They were all sorry for her, and sorriest because it was whispered that the lord King-lo, even in the terrible land where they lived, had not even one concubine; and they all were very kind to her. Nowhere else are social barriers at once so high and so negligible as they are in China. A Chinese lady chums with her maid—between the whiles she cuffs and beats her—eats with her, consults with her, gossips with her. And this disconcerted and revolted English Ivy even more, if the truth must out, than the ever present and patent concubinage did. Sên King-lo came to his wife as often as he could. At Sên Ya Tin’s decree, startling but not to be questioned, rules of social sex decorum were scandalously relaxed. Sên King-lo had access to his wife at all times, of course, and because—that she never need lack friendly faces and voices about her—she was quartered so unisolated from her new kinswomen, in going and coming to her King-lo came more in touch with the haremed ladies of his kinsmen than was Chinesely decent, and far more than old Madame Sên would have cared to have it whispered abroad. And he saw several Chinese girls now—unmarried daughters of the house, but he thought little about any of them, and neither the wives nor the maidens seemed to resent it—unless giggling is a protest. Ruby still wore her Chinese dress invariably, but he came now and then in his English clothes. The first time he did there was a harem riot, for one of the women had spied him, or a eunuch or a slave girl had seen him and told; and the little painted ladies tore pell-mell into Ivy’s room, pushing and jostling each other in their mad rush to see and to touch, and women who never had left their own precincts or seen a forbidden man, much less let one see them, nearly ripped Sên King-lo’s coat off his back. And one tripped and fell—fell thump across King-lo’s knees, and Sên King-lo chuckled and chortled with glee, and so did the tumbled one’s husband who came in then to see what all the noise—excessive even in a Chinese “flowery”—was about. He’d no business there of course, in Sên Ruby’s apartment; but she went freely among his kinsmen, so that did not so much matter; but that he was here with his kinsmen’s unveiled Chinese women was an enormity. But no one seemed to mind in the least, and the fun ran fast and shrill. Sên Po-Fang caught his wife up by her girdle and shook her, and she slapped his face, and they both giggled—and so did every one else except Mrs. Sên King-lo.