So she knew, had divined, what his trouble was, understood half of his dual trouble—for Sên King-lo was carrying two, and they were quite distinct—knew without any need of being told! But because she had asked him, and because it was a relief to speak to one he so trusted and liked, of what he could not have spoken to any one else, unless perhaps to Charles Snow, Sên King-lo went on. “As short a time as I can make it,” he replied. “She wanted to bring our boy with us, of course; but there I would not yield, and our physician backed me up.” “Wonderful people, doctors!” the physician remarked, “and beautifully helpful.” Sên smiled his agreement. “But I ought not to have brought her,” he added gravely. “It was a terrible risk, an unpardonable mistake, and I do not see how I am to save her from finding it out. No one avoided us in London. No one resented our marriage, or dared to misunderstand it. She was too fine, too unmistakable—and a little because I was so seemingly cosmopolitan, and because London is London—at once indifferent and wholesome. But here it is not so.” “Has Mrs. Sên been ostracized here?” “Something like that. The Europeans have been supercilious—salacious-minded and evil-tongued amongst themselves and behind our backs, I have little doubt. And my own people have been hard, unbending. The English sneer, more or less openly, and the Chinese have tabooed my wife. An Englishman, a married man who also has a Chinese ménage and children in it, called here one day when I was out, and Ruby gave him tea; but I happen to know that he has forbidden his wife, an Englishwoman, to call on mine.” “But you are going soon,” Dr. Ray said more cheerfully than she felt. “Get her away. That is the only thing to do. And you are going soon now, Ruby said.” “Farther into China. To my own family. That will be worse, I fear.” “Oh! I hope not. She wouldn’t stay with me, I suppose, while you went and came back for her? We could take a little trip—to Japan perhaps—she and I. I will part ways with Julia Townsend, for a time, or bring her to reason.” “I’d give a great deal if she would,” Sên replied. “But she will not. It isn’t even worth trying. Don’t think me ungrateful.” “I know that you are not that,” Dr. Ray said emphatically. Mrs. Sên came to them from the drawing-room then, her home letters read, Emma’s cried over a little—for it had told her of Ruben’s first tooth and of a pair of tiny new red shoes he preferred to suck rather than wear—and nothing more of analysis or of confession passed. It was late when Dr. Ray went back to her hotel down in the city, and Sên walked beside her with his hand on the edge of her chair.