She heaped the lilies out on the coverlid beside her, and opened the book. How queer the Chinese writing looked! Heathenish—but picturesque—beautiful, even, she finally decided. Then she turned the leaf and read and reread the English translation. One question that he had answered in Chinese, he had left unanswered in English: “What is your favorite woman’s name?” But, of course, his favorite woman’s name was a Chinese name—and could not be translated into English. She turned back and studied the Chinese character. It was exquisitely made, she thought—almost as if the man’s hand and his brush had lingered tenderly over it. Was it a sweetheart’s name? No—it couldn’t be, for he never had so much as seen a Chinese girl—he’d said so that first night at Miss Julia’s—and it had stuck in her memory because it had struck her Western mind as at once the most absurd and the most preposterous thing she had ever heard. She wondered what this name he most liked sounded like. She’d ask Charles to read it aloud to her. Probably Charlie didn’t pronounce Chinese with impeccable Chinese accent, but she knew that he spoke that language—or had spoken it some years ago—and no doubt he could read it a little. She’d like to hear how that funny looking little name sounded. It must be a short name—with just one character—that was what they called them, she thought—in its writing: a chubby little name, if its “character” at all depicted it—but neither unpretty nor ungraceful, for delicate curves—almost hair-lines one or two—crossed and jutted out daintily from its fat thicker sweeps of the brush. How unlike English writing this Chinese writing was! Strange that inked makeshifts for spoken words, so unlike as these that Mr. Sên had written in Chinese and those he’d written in English were, could stand for the same things, convey the same meanings! But did they? Were Chinese thoughts and English—hearts, minds, emotions—in anyway one? The man she had ridden with the other day had seemed so little un-English to her! And he had found her a little Chinese—that first night at Miss Julia’s. Could hands of the West and hands of the East meet now and then, after all, in grip not altogether Eurasian and flabby? How interesting it all was! And she’d never given it a thought before! How full of wonderful things the world was—and life!