troubled Madame Sên as little as it concerned her, but she always had hugged a personal vein of wickedness of her personal own. And because she had no right to wear even a tinge of yellow, she often did, and often had since widowhood had made her supreme in the house of the Sêns. No one outside her gates would know, for no one within her gates would presume or dare to report. A vase of almost inestimable value, a porcelain saucer of melon seeds, with a tiny-bowled, long-stemmed silver pipe, a tinder and a gold-lacquer box of fine tobacco and a tiny queenly fan lying near it, stood on a small, octagonal, carved teak-wood table beside her; a small, tight bouquet of mint and sage and musk lay on her lap; a tiny tame monkey, tethered by a silver chain, perched on the top of the tall, throne-like chair; and about her neck Sên Ya Tin wore, as she always did, the long mandarin chain of cornelian beads of her dead husband’s—as the widow of a British officer often wears his regimental badge. She sat with her face square to the panel that had slid open for King-lo and slid close again behind him, and her unmoved face was a wrinkled, lifeless mask. Three times Sên King-lo k’o-towed to the floor, then stood with downcast eyes and hands meek within his wide sleeves and waited for her to command. She let him wait, neither pleasure nor love nor welcome in her adamant eyes. The water-clock dripped a long minute away. Sên King-lo did not lift his eyes. Sên Ya Tin did not move hers. She watched him stiffly through unwavering narrow lids—and so did the mouse-sized monkey, too. “Approach!” she said in a cold, relentless voice. Sên King-lo neared her by three slow steps; his padded Chinese shoes made no sound as he moved; his hands were still hid in his sleeves; his eyes were still on the floor. And then he k’o-towed again, and again three times, then stood and waited as before. Again she let him wait—but not so long. “Nearer!” Three steps more he went, three more obeisances he made, and as he stood again erect he lifted his eyes to the face of his father’s mother. And Sên Ya Tin sent her eyes to his, steady old eyes, harder than age, that looked but told nothing, gave no hint or sign. It was nearly twenty years since his eyes and hers had met; for she had been ill with smallpox when he had been in China last, and she had forbidden him—as her will and self-control had forbidden the smallpox to disfigure her. And boy and pox had obeyed. She looked at him long, coldly. And he waited for her to signal or speak; to beckon or dismiss. His eyes were the eyes of her father. A silver nail-protector studded with diamonds clattered a little against a pearl-studded one of gold. His mouth was the mouth of her favorite and first-born son. The cornelian beads moved a little on her bosom.