He always was glad to get back to the bungalow on the Peak which he had taken and furnished for Ruby through a cablegram sent from Vancouver. Sên King-lo had not cared to take his English wife to a Hongkong hotel. They had been in Hongkong several months now, during which time he had been away more than once on the bank’s business, once with Ruby, twice without her. He did not intend to take her with him again when he went on a business journey. There had been a hint of unpleasantness for them—not between them—more than once on that one journey, hints that had reached him more clearly than they had her. He understood the language and the people; she did not. She had amused herself comfortably enough on his two brief absences, and he would have been glad to hope that he might persuade her to remain in Hongkong when he went to Ho-nan to see his grandmother at his old home. Ruby had certain social assets here that could not be ignored or too ruthlessly discounted. The Governor was a lifelong friend of Sir Charles Snow’s; his wife a distant relative of Lady Snow’s; and in London Ruby and he had dined with them and they with the Sêns. It had not been possible for Mr. and Mrs. Sên to be excluded from Government House. And that gave her a chance of amusement which might, he thought, be a little more cordial if he himself were away. But Sên knew so well that his wife would not be persuaded to remain behind when he went to Ho-nan that, much as he wished it, he scarcely urged it. What was the use? Sên King-lo began to see, faint but growing clearer, the same writing on the wall that Sir Charles had seen, and been aghast but not surprised to see, at Kensington. Eagerly determined that this holiday and homecoming of his should be all Lo’s, filled to the brim with all that would make it happiest for him and pleasant to remember, Mrs. Sên cared very little how many Europeans called on her or how many did not; but she was keenly anxious to know and “make friends” with Chinese women, that she and Lo might come and go among his Chinese friends, seeing them in their homes and in the Sên home. Sên had hoped to gratify her in this, believing that it would be easy enough under the change in woman’s position in China. To an extent he had, but it hadn’t worked. Chinese ladies had called on Mrs. Sên—a few; two had invited her to lunch; and one, more emancipated perhaps, or perhaps more good-natured, or it even might have been under a husband’s control, had gone so far as to bring her daughters with her the second time she called. She had dined once at the Sêns’ bungalow and had once invited them both to dine with her husband and herself—on which occasion neither of her daughters had been present.