Yes, but when she had told him she loved him she had not dreamed that her love for him and his for her would estrange him from one who, before ever she had come to this world, had pillowed his head on her breast. Suddenly this girl, so practical, so humorous, so clever in every-day life, covered her face with her hands and sobbed like a child. Two roads of life had lain before her and she had chosen the hardest. The warning bell of an automobile passing the cross-roads checked her tears. That reminded her that Nellie Blake would soon be home. She turned on the light and went to the bedroom and bathed her eyes. Nellie must have forgotten her key. There she was knocking. * * * * * The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses as Mary Carman stood upon the threshold of the little cottage, and beheld in the illumination from within the young girl whom she had called “the Inferior Woman.” “I have come, Miss Winthrop,” said she, “to beg of you to return home with me. Will, reckless boy, met with a slight accident while out shooting, so could not come for you himself. He has told me that he loves you, and if you love him, I want to arrange for the prettiest wedding of the season. Come, dear!” “I am so glad,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “that Will Carman’s bird is in his nest and his felicity is assured.” “What about the Superior Woman?” asked Mr. Spring Fragrance. “Ah, the Superior Woman! Radiantly beautiful, and gifted with the divine right of learning! I love well the Inferior Woman; but, O Great Man, when we have a daughter, may Heaven ordain that she walk in the groove of the Superior Woman.” THE WISDOM OF THE NEW I Old Li Wang, the peddler, who had lived in the land beyond the sea, was wont to declare: “For every cent that a man makes here, he can make one hundred there.” “Then, why,” would ask Sankwei, “do you now have to move from door to door to fill your bowl with rice?” And the old man would sigh and answer: “Because where one learns how to make gold, one also learns how to lose it.” “How to lose it!” echoed Wou Sankwei. “Tell me all about it.” So the old man would tell stories about the winning and the losing, and the stories of the losing were even more fascinating than the stories of the winning. “Yes, that was life,” he would conclude. “Life, life.” At such times the boy would gaze across the water with wistful eyes. The land beyond the sea was calling to him. The place was a sleepy little south coast town where the years slipped by monotonously. The boy was the only son of the man who had been the town magistrate.