She began singing the old Chinese ditty in a fresh birdlike voice. Wou Sankwei, listening, was glad to hear her. He liked having everyone around him cheerful and happy. That had been the charm of the Dean household. The ship was finished before the little family retired. Yen examined it, critically at first, then exultingly. Finally, he carried it away and placed it carefully in the closet where he kept his kites, balls, tops, and other treasures. “We will set sail with it tomorrow after school,” said he to his father, hugging gratefully that father’s arm. Sankwei rubbed the little round head. The boy and he were great chums. * * * * * What was that sound which caused Sankwei to start from his sleep? It was just on the border land of night and day, an unusual time for Pau Lin to be up. Yet, he could hear her voice in Yen’s room. He raised himself on his elbow and listened. She was softly singing a nursery song about some little squirrels and a huntsman. Sankwei wondered at her singing in that way at such an hour. From where he lay he could just perceive the child’s cot and the silent child figure lying motionless in the dim light. How very motionless! In a moment Sankwei was beside it. The empty cup with its dark dregs told the tale. The thing he loved the best in all the world—the darling son who had crept into his heart with his joyousness and beauty—had been taken from him—by her who had given. Sankwei reeled against the wall. The kneeling figure by the cot arose. The face of her was solemn and tender. “He is saved,” smiled she, “from the Wisdom of the New.” In grief too bitter for words the father bowed his head upon his hands. “Why! Why!” queried Pau Lin, gazing upon him bewilderedly. “The child is happy. The butterfly mourns not o’er the shed cocoon.” Sankwei put up his shutters and wrote this note to Adah Charlton: I have lost my boy through an accident. I am returning to China with my wife whose health requires a change. “ITS WAVERING IMAGE” I Pan was a half white, half Chinese girl. Her mother was dead, and Pan lived with her father who kept an Oriental Bazaar on Dupont Street. All her life had Pan lived in Chinatown, and if she were different in any sense from those around her, she gave little thought to it. It was only after the coming of Mark Carson that the mystery of her nature began to trouble her. They met at the time of the boycott of the Sam Yups by the See Yups. After the heat and dust and unsavoriness of the highways and byways of Chinatown, the young reporter who had been sent to find a story, had stepped across the threshold of a cool, deep room, fragrant with the odor of dried lilies and sandalwood, and found Pan.