“You do think I'm a rotter!” he cried. “Well, maybe I am. Maybe I'm spoiled. But what's a fellow to do? My father's a machine--that's what he is--a ruthless machine. My mother divorced him ten years ago. She married that English captain--got the money out of father for them to live on, and now she's divorced him. Where do I get off? I know I'm overstrung, nervous. I've always had everything I want. Do you wonder that I've begun to look for something new? Perhaps I'm going to hell. I know you think so. I can see it in your eyes. But who cares!” Doane stood a long time at the rail, thinking. The ship's clock in the social hall struck eight bells. Faintly his outer ear caught it. It was time to join his excellency. CHAPTER III--MISS HUI FEI |THE luncheon table of his excellency was simply set, with two chairs of carven blackwood, behind a high painted screen of six panels. It was at this screen that the first mate (left by a smiling attendant) gazed with a frown of incredulity. Cap in hand, he stepped back and studied the painting, a landscape representing a range of mountains rising above mist in great rock-masses, chasms where tortured trees clung, towering, lagged peaks, all partly obscured by the softly luminous vapor--a scene of power and beauty. Much of the brighter color had faded into the prevailing tones of old ivory yellow shading into some thing near Rembrandt brown; though the original, reds and blues still held vividly in the lower right foreground, where were pictured very small, exquisite in detail yet of as trifling importance in the majestic scheme of the painting as are man and his works in all sober Chinese thought when considered in relation to the grim majesty of nature, a little friendly cluster of houses, men at work, children at play, domestic animals, a stream with a water buffalo, a bridge, a wayfarer riding a donkey, and cultivated fields. The ideographic signature was in rich old gold, inscribed with unerring decorative instinct on a flat rock surface. The mate bent low and looked closely at the brush-work; then stepped around an end panel and examined the texture of the silk. “Ah!”--it was a musical deep voice, speaking in the mandarin tongue--“you admire my screen, Griggsby Doane.” The name was pronounced in English.