“I certainly like to know people—what else is there for me to do with you shut up all day over your silly papers?” “I do not doubt you would find them so,” Sir Charles admitted dryly. “We both were lunching there. I found him interesting—different somehow from any one I know. My new acquaintance is a man, did I say?” “Quite unnecessary—but you did.” Emma Snow laughed. She plumed herself on her “affairs,” and lived in desperate hope that some day one of them would attract her husband’s attention sufficiently to wean him a little from his dense absorption in the “silly business” his country paid him to attend to—and incidentally had knighted him that he might do it the more effectively in a country that proclaimed its scorn of all such fictitious honors, but at the same time received them with very marked favor and attention. Sir Charles went stolidly and attentively on with his very good dinner. His wife raised her eyebrows—and led trumps—at least she hoped that it would prove she had. “A perfectly charming Chinaman, Charlie.” But Sir Charles neither dropped his knife nor spilled his claret. “Most of them are,” he told her. “This canvas-back is a great improvement on those we had last week. But the sauce needs a dash more cayenne and more than a dash more lemon.” “Do you like the Chinese?” Ivy asked him quickly. “Very much,” he replied. “Every one does who _knows_ them. They’re the salt of the Eastern earth.” “Have you known many Chinamen—well?” Reginald Hamilton asked his host a little superciliously. “I lived ten years among them,” Snow replied curtly. “I was sent to Pekin when they first let me pass my Civil Service Exam. And I wish they’d left me there. But after ten years—for my sins—they promoted me—to Geneva! Yes, I have known many Chinese—some of them fairly well. The more you know them, the better you like them: bound to. By the way, Emma, ‘Chinese’ is a better word, more descriptive, I think, and better taste than ‘Chinaman.’ There is one Chinese in Washington I very much want to get on easy terms with.” “To Scotland Yard special-branch him?” his wife quizzed him. “Never mind that part,” her husband retorted. “Mr. Sên told me—” Lady Snow began, but she never finished her sentence. “Was it Sên King-lo you met at Judge Ransome’s?” her husband demanded, putting his glass down untasted. Emma Snow had aroused her husband’s attention at last—very much so. “Yes—it was,” she announced importantly, “Mr. Sên King-lo. I asked him to call.” “Good!” said Sir Charles heartily. “I hope he does.” “Sure to. He promised,” Emma Snow said confidently. Charles had not taken her small news as she’d intended him to, and had hoped that he would. But she was gratified at the mild excitement she’d caused. She’d hoped Charles would be annoyed—but, since he was not, it was the next best thing that he was pleased. It was his indifference that rankled—and indifference was his constant everyday wear.