repeated Mr. Spring Fragrance. Not wishing to hear more of the secret talk of women, he arose and sauntered around the veranda to the other side of the house. Two pigeons circled around his head. He felt in his pocket for a li-chi which he usually carried for their pecking. His fingers touched a little box. It contained a jadestone pendant, which Mrs. Spring Fragrance had particularly admired the last time she was down town. It was the fifth anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s wedding day. Mr. Spring Fragrance pressed the little box down into the depths of his pocket. A young man came out of the back door of the house at Mr. Spring Fragrance’s left. The Chin Yuen house was at his right. “Good evening,” said the young man. “Good evening,” returned Mr. Spring Fragrance. He stepped down from his porch and went and leaned over the railing which separated this yard from the yard in which stood the young man. “Will you please tell me,” said Mr. Spring Fragrance, “the meaning of two lines of an American verse which I have heard?” “Certainly,” returned the young man with a genial smile. He was a star student at the University of Washington, and had not the slightest doubt that he could explain the meaning of all things in the universe. “Well,” said Mr. Spring Fragrance, “it is this: “’Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.” “Ah!” responded the young man with an air of profound wisdom. “That, Mr. Spring Fragrance, means that it is a good thing to love anyway—even if we can’t get what we love, or, as the poet tells us, lose what we love. Of course, one needs experience to feel the truth of this teaching.” The young man smiled pensively and reminiscently. More than a dozen young maidens “loved and lost” were passing before his mind’s eye. “The truth of the teaching!” echoed Mr. Spring Fragrance, a little testily. “There is no truth in it whatever. It is disobedient to reason. Is it not better to have what you do not love than to love what you do not have?” “That depends,” answered the young man, “upon temperament.” “I thank you. Good evening,” said Mr. Spring Fragrance. He turned away to muse upon the unwisdom of the American way of looking at things. Meanwhile, inside the house, Laura was refusing to be comforted. “Ah, no! no!” cried she. “If I had not gone to school with Kai Tzu, nor talked nor walked with him, nor played the accompaniments to his songs, then I might consider with complacency, or at least without horror, my approaching marriage with the son of Man You. But as it is—oh, as it is—!” The girl rocked herself to and fro in heartfelt grief. Mrs. Spring Fragrance knelt down beside her, and clasping her arms around her neck, cried in sympathy: