But it was not the vigil of the previous night. She was able to think of other things than her husband’s condition and the doom that, of a sudden, had menaced her happiness. Her spirits having risen, she was correspondingly impatient of a protracted, oppressive stillness, and looked about for an interruption, and for diversion. Across from her, a Celestial patrician in his blouse of purple silk and his red-buttoned cap, sat Fong Wu. Consumed with curiosity--now that she had time to observe him closely--she longed to lift the yellow, expressionless mask from his face--a face which might have patterned that of an Oriental sphinx. At midnight, when he approached the table to satisfy himself of Barrett’s progress, and to assure her of it, she essayed a conversation. Glancing up at his laden shelves, she said, “I have been noticing your medicines, and how many kinds there seem to be.” “For each ailment that is visited upon man, earth offers a cure,” he answered. “Life would be a mock could Death, unchallenged, take it.” “True. Have you found in the earth, then, the cure for each ailment of man?” “For most, yes. They seek yet, where I learned the art of healing, an antidote for the cobra’s bite. I know of no other they lack.” “Where you were taught they must know more than we of this country know.” Fong Wu gave his shoulders a characteristic shrug. “But,” she continued, “you speak English so perfectly. Perhaps you were taught that in this country.” “No--in England. But the other, I was not.” “In England! Well!” “I went there as a young man.” “But these herbs, these medicines you have--they did not come from England, did they?” He smiled. “Some came from the hills at our back.” Then, crossing to his shelves and reaching up, “This”--he touched a silk-covered package--“is from Sumbawa in the Indian Sea; and this”--his finger was upon the cork of a phial--“is from Feng-shan, Formosa; and other roots are taken in winter from the lake of Ting-Ting-hu, which is then dry; and still others come from the far mountains of Chamur.” “Do you know,” Mrs. Barrett said tentatively, “I have always heard that Chinese doctors give horrid things for medicine--sharks’ teeth, frogs’ feet, lizards’ tails, and--and all sorts of dreadful things.” Fong Wu proffered no enlightenment. “I am glad,” she went on, “that I have learned better.” After a while she began again: “Doubtless there is other wonderful knowledge, besides that about doctoring, which Chinese gentlemen possess.” Fong Wu gave her a swift glance. “The followers of Laou-Tsze know many things,” he replied, and moved into the shadows as if to close their talk. Toward morning, when he again gave her some tea, she spoke of something that she had been turning over in her mind for hours.