Mrs. Tai Fu did her best, which was notably weak, until she observed what made her drop the stick by her side in amazement. Ah Kim was crying. Down both cheeks great round tears were coursing. Li Faa was amazed. So were the gaping clerks. Most amazed of all was Ah Kim, yet he could not help himself; and, although no further blows fell, he cried steadily on. “But why did you cry?” Li Faa demanded often of Ah Kim. “It was so perfectly foolish a thing to do. She was not even hurting you.” “Wait until we are married,” was Ah Kim’s invariable reply, “and then, O Moon Lily, will I tell you.” * * * * * Two years later, one afternoon, more like a water-melon seed in configuration than ever, Ah Kim returned home from a meeting of the Chinese Protective Association, to find his mother dead on her couch. Narrower and more unrelenting than ever were the forehead and the brushed-back hair. But on her face was a withered smile. The gods had been kind. She had passed without pain. He telephoned first of all to Li Faa’s number but did not find her until he called up Mrs. Chang Lucy. The news given, the marriage was dated ahead with ten times the brevity of the old-line Chinese custom. And if there be anything analogous to a bridesmaid in a Chinese wedding, Mrs. Chang Lucy was just that. “Why,” Li Faa asked Ah Kim when alone with him on their wedding night, “why did you cry when your mother beat you that day in the store? You were so foolish. She was not even hurting you.” “That is why I cried,” answered Ah Kim. Li Faa looked up at him without understanding. “I cried,” he explained, “because I suddenly knew that my mother was nearing her end. There was no weight, no hurt, in her blows. I cried because I knew _she no longer had strength enough to hurt me_. That is why I cried, my Flower of Serenity, my Perfect Rest. That is the only reason why I cried.” WAIKIKI, HONOLULU. _June_ 16, 1916. THE KANAKA SURF THE tourist women, under the _hau_ tree arbour that lines the Moana hotel beach, gasped when Lee Barton and his wife Ida emerged from the bath-house. And as the pair walked past them and down to the sand, they continued to gasp. Not that there was anything about Lee Barton provocative of gasps. The tourist women were not of the sort to gasp at sight of a mere man’s swimming-suited body, no matter with what swelling splendour of line and muscle such body was invested. Nevertheless, trainers and conditioners of men would have drawn deep breaths of satisfaction at contemplation of the physical spectacle of him. But they would not have gasped in the way the women did, whose gasps were indicative of moral shock.