This young Chinese was as little given to sudden likings as the slow-to-decide Englishman was. But there are affinities of manliness and of tastes that brook no delay, that defy barriers. And the quick and sure Chinese intuition of the younger man had leapt to Snow’s worth and congeniality almost on the instant. Now and then, across the stretch of East and West, there are hands that touch, and having touched, clasp. Sên King-lo did not like Miss Gilbert—the girl with the Chinese-like flower names—the less because she was Charles Snow’s cousin, or that the cousinly bond between them so evidently was strong and close. One thing, at least, Sên disliked in his new girl-acquaintance: the little she seemed to care for her small cousins. He had not seen her with them—or seen them at all—and he hoped her indifference to them was merely a verbal barrage to screen and defend from a stranger, a sentiment too exquisite to be shown to a passing acquaintance, above all not to one whom she disliked. He hoped that—for the sake of his new ride-born liking of her—but he rather doubted it. He thought her pluck was more than her artifice; her indifference had rung true enough. And to his Chinese thinking even the slight ailment that kept her little cousins prisoners in their own rooms would have been sufficient excuse for the kinswoman, who had an almost maternal office over them, to have denied herself to him altogether this morning, and have sent him and his horse away from the door. They might be suffering, the poor little tender things—and yet she had laughed and galloped, and her color had deepened joyously, and her brown eyes sparkled care-free and happy. Was she callous? All Chinese adore all children. Nothing else in our West so repels them as that there are among us some that do not. He hoped he was wrong—she had seemed fond of her horse. When he had tubbed again, Sên had his lunch-chop and hock alone. Washington is as “dry” now as an autumn leaf in drought-time, of course; and was then. But there still are cellars in Washington. In his own house a man, and his guests, may do as he likes with his own. It seems unlikely to be so long, but it is measurably so now. And the Chinese Legation had its cellar—a very good cellar, though rarely broached except on “guest-nights”; and Sên had its freedom. He would not have bought hock now, imported since 1914. He did not relish Colonial wines. But the hock that had been bought and paid for—he feared it had been paid for—before the War, he drank and enjoyed. It was no new thing for Sên to eat alone. For so popular and courted a man, he spent a great deal of time in his own nook—his oak well-sported. And for so busy a man, he seemed to have, or to make himself, a great deal of leisure.