My thoughts at dinner that night seem very amusing to me as I recall them now. Chan-King was so like one of us, as we sat at table together, that I found myself wondering if it was true that a Chinese wife did not eat at the same table with her husband; if she actually did wait upon him and obey him without question in everything; if Chan-King would return to China soon and there become an insufferable, autocratic Eastern husband. The thought oppressed me unbearably. Since Chan-King was leaving next day on a summer-vacation trip, this was a farewell dinner. He insisted on helping me with the dishes afterwards, for ours was a simple household, and we usually had no maid. We were very merry over the task. "In China," he confided, as he stacked the saucers, "the lot of women is much easier. They have servants for everything of this kind. I know an Englishwoman who married a Chinese, and she afterwards taught in a college for the sake of something to do." "She did quite right," I said. "Idleness is not good for anyone." "Chinese wives are not idle," he answered gravely, "they have many duties for everyone in their household." At this he turned his eyes upon me, with an intent, inner look. Because I was impressed, I chose to be flippant. "If I obstruct your view, I will move," I said. "It would do no good," he answered. "You are always there--wherever I want to look." Later he was writing his name in Chinese characters on a photograph he had given my mother. I stood beside him. He dropped the pen, turned to me and took both my hands in his own. He bent toward me, and I drew away, shaking my head decisively. I wrenched one hand free, and the kiss he meant for my lips reached my fingers instead. I was overwhelmed with a sense of invasion. We quarrelled, but without bitterness or real anger. I was simply convinced that, since love was not for us, we were bound by all ethics to keep our relations in the outward seeming of friendship. For a moment I felt that one of my ideals had been rudely shattered. "Oh, but you have mistaken me!" he declared earnestly, refusing to release my hand. "Kisses are not for friendship," I managed to say. "I'm sorry," he confessed, but I saw in his eyes that he regretted my misunderstanding of him, nothing more. During his summer travels he wrote me many letters. I had time to think, and in my thoughts I admitted that to be a friend of Chan-King was better than to have the love of anyone else in the world. When he returned, we wandered together one evening down to the campus and sat on a stone bench in the moon-shade of a tall tree. I had overheard a remark, tinged with race prejudice, that had awakened again in my heart that brooding maternal tenderness, and when Chan-King's eyes pleaded wistfully I gave him, as a sacrificial offering, the kiss before denied.