“It was my girl-mother’s name, Miss Gilbert, and I love it for that, even far more than I do for the music it makes—it _is_ music in _my_ language and in yours. It was the last word my father ever spoke.” “I beg your pardon,” Ivy told him shyly. “I’m so sorry. Of course, you wouldn’t write it in my confession-book.” “But I did. I wrote it in Chinese. I’ll write it now in English, if you’ll let me. I didn’t when I wrote the English pages, because I could not take that liberty with _your_ name.” “My——” Sên King-lo’s eyes kindled into hers. “My mother’s name”—his lips seemed to caress it as he spoke it—“was Ruby.” _And then the girl knew._ CHAPTER XXV Sên King-lo did not know—yet. But Ivy knew. Almost always the woman knows first—no matter how inexperienced she is, or how experienced he. Ivy knew. And because she reeled a little under the shock—and all that it meant—she blundered into words that were the last she’d have spoken, if she and her tongue had known what they were doing. “How odd! Your mother’s name was Ruby Sên.” She knew what she’d said the moment she’d said it, and she flushed, face and neck, almost as crimson as a Chinese’s bride’s veil. Even then the man did not know—neither his secret nor hers. But the first far-off glimmering of his own came to him then—like the shimmering scent of distant flowers or the tremble of music a long way away. He saw Ivy’s confusion, the red on her face, and that her lips and hands trembled a little. But he mistook it to be only her vexation for a _faux pas_ that the sensitive taste of so nice a girl exaggerated out of all proportion to the small thing it was. “But no,” he reminded her with a light laugh, “it was not—it was Sên Ruby.” Ivy laughed too then. But the odd inverted sound of it hurt her—“Sên Ruby”—reminding her, admonishing her, of the bar eternally set, the race-bar that decency—or was it prejudice?—set between East and West. _She_ never could leap that bar, and she knew that he never would. “English-Chinese!” She was glad when Sên King-lo went to the piano. (Was it tact or because he felt like playing? she wondered. It was both.) And she was still more glad when Emma came in with Sir Charles and the Duke. And as soon as she decently could she said goodnight and left them. She was very weary as she trudged up the easy stairs—and her young soul was bitter. Other girls kept their dreams—at least for a time—but she might not keep hers for an hour—not for one heart-beat of time. Chinese! She lay awake a long time wishing the day would come, dreading its coming. She did not hear the front door close, but she heard Sên’s step as it passed under her window, and she smothered her ears in her pillow. It was almost morning when at last she slept, and she dreamed of Sên King-lo’s wife—his Chinese wife and hated her. She dreamed of Sên King-lo in Chinese dress—skirts, hair, and all—and loathed herself. She mocked herself, and his eyes mocked her.