"It was very extraordinary. A Lu Kikwang was a high official of the Canton Customs, and when Shanghai was declared an open port in forty-two they made him hoppo there. I remembered him at Canton, a dignified old duck with eighty or a hundred servants to keep anyone from possibly speaking to him of business, but there had been some trouble about foreign vessels selling saltpeter illegally and--he knew some English--we had quite a friendly little consultation. Yet it hadn't prepared me for his coming off to the _Nautilus_ at Shanghai with a linguist and an air of the greatest mystery. His manner was beautiful, of course, absolutely tranquil and that made what they said, what he hoped, seem even wilder than it was. "His son, it appeared, had married and was accidentally drowned in the Great Canal hardly a month after the ceremony. His widow belonged, then, to the husband's family, and from that moment her father-in-law had had nothing but bad luck. He had been robbed, his best stallion died, there had been a flood in his tea which not only spoiled the crop but filled the ground with silt--it was impossible to relate his calamities. He consulted a necromancer at last and learned that it was all caused by the presence of Taou Yuen. "This, you see, made the difficulty, as it's a frightful disgrace to return a married daughter to her own father's home, and Lu had grown very fond of her. She was extremely clever and virtuous, he said. The other thing was to kill her or force her to commit suicide. He told me very calmly that he would like to avoid this. "Then, in the linguist's most flowery manner, they went on with what Lu Kikwang proposed. He had recognized that I was a man of 'superior propriety' and he wondered if I would take Taou Yuen away to America with me. Very secretly though--there would be an uproar if it were known that a Manchu woman had been married to a foreigner. I could see her first in his garden without her knowing anything about it. "It's needless to tell you that I went with them that afternoon. A meeting was arranged for the next day--" he broke off, sitting forward with elbows on knees, gazing fixedly at his clasped hands. "You make that very clear, Gerrit," his sister-in-law replied; "I now understand the past almost as well as yourself; but it's the future I'm in doubt about. I saw immediately that your wife was not an ordinary woman; it would be much easier if she were. Certainly you don't intend to stay here, at Java Head; but that is immaterial. Wherever you go in America it will not be suitable for her. She'll be no more at home with your friends than you with hers. I feel terribly sad about it, Gerrit; you were as selfish as only a man can be." "You are unjust, Rhoda," he protested. "Taou Yuen was willing to come. She had read about other countries and saw a great deal of the English wife of a rich Dutch factor at Shanghai; as Lu Kikwang said, she's wonderfully intelligent. I think she is happy, too."