“Oh--I see.” Mr. Kane looked over the menu, ordered his roast, and selected a red wine, cautioning the waiter to set it near the stove for five minutes. “It's wicked to heat Burgundy,” he said, when the waiter had gone, “but it's the only way you can get it served at the right temperature. I discovered that when we were here before.... I gather, my boy, that you've come to your senses in the matter of that little yellow girl.” Rocky did not wince outwardly; he merely sat still. But his mind, at last, was active. And he knew--saw it in a flash--that no explanation he could possibly make, would be intelligible. You can not--yet--talk across the gulf between the worlds. It was his first intelligent glimpse of the tremendous fact that Doane had so long and so clearly felt and seen. So he merely--at last, when his father looked closely at him--inclined his head and said, huskily: “I'm going to work out this college business'. That's my job clear enough.” This new attitude was to bring, later in the evening, confidences from the father. “It's been an interesting journey for me, Rocky.” Thoughtfully Dawley Kane smoked his Manila cigar. “It's enabled me to understand somewhat the delicate international situation out here. I couldn't see why our agents weren't accomplishing more. The trouble is, of course, that every square foot of China's staked out by the European nations. If you don't believe that, just get a concession from the Chinese Government--for a big job--water power development, mining, railway building, or an industrial monopoly--that part of it isn't so hard--and then try to carry it through. You'd find out fast enough who are the real owners of China. And those owners would never let you start. Great Britain controls this great empire of the Yangtze Valley as completely as she controls India. France owns the south--Russia the northwest and the north--Japan, from Korea and Lower Manchuria is penetrating the northwest, too; they're bound, the Japanese, to tip Russia out one of these days, and they're very clever and patient about slipping into the British regions. They've got the Germans to contend with, too, in the Kiochow region. But someday--either in the event of the final break-up of China or in the event of the European nations coming to an out-and-out squabble (which is almost a certainty, at that) Japan will be found to have pulled off most of the big prizes for herself. We'll have to fight Japan someday, I suppose--over the control of the Pacific--but in the meantime, those little people are the best bet. They know the East as the rest of us don't, they're clever, and their diplomats aren't hampered by the sort of half-enlightened public opinion that's always tripping us up in the West--sentimental idealism, that sort of thing--and they control their press infinitely better than we do. They've got everything, the Japanese, except money. And we've got the money. It'll be just a