The incident was like oxygen to the tired woman. Nearing Shanghai, the _Empress_ steamer nosed the winter zone, and Jerry Cardinegh was not well enough to go ashore. Noreen had shopping to do, and took the afternoon launch up the river for an hour in the city. Snow was falling. On the Bund, Noreen encountered Finacune, who had come down from Tokyo to get a glance at affairs from the outside. He declared that little or nothing was to be learned in the Japanese capital. Already the nation was constructing an impenetrable atmosphere about her great war. Finacune was going back on the _Empress_. As the time was short, they parted to attend their several errands, planning to meet at the launch later. With her parcels, Noreen hurried back from the shops to the Bund in the winter twilight. Finacune, who had not seen her, was fifty feet ahead, also making for the water-front. She saw him stop short, stare for an instant at the profile of a huge, gaunt figure--in the great frieze coat! It was then that the mighty leap of her heart forced a cry from her throat.... Routledge, staring out over the darkening river, started at her voice and the touch of her hand. For a moment he pressed his fingers against his eyes as if trying to shut out some haunt from his brain. Then he, spoke slowly: “I did not think that there were substances fine enough in the world to make a woman so beautiful----” “Routledge-san! Oh, God, there is only a moment or two!” “I should not have been here,” he began vaguely. “Some one may see you talking with me.” “Don’t speak of that!... Oh, words are such puny things now! I thought we understood each other about that. Tell me, are you ill? You look----” “No, not ill, Noreen. I shall be tiptop when I get up yonder into the field.... You startled me. I think I was in a kind of dream about you, and then you----” The old dread returned to his mind. He wondered if the man who had passed had been Finacune. “Are you alone? I wouldn’t have anybody see you talking to me.” All that was in her heart was called forth by the spectacle of her giant’s pallor and seeming weakness. Proudly she put all this into words: “I would not care if the whole world saw me with you. It is the same with me--as I told you on the way to Charing Cross! What you may think--does not make me afraid. You have done no wrong. I want to be with you--but the time is not yet come. It is dreadful. Why do you forget all that we told each other--all that I told you?” “I have not forgotten,” he said huskily. “The scars of that hour in the carriage--leaving you that hour--would not suffer me to forget, but I should not speak this way. I wrong you speaking this way. I am only a world-tramp between wars.... And this war I must watch alone--from the edge where the others do not go. God, what a coward I should be--to chance your happiness----”