But through the chaos Griggsby Doane was never for a moment to lose the new vision that had finally cleared his long troubled mind. Behind the crumbling of the empire, underlying the torn and bleeding surface of Chinese life, lay a tradition finer, he was to believe until his dying day, than any so far developed in the truculent West--a delicate responsiveness to beauty in nature and art, a reflective quality, an instinct for peace--it was all these at once, and more; a blend of art in living and living in art; a finish that was exquisite in concept, a sensitiveness that lifted the soul of man above the ugly fact. Even the brittle perfection of Chinese etiquette--regulating every passing human contact, clothing in silken manner the naked thought--was like a fine lacquer over the knotted wood of life... America, he felt, with all its earnestly insistent young virtues, worshiped the fact. To the Americans must be preached the gospel of sensitive thought, of reflective enjoyment of the beautiful. Those old master painters of Tang and Sung breathed beauty; it was sweet air in their lungs; whereas in America beauty was too often like a garment to be bought in a shop and worn for show.... Yes, this revolutionary work was a gratifying opportunity for service, of great momentary importance because the Chinese people must be rescued from Manchu conquerors and their eunuchs, from disease and famine, and from ignorance of the new world that had come amazingly, brutally, into being while the old Middle Kingdom slumbered; but it was not the main work. The aggressively greedy West, now, with its merchants and war-ships and armies, was destroying the soul of China even while teaching her a smattering of the materialistic new faith. There must be a counter-influence; as the East now so strongly felt the West, so must be the West made sensitively aware of the East. It was fair give and take. It might yet help the world to find a stable balance.... This was what the difficult life of Griggsby Doane was coming to mean. The East had crept into his heart. So he must turn back to the West. For three days Mr. Doane's brief chit--with the address of Hui Fei in the native city--burned in Rocky Kane's pocket; then, early in the third afternoon, he went down to the Japanese steamship offices (for the keen little brown people had already captured the Pacific traffic from the Americans) and bought the second officer's room on a crowded liner leaving at the end of the week for San Francisco.... On the fourth afternoon he called a rickshaw and rode out beyond the American post-office to the address the older man had given him. But Mr. Doane, it appeared, was not in; already he was established at Doctor Wu's revolutionary headquarters. Rocky considered driving there; even took the address and rode part of the way: but reconsidered, returned to the hotel, and sent a messenger to Hui Fei with this chit: