She knelt by the bed, all the sweetness of girlhood unspoiled, all the motherhood-love in the face she bent over the child that slept in her cradling arms, baby head on maiden breast. And Kwan Yin-ko up on the wall, was guarding them both. _And Sên King-lo knew._ A great light came into his eyes. A sudden beat under his ribs made a vein on his forehead swell and throb, quivered his lips; and all his being rushed to the kneeling girl. As quietly as he had come in, he turned and went, and went from the house, an up-to-date Washington flat that was a sanctuary now. He knew his own secret now, knew it as completely and as surely as he had learned it suddenly. Nature had torn a veil aside, and a man had looked in. He had seen his own soul, and he knew that if ever life gave him a child—a girl-child, perhaps, to bear his mother’s name—he but now had seen its mother—an English girl kneeling beside his bed. * * * * * He walked away from the city, taking his course to the woods across the river. He knew the bar—the impossibilities—the disaster and petty, sore frets that passionate disobedience must bring. He knew and believed all this as no untraveled girl could. To call a halt to her heart Ivy had only instinct and a convention for which she had lost respect—had lost it because of what she had found in him. He had conviction, China, thousands of years. The bar that she had come to think but inconvenience and problem, a drawbridge of race that _might_—were the motive enough—be lowered or raised, was to him an impenetrable, unsurmountable wall—the Greater Wall of China, with never a breach or loophole in its everlasting imperial masonry. If ever his puissant, virile manhood—the wholesomeness and sweetness of his being—the heritage his fathers had given—pulsed to manhood’s gravest sacrament, life’s perfect fulfilment, he had seen today—there in his room, the mate of his being, the core of his soul, his children’s mother. _And she was forbidden._ Did she suspect? Could he have taught her to care? English Ruby! _English!_ _What_ was he going to do about it? Elenore Ray could have told him. CHAPTER XXIX Sên King-lo gave a cry; a thousand words could not have said more. Ivy and he had lunched at Miss Julia’s—blind Miss Julia—and were walking home through the woods, at least as far as the river. They might find a cab near the bridge, or, if not, they could take a street-car there. Here in the quiet old wood where two months ago he had brought his new revelation, to be alone with it, to creep into Nature’s rest, to lift his eyes to the sky and the darkling hills, to cool his burn and still his soul amid the trees where now buds swelled and hidden sap lifted, to wash and clean his hands and his spirit in the crisp air that whispered of summer—they loitered a time because it was so beautiful here, and because they were together.