Republic, commonwealth, kingdom, democracy, empire—take your choice. There are things to be said of them all—they all have their points. You may not be able to choose an empire, if you’re too long about it—so they say—well, we shall see, or our children’s children will. Prophecy’s a thankless, perilous pastime. And even the writing on the wall blunders sometimes. But this much is true; our old shifting Earth has but two empires left her now—China’s and England’s. Japan doesn’t count—yet. It mixes and meddles, but in the ultimate soul bigness _it does not count_. And China’s a republic you say? China is not—never has been and never can be, except in the fevered dreaming of a day of midsummer madness, the demented throes of a short nightmare; there are intrinsic qualities of peoples as of individual characters which no label can change. Under another name China may not be so comfortable a place to live in, but it is an empire still, disfigured, demented, but neither shattered nor lost—but not less than empire while the soul of the Sages, whom she wombed and who too begat her, breathes through the soul of her people, the poppies and bamboos hang at the edge of the Yellow Sorrow, and the silkworms gorge on the mulberry leaves and empurple the looms. And while those twin empires stand—in so much alike, so much unalike—a something will show in many faces of two races’ women which shows in no others. It is not distinction—though it often includes it; it is not courage—though it never lacks it; it is not flare or flame; it is not beauty; though never unfeminine it is not femininity; it is not dignity, though it never is cheap, it never asserts itself—it has no need to; it is not self-conscious; it is neither humble nor proud and yet it is both; it is neither virtue nor individuality; still less is it cant; it is empire—racial empire and personal empire: a part and a whole. A thing to admire? That’s as you think. But while the wild white rose perfumes the graves of Li’s ancestors, and the Augean goats browse by the graves of English boys in Gallipoli, that something will show in the faces of one type—the best type—of Chinese and English women. Ts’z-hi had it, and Ivy Gilbert, whatever medley her ancestry, undeniably had it, and the eyes of a Chinese man, who had been a sash-wearer for thousands of years, saw it and gloated. She wore it here in Washington; in the nursery schoolroom, in the ballroom or at Rosehill, as Ts’z-hi had worn it in the Vermilion Palace. That Sên King-lo was attracted by Ivy Gilbert was not odd. That he attracted her, would be longer to explain, if one could—more intricate and difficult to trace. But he did. And her liking and friendliness turned to him in the good old hackneyed way that sunflowers have turned to the sun ever since Adam made the meanest and truest excuse in human history. She tempted him—though he didn’t know it yet. Youth called to youth. Loneliness answered to loneliness. Sex called to sex.