Then, a little later, he was sitting moodily on the extension front of the chair, face in hands, plunged into a wordless abyss; she sat on the edge of the steersman's deck, leaning against the rail, her face close to a lotus plant, with one flower that looked a ghostly blue in the fading moonlight, and just later, shaded through pink to deep red with the first quick-spreading color of the dawn. His emotional outburst had passed, for the moment, like a gust. He seemed to himself, already, to have failed. His thoughts were turned, behind the gray half-covered face, on death. For so swung the pendulum. He couldn't, in these depths, draw significance from the remarkable fact that she had risen only to drop down again and carry forward the talk that he let fall, and that he had, for the time at least, swept away those mental obstacles. Certainly Miss Hui Fei was not elusive now. The things she was saying, in a deliberate, matter-of-fact way, bewildered him. “I don' want you to make love to me like tha'.” “But how can I help it? You're so wonderful. You thrill me so. I tell you it's my whole life. I can never live on without you--not any more. It's got to be with you, or--or nothing.” It was strange. This impulsive affection had grown very, very rapidly within him; yet, even a day earlier he couldn't have pictured this scene. Not a phrase of these burning sentences he was so fervently uttering had been consciously framed in his mind. A part of the thrill of the situation lay in the very fact that he was so wildly committing himself. Now that it was being said, he felt no desire to take a word back. He meant it all; and more--more. But she--still, even in the telltale morning light, quaint, charming, adorable--was growing so practical about it. “You're a ver' romantic boy.” “I'm not! This is real! Can't you understand that it's love--forever?” “Please!.... I don' want you to think I don' un'erstan'. It's ver' sweet an' generous of you--” “I'm not generous! I want you!” “I do apprecia' all it woul' mean. You offer me so much--” “You dear girl, I offer you everything--everything I have or am! I don't want to live at all unless it's with you always at my side.” “But I don't think--Please! I woui'n' hurt you for anything. You've helped so--helped saving my father's life an' mine. It's won'erful--but I don' think life is like that. People mus' have so much in common to marry in the Western way. They mus' love each other, yes. But in their min's an' feelings they mus' share so much--their backgroun's....” He was out of the chair now; was beside her on the deck. “Listen!” he was huskily saying. “We'll get married right away in Shanghai. We've got to! I won't let you say no! And then we won't go back. We'll stay out here. There'll be money enough, in spite of the pater. We'll study this East together. I'm going to devote all the rest of my life to it. We'll build our common interest. I shall never want anything else!” “How do you knew that?”