night when Li Ho was away.  We lived in Vancouver at the time and Li Ho often disappeared into Chinatown.  He had all the Oriental passion for fan-tan.  That night there was a police raid on his favorite gambling place and Li Ho was held till morning.  It was always he who locked the doors and attended to everything at night.  Perhaps it was known that he was away.  But just what happened was never settled, for my father was found unconscious on the floor of the passage outside my mother’s door.  He couldn’t remember anything clearly.  The fact that there had been several previous burglaries in town and that there were valuables missing offered the only explanation.”