“I dislike it,” Sir Charles began, passing his cigarettes—tobacco marks conference, not dispute—“I dread it utterly, and I ask you to consider it searchingly.” “I believe I have done that, Sir Charles.” “When!” Sên smiled. “_Since_, I’ll be bound,” Snow continued, “for I’m convinced that you’d not have done it—spoken. I mean—if you had thought it out beforehand. It came on impulse, I suspect.” “Quite on impulse,” the other owned. “It usually does,” Sir Charles Snow smiled as he sighed. “But I had considered it from every angle, I think, _before_, as I also have since.” “And you did not mean to speak?” “I meant not to speak.” “But you did; and now?” “I certainly did,” Sên assented. “It was no speaking of Miss Gilbert’s.” Both men smiled. “And now, Sên?” “I dislike it too,” Sên said quietly, “in some of its aspects.” “Ah?” “Because I dread it a little for her.” “You have more cause to dread it for yourself,” the other said sharply. “Given considerable luck Ivy may go through it practically scot free. But for you, as I see it, it can be nothing but disaster. She _may_ get through it comfortably enough—if she never goes East—” Sên winced a little and his eyes were grave—“but if you persist in it, you are running your head very tightly into a very rough noose.” “I’ll risk that,” Sên’s eyes were smiling again, “and because I believe I can keep it from being sometimes an inconvenience to her, I do persist in it, Sir Charles.” “Is it fair to her to persist in what you own you dislike?” “Some of its possible rasps—probable rasps—only, and between which and her I believe that I can always stand. I intend to. And I like it,” Sên added, “incomparably more than I dislike—know and admit that I should dislike—one or two of its quite possible consequences.” “Quite possible,” Snow repeated with quiet significance. “I like it immensely, Sir,” Sên said with a boyish laugh but a man’s steady purpose and pride in his eyes. “But you fear it.” “No, scarcely fear it.” “Fear it,” Snow insisted. “Take the way out. I beg you to—for both your sakes.” “There is no way out,” Sên King-lo declared, “none that I can take, or will. If your cousin—you have spoken to her, of course, or will——” “I have spoken to Ivy,” Snow told him grimly, “and made matters worse, if I did anything. She’ll not budge an inch. But you—you are reasonable. You will listen to what I have to say?” “To every word of it and as long as you like.” Snow plunged into his arguments—most of them the old ones that every student of “East and West” has heard again and again, and that dozens of pens have twisted and turned into well-grimed shreds. And, quite without offensiveness, he cut very much deeper into physical things—revulsions, apparent, if not actual, abnormality, and so on—than often a pen has dared to do. In some points, Sên agreed; most he rejected or claimed to be outweighed.