Megan liked the room, her father she thought would like it. And suddenly she realized that her father at this very moment must be believing her dead. Her parents' grief, Bob's grief, struck her too vividly, with too strong an implication of reproach, to be endured. Her headlong rush into this disaster blazed itself like a trail from the moment when she had sat with Bob's letter on her knee and told her parents that she had to go to China come what might, down to the moment when she had demanded a miracle from God. The miracle had come but already it had lost its sheen, as though it had been tossed to her carelessly by One who knew that miracles are not always of very great account. A depression began to settle over her because she felt that she had been humiliated by something more profound even than fear. Then she thought, "Well, perhaps it is all of no importance, I am not dead. I will let them know it in the quickest way possible. As soon as I can get a paper and pencil, write a note, have a telegram sent. And after all, I am in China, where I felt I had to be, and maybe I was even right." She thought of the General and his concubine, of all Doctor Strike had told her about the General. Apparently for all the Doctor's ardor, his knowledge, he had never been able really to touch the General. And how much he had wanted to! All the time he had been talking of him Megan felt she must have been half aware that she herself had already touched the General's life by the mere brushing of a wing and that she would inevitably touch it again more deeply. Perhaps this was to be the miracle. She was too recently humbled to be willing to dwell much on this, but in spite of herself vague and glorious pictures began slowly to flood her mind. A Chinese man. A Chinese woman. Truly that was all of China. Her pictures merged into sleep and she awoke again, determined at once to get up. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited until the dizziness and slight pain in her head passed. She sat there wondering if the house she was in could possibly be in the midst of a city. It was so quiet. In the early morning there had been so many birds and even now the air coming in the open octagon-shaped window was fresh and there was about it some indefinite coolness, an aroma, as of water near by. Occasionally she heard soft slippered feet cross a tiled or brick pavement outside her window, and there was a telephone somewhere in the house that rang at intervals, answered by a Chinese voice, monotonous and persistent. But the telephone was not ringing just now. From a greater distance she heard on a soft road the march of feet, then a staccato command. The footsteps halted and at another command she heard the muffled clatter of rifles as the company came to rest Bugles sounded and the notes dissolved instantly like bubbles in the tranquillity of the air. And from somewhere a cock crowed. Certainly she was not in a city.