“One afternoon I was squatted with a book at the edge of the pines, nearer your grandfather’s house than I was to the monastery, reading a little, doing nothing most of the time—_being_, not doing at all. The sun was setting—I can see it now. Looking up from a page—it was Han Yu, by the way—I saw a plume of flame lick up from the low, widespread, red-roofed house, and then—the day was very still—I heard a girl cry. You know what things of old wood most Chinese houses are, and how they burn if once they start.” Sên nodded. He knew. All China knows. “I ran, of course—no ceremony then between me and the devil-guards on a Chinese man’s forbidden gate. I pelted in and I carried two Chinese girls out—they didn’t weigh much, the pair of them. They were very like their pictures. . . . The servants ran about like tipsy rabbits and were of no possible use.” Sên nodded again. He found that easy to believe. “It turned out that all the men of the family were miles away—hunting. And my idea of what was best to do with those two little things in my arms was—well, hazy. I didn’t speak Chinese then quite as well as I did afterwards, and the gibbering servants knew no Mandarin. At least, if they did, they didn’t trot it out then, and their language was completely new to me. I didn’t quite know what to do with those girls. One giggled—your mother—” Sên smiled—“the other cried. Ivy’s laugh has reminded me of your mother’s sometimes.” Sên looked at him curiously, but Snow did not bite his lip—propaganda forgotten—for he and his cigarette were far away, living again an old love-story. A song of Grieg’s came from the drawing-room. It was Ivy’s touch, Sên King-lo knew, but Charles Snow did not hear. “So—I took them to the monastery. There was a small consternation, but the top monk cleared out of his cell, heaped it with the best things in the place—rugs and cushions and things—and there they slept. Their women were with them, and some score of the men servants and coolies jabbering and smoking outside, while I did sentry-go outside the cell door, and the fraternity told their rosaries and chanted their prayers half through the night.