of sweet-meats lay on the floor beside her, a pair of chop-sticks she simply could not learn to manipulate crossed above the chocolates and glacé fruits. She wore an oleander flower over one ear and a tiny orange-colored fan over the other. She was well hung with jade—such as it was—and the foot from which she had kicked its heelless sandal showed that she wore white stockings made like mittens, with separate compartments provided for flat great toes. She had taken her flat for a year; and had furnished it, as she believed (and said), in an absolutely Chinese way. And she lived here alone with a maid old enough to be a duenna—but far too shrewd to attempt it. Her brother sulked on a very uncomfortable stool—too high for feet—very much too low for one’s legs to be conveniently or painlessly disposed of. Emmeline had been crying; her eyes were redder than her lightly rouged cheeks. Reginald looked thunderous. Each had close at hand a cocktail—larger than cocktails usually are made. The Reginald’s—he liked to be called so—was served in a champagne glass; Emmeline’s in a small bowl which she called a Chinese wine cup—but Li Po himself never drank wine out of any vessel half so ample, for it was almost as large as a small afternoon tea-cup. “I tell you it’s true!” the girl sobbed, between a whiff and a sip. “I’ll not believe it!” Reginald liked the suggestion almost as little as Miss Julia had—and by it his personal vanity was stung, which Miss Julia Townsend’s had not been. “That low Chink——” Emmeline threw out a dramatic hand, scattering ash into the embossed scales of the purple kimono’s handsomest dragon. “Not here!” she hissed. “No one that speaks with less than the deepest respect for Sên King-lo shall dare speak it here. He is Celestial!” and she sank back with an adoring moan on her prickly cushions—a stork’s leg rasped her cheek—but she was too highly or abjectly Chinese to wince. “Rot!” Reginald replied. He turned to his cocktail; she pulled broken-heartedly at her cigarette. She had a pretty collection of tiny pipes—Chinese and otherwise—but, like the chop-sticks, they had mastered her, not she them. She industriously kept them conspicuous, but she couldn’t manage to use them. “Reggie,” she said presently, “can’t we help each other, you and I? Let’s.” “How?” He spoke gloomily. “We must think.”