“That’s up to you, dear,” he answered with a laugh, as he snapped a final “popper” behind a puff of _ninon_, for they were dining in some state tonight, al fresco in the wilderness. “They have served their purpose. You might make cushions and tea-cosies and those vanity-bag things you women like to swing out of them, I’d think, and take them home for presents,” he added. Then he gave the puff of silvery, smokey _ninon_ another careful tweak and bent and kissed a dimpled shoulder. “You are very good to me,” Ruby whispered with her hands upon his coat. “Lo, tell me, does it hurt you very much—to leave China?” “Very much,” he told her, “but it would hurt me more to stay. I have loved being here as only Easterners love such things, I think; but I am ready to go home now, Ruby. I take my treasure with me, and we go back to the treasure we have left. My wife is my happiness and my contentment. I would not give her for a world ‘made of one entire and perfect chrysolite’!” * * * * * No one called on Mrs. Sên in Hongkong—few knew that they were back. King-lo scarcely left the bungalow, the few days they waited for a boat. Men came to see him, and he completed with them the business things he had planned and come to do. The day before they sailed, by the man who took a message and a greeting to Sên Ya Tin, his wife sent a letter and an offering to the venerable lady and a horde of costly Chinese garments to the concubine La-yuên. Perchance something of China’s quiet, whispered message had reached Sên Ruby after all! She kept one of the lovely native costumes, to treasure it for memory. She kept all her stickpins and every Chinese bauble that Sên King-lo had given her, and with them a flower that he had gathered her in the forest, and one that he had fastened at her breast, in their bungalow garden, late the night before. It was then that she had told him—shared with him—what was coming in the English winter. And for answer he had put his hands about her face and kissed her slowly on her lips. They stood together on the deck, as the great ship moved slowly from Hongkong. Presently his wife made an excuse of something she wanted in the cabin—no, she’d rather find it herself—and left Sên King-lo to take his last look, say his last goodbye to China—alone. Hongkong grew a blur. Sên King-lo’s face was very pale as he took his last look at his country; but his eyes were calm and steadfast, though his heart ached with a pain passing the pain of woman. And he thought that the gods of China made mouths at him. CHAPTER LIII