To stray, even in dreams, beyond his steel wall was to expose himself to forces outside his experience, and now life seemed indefinably dangerous as it had never seemed before. It is this sense of danger, experienced by all natures neither utterly animal nor merely trivial, that gives to love both its dignity and its finest colour. It is never more acute than in minds that have been isolated or confined, for to these the new world is new indeed. John was so much a stranger to the perilous country that as yet he did not call it by any name. In childhood his shy reserve had withheld him from close friendship. His mother had been an invalid--“too frail to be hugged”--and it was not until circumstances had placed her beyond his reach that her strength had in some measure returned to her. His nurse, unusually free from a mistress’s supervision, had been too occupied with her own affairs to accept the devotion which John would have given so eagerly. He had no sister upon whom to expend his affection. For lack of outlet, emotion had accumulated within him until its force could no longer be resisted. Margaret had seemed so inaccessible, by reason of her own position and of the distances which must always divide him from her, that John had never regarded her as a prize he might hope to win. The thought of her was as a clear bugle awakening the finest legions of his mind--thoughts which had slept long, and, being aroused, were masters of the evil in him, masters of sorrow and loneliness and pain, as faith is master of us all while faith endures. And now, though the difficulty of her position remained, the miles between them were to be swept away. For on the China Station ships remained long in one port, and leave was more generously given than elsewhere. John listened gladly to the tales that were told of Yokohama and Tokio, of Hong Kong and Shanghai, but repeated to himself, happy in the possession of his secret, “She will be there, and there will be no London to absorb her.” It was almost incredible that the news which, when it was given, had seemed disastrous should have become the substance of his happiness. Then doubt arose. The first letters Margaret wrote to Hugh on the subject had confirmed Mr. Alter’s tale; both her father and mother had been in favour of her going. Then her tone had become less assured. “_I don’t know whether I shall go to China after all_,” she wrote. “_Father is discovering difficulties--or, rather, Mr. Ordith, who has been to China, is discovering them for him; and now he talks of taking mother with him, and leaving me in the charge of some aunt--I don’t know which aunt._” And in a later letter: