She nodded thoughtfully.

“I might,” she acknowledged.  “But in my case it would be merely the outcropping of a feminine instinct, easily suppressed.  I am not at all afraid of it.  Look at all the women who are perfectly happy without children.”

“Hum!” said the professor.  “I am looking at them.  But I find them unconvincing.  There are a few, however, of whom what you say is true.  You may be one of them.  How about Sami?”

“Sami?  Oh, Sami is different.  He is more like a mountain imp than a child.  I don’t think Sami would seem real anywhere but here.  If anyone were to try to transplant him he might vanish altogether.  Poor little chap—­how terribly he would miss me!” finished Desire artlessly.

She had accepted the possibility, then!  Spence’s heart gave a leap and was promptly reproved for leaping.  This was not, he reminded himself, an affair of the heart at all.  It was a coldly-thought-out, hard-headed business proposition.  Such a proposition as his father’s son might fittingly conceive.  The thing to do now was to stride on briskly and avoid sentiment.

“Then as we seem to agree upon the essentials,” he said, “there remains only one concrete difficulty, your father.  He would object to marriage as to other things, I suppose?”

“Yes, but we should have to ignore that.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” somewhat doubtfully.

“No.  I have always known that a break would come some day.  It isn’t as if he really cared.  Or as if I cared.  I don’t.  If I should decide that there is an honest chance for freedom, a chance which I can take and keep my self-respect, I am conscious of no duty that need restrain me.”

Spence said nothing, and after a moment she went on.

“Why should I pretend—­as he pretends?  I loath it!  Day after day, even when there is no one to see, he keeps up that horrible semblance of affection.  And all the time he hates me.  I see it in his eyes.  And once or twice—­” She hesitated and then went rapidly on without finishing her sentence.  “There is some reason why it is to his advantage to keep me with him.  But it imposes no obligation upon me.  I do not even know what it is.”

“Perhaps Li Ho may know?”

“Li Ho does know.  Li Ho knows everything.  But when I asked him he said, ‘Honorable boss much lonely—­heap scared of devil maybe.’  Li Ho always refers to devils when he doesn’t wish to tell anything.”

“I’ve noticed that.  He’s a queer devil himself.  Would he stay on, do you think?”

“Yes.  And that’s odd, too.  In some way Li Ho is father’s man.  It’s as if he owned him.  There must be a story which explains it.  But no one will ever hear it.  Li Ho keeps his secrets.”

Spence nodded.  “Yes.  Li Ho and his kind are the product of forces we only guess at.  I asked a man who had spent twenty years in China if he had learned to understand the Oriental mind.  He said he had learned more than that, he had learned that the Oriental mind is beyond understanding.  But—­aren’t we getting away from our subject?  Let’s begin all over again.  Miss Farr, I have the honor to ask your hand in marriage.”