"Oh, I don't know," Doctor Strike spoke in a low voice, and there was something painful to Megan about the puzzled, stilled look on his face. The General's defection from such a man seemed to her horrible. She wished Mrs. Jackson would leave Doctor Strike alone. But suddenly he lifted his head and flashed a look around at all of them. "It doesn't matter what he thinks about me," he said, "it doesn't matter. I shall never give up hope of him. It is hard to make clear to others on just what we rest some of our convictions. They seem to rest on nothing tangible. Perhaps on instinct. Perhaps they are a truth which we remember, though it was spoken to us when we were unaware. I only know this, I shall never give up hope of the General. I know that there is something fine in him, yes, and even something superfine. It is as though under all the load of falseness his spirit continually cried out to me, 'I'm here, I'm here, come and find me.'" The Doctor stopped abruptly and looked down, both hands clenched beside his plate. As Megan watched him he looked up again, not seeing her, and suddenly his face was touched by a fluttering, strange smile, as if before some more vivid memory of the General he found himself once again charmed and dismayed and hopeful. "Where is General Yen now?" asked Mr. Jackson. "Mrs. Jackson was reading in the paper that he had come to Shanghai." Doctor Strike spoke with an effort at casualness: "Has he? I don't know. He is probably with friends in the Chinese city." Megan was annoyed with the Jacksons for continuing to talk about what was obviously so poignant a thing to Doctor Strike, but Mr. Jackson insisted: "He wouldn't have been safe in the Chinese city until to-day. If he came while the Northerners had it he must have come incognito and gone into the Settlement, or into the French Concession. You probably know, Miss Davis, that the French have always kept their Concession separate from the International Settlement here in Shanghai. The paper said he had gone to a Chinese hotel in the French Concession. Maybe he came to try to buy them out here." "Perhaps," said the Doctor shortly. They left the table and went back to the front room, where they could see the road outside and the refugees who flowed past now as inevitably as water down-hill. Against their steady stream the big armored trucks loaded with Annamites in mushroom hats lunged their way toward Siccawei. Doctor Strike watched them pass, never taking his eyes from them, as he smoked his pipe by the window. And Megan watched him, wondering how old he was, what his life had been, what his thoughts now could be, and filled at the same time by a complete satisfaction as though she had found something which she had felt all along must exist. "Do you like the Chinese people, Doctor Strike?" she asked. He turned quickly and leveled his colorless, brilliant eyes on her.