Sên King-lo laughed. “Do you think the Manchu was a good dynasty in its last reigns?” he questioned. “I do,” Snow said stoutly. “It gave you the two finest rulers any country ever had—any country, bar none.” “You mean K’ang-hi and K’ien-lung.” “I do.” Sên King-lo smiled again, but he drained the glass Sir Charles had refilled. “Twenty Sun-Yat-sens would not out-balance either K’ang-hi or K’ien-lung. And I hope the Manchu will come back. And I don’t like dethronements.” “We’ve had a good many in China.” “Not exactly. Conquering princes and warriors have mounted, usurped, if you like, the throne of the Emperor they’ve unseated—but that’s a very different thing from a people voluntarily dismissing their ruler. And when they do it at foreign instigation and chicanery—to my mind it is without excuse.” “Mencius taught ‘Killing a bad monarch is no murder,’ ” Sên remarked. “Then Mencius was, to my thinking, a bit of a Bolshevik,” Snow retorted. Sên King-lo laughed pleasantly. That he did—at such hot derision of the Sage, showed how tight Young China had gripped him, how far Old China had lost him. “I hate to see China a republic,” Snow insisted. “And I stand by the Manchu. You will dislike my saying that——” “And that is why you say it.” “Exactly. I want to start fair.” “So I thought, Sir Charles. But I do not dislike your saying it, or even your feeling so. I think you are wrong,” Sên King-lo inclined his head courteously towards the older and host, “but if a man himself is thoroughly sound, I don’t think that it matters very desperately what views he holds. I believe that neither an incorruptible man, nor any views he has, will do himself or any one else much harm. For our weal or our woe, the Manchu _has_ gone—for a time, or for ever—and we, we Chinese, must do the best we can for our country, with things as they are. And we can’t very well import an Emperor made in Germany.” “God forbid! But you could choose one of your _own_.” “Would you have us crown Sun-Yat-sen?” “That’s the last thing I’d have you do,” Snow retorted grimly. “But there are _men_—good men, in China.” “Yes,” Sên King-lo agreed, noncommittally. “You have started splendidly fair,” he added with a pleasant grin, “and now you wish to ask me something?” “Yes; that was why I wouldn’t let my wife have half Washington here tonight. I wanted a chance to talk with you alone—to find out several things from you, if I could. You won’t tell me, of course. Your Minister won’t, and you, of course, cannot and should not; but I might gather something from the way your reticence shaped—I’m an old hand, you know.” The young Chinese laughed gleefully. He liked this Englishman. “Shantung?” he asked, gravely. “No—not Shantung. I know what you and every decent Chinese wish and plan and hope concerning the sacred province. I wish it too, Sên King-lo.” “Thank you,” Sên said quietly.