"The General believes him because he himself has not been generous to me. He supposes I want the money. My mother and my grandparents live in Soochow." She added, and Megan could scarcely catch the words, "They are very poor." For a moment Megan was tempted to transfer some of the responsibility for Mah-li's conduct to filial devotion. It would be more Chinese. But Mah-li's motives were not really important to her now; they seemed only an indistinguishable part of the general romantic error of her life. What was important now was that Mah-li should put herself in her hands, confide herself and all her little complexities to her, so that she might save her. "Is it true, Mah-li," she demanded, "that you did sell information about the General?" Mah-li's eyes had such a look of withdrawal that it was as though her face sank down through water, then she bent her head, looking into her lap, but Megan pressed forward relentlessly. "Tell me. It makes no difference to me what you did. It won't change my feelings toward you if you sold him ten times over. I can understand that you may have been driven to it. I only want to help you. I want to do everything I can for you. I must make the General see as I do, that you have never had a fair chance, and that you are a child and haven't understood right and wrong any more than a child, that he must forgive you and do what he can to help you. He also has been to blame in his relations to you, so he ought to be all the more willing to forgive. But you see, I can't talk to him, Mah-li, until you tell me the truth. Try to tell me. I've told you it doesn't matter, but just tell me. Why, Mah-li, you don't realize to what extent I want to be your friend." Mah-li did not raise her head. Megan saw her face foreshortened, and her forehead was a dome of obstinacy. Her eyebrows raised slightly but she made no answer, and Megan was unable to continue with any assurance of being understood. She had no idea what to say now and a definite irritation with Mah-li for not accepting her generosity stole over her. Mah-li's every effort was to maintain, even with desperation, the obscure balance necessary to her self-respect, or perhaps only her vanity. They sat in silence; Mah-li, reassured, raised her head and looked now with polite inquiry toward Megan, waiting for her to continue. Megan wished that she were actually a child and could be given one efficacious slap. She thought of the rings. "I have your jade," she said. "I would have sent them to you but I thought it safer to wait until I saw you myself. I put them on so I would be sure to have them ready." She slipped off the rings and handed them to Mah-li. Mah-li took them without hesitation but she did not put them on. She looked at them lying on her palm and Megan felt she was trying to make up her mind to say something about them. "You have told me," she said finally, "that you would be glad to do me a favor. Did you really mean that?"