"And what difference does that make? Undoubtedly the quality of it was such that only a rare few could appreciate it. Who wants a civilization that would seem satisfying to your beggar with elephantiasis? But how you struggle, Miss Davis, against the idea of your own pleasure! Your plan is to diffuse it over the whole world, share it with the whole race. I am surprised at this in one of your incomparable distinction. Don't you know that the more concentrated pleasure becomes the keener it is? I sometimes feel it is at its best when tasted by oneself alone." "You are a poor Republican. You don't dare admit your ideas to many people, do you?" "To practically no one. I know I am a poor Republican. Whenever a good Republican becomes really necessary in China, I will go under." "You hate all this change then?" "Not entirely." He smiled at her. "Certain new combinations seem to rise out of it occasionally that make it worth what is lost." Megan exclaimed, "It is not possible that you are being gallant, is it?" "Why not? How very unflattering you are! Do you think we have never been gallant to women?" "Well," Megan laughed with a touch of constraint, "I somehow never pictured a Chinese gentleman as being anything but subdued by his mother and tyrannical to his wife. But I suppose that is an absurd injustice. You must have had generations of women with beauty and wit and of course goodness. And then in modern China,--I should think you would enjoy these astonishing changes that must have come about in educated women." Megan realized that the comradeship they had managed to arrive at so suddenly and without effort had vanished at the first mention of women. They were once more on their first uneasy footing. Why? Because such a comradeship was fundamentally unnatural to him, or because she was thinking again of Mah-li? With a sudden compunction she forced Mah-li to the foremost position in her mind. Until his responsibility to Mah-li was settled, she told herself, there could never be real friendliness between them. She said decidedly: "And even among those not educated in the modern way, one has only to look at their faces to see how many of them have good temper and a keen sense of humor." He bowed his head toward her. "I thank you on their behalf." "For instance, Mah-li," she insisted, "I find her full of all sorts of possibilities." The General did not answer. He turned halfway toward the window. "I have grown very fond of her. She struck me as a child who has for the time more or less lost her way. She is only a child, you know."