“To be sure! I might have known that. But, I don’t suppose you know anything about what I did in China—it wasn’t much, and you were the merest child then, still smelling of your mother’s milk.” The Chinese face quickened at the other’s use of a Chinese saying. Then it grew graver, and Sên said a little sadly: “We have to grow old rapidly now, we Chinese who love our country, and wish to serve her. I know what year you landed in China, what boat you took there, how long you stayed, much of what you did, where you lived and went most of the time, who many of your Chinese friends were. And that was one reason—only one—why I was so particularly pleased when I received Lady Snow’s note, kindly saying that I might dine with her and make your acquaintance—for I don’t suppose we count as acquaintance the few k’o-tow nods we’ve exchanged at your ‘shop’ and mine.” “No—precisely,” Snow agreed. “Well—as you know then, I must try not to feel too flattered by what is purely a bit of detail work of a painstaking patriotism, you know that I have lived in China all told quite a lump of moons——” “A year and seven weeks longer than I have myself—all told.” “By Jove! You have been exiled as much as that?” “Yes,” the Chinese said gravely. “Well, Mr. Sên, a man knows his own country better—certainly more naturally—than any foreigner can. But you and I know that the old myth that no European can know anything very vital about China, or the Chinese, or understand either at all, is untrue.” Sên King-lo nodded and smiled across the cigarette he was lighting. “Tommy-rot,” he said. “Parkes knew China—quite a good deal about you—and Hart did, and Macartney.” Sên King-lo nodded again. “And there have been others.” “And there have been others,” Sên King-lo said. “And there are now—a few. We need more.” “I hope you’ll get them,” the host said cordially. “But if you don’t, I expect you’ll make shift without them.” “I hope so,” Sên replied. “But it will take longer to accomplish what we must.” “Much longer,” Snow added. “Next to my own country and people, I like and admire _and trust_ yours, Mr. Sên.” The Chinese lifted his glass. “And next to my own country and my own countrymen, I like and admire and trust yours, sir,” he said, and drank. “When the Manchu fell,” Snow began when he, too, had tasted his port,—“frankly I wish they had not——” Sên King-lo smiled. “We all regret—some more, some less—that they had to, all of us who love self less and China more, I think. But it had to come.” “Possibly,” the other conceded. “I don’t own that I see it. But we need not quarrel over that.” “_We_ shall not quarrel over anything,” Sên said simply. “No, I don’t think we shall. Well—I hope that the Manchu may come back.” “Why?” Sên King-lo asked. “Best dynasty you ever had. And I don’t like republics. Don’t believe in them. And for an Oriental people—well, in my opinion they smell to heaven.”