The dragging hours of darkness past, Anthony Barrett found sane consciousness. He was pale, yet strengthened by his long sleep, and he was hungry. Relieved and overjoyed, Mrs. Barrett ministered to him. When he had eaten and drunk, she helped him from the table to the stool, and thence to his feet. Her arm about him, she led him to the door. Fong Wu had felt his pulse and it had ticked back the desired message, so he was going home. “Each night you are to come,” Fong Wu said, as he bade them good-bye. “And soon, very soon, you may go from here to the place from which you came.” Mrs. Barrett turned at the door. A plea for pardon in misjudging him, thankfulness for his help, sympathy for his exile--all these shone from her eyes. But words failed her. She held out her hand. He seemed not to see it; he kept his arms at his sides. A “dog of a Chinaman” had best not take a woman’s hand. She went out, guiding her husband’s footsteps, and helped him climb upon the mustang from the height of the narrow porch. Then, taking the horse by the bridle, she moved away down the slope to the road. Fong Wu did not follow, but closed the door gently and went back to the ironing-table. A handkerchief lay beside it--a dainty linen square that she had left. He picked it up and held it before him by two corners. From it there wafted a faint, sweet breath. Fong Wu let it flutter to the floor. “The perfume of a plum petal,” he said softly, in English; “the perfume of a plum petal.” YEE WING, POWDER-MAN Yee Chu, wife of Yee Wing, sank low before her husband, resting her clasped hands upon a knee. “Surely, Kwan-yin, the Merciful, has thought me deserving,” she said, “for she has set me down in a place where soft winds blow unceasingly.” The Powder-man glanced out of the one window of their little home, past the pot of ragged chrysanthemums and the white-and-brown pug that held the sill. “I shall burn an offering to her,” he promised gravely. “It is so sweetly warm,” she continued, rising and standing at his side; “though the new year is almost upon us. See, I have put off the band of velvet that I wear upon my head of a winter, and changed to these flower-bouquets. Esteemed, will it always be spring-time here?” Yee Wing’s face lost its expression of studied indifference. He let his look rest upon her hair, blue-black, and held at each side by a cluster of mock jewels; let it travel down to the young face,--a clear, polished white except for deep-carmine touches on cheeks and eyelids and on the lower lip of the pouting mouth--to the brown eyes, whose charm was enhanced by a curious little wrinkle just above the darkened brows, a petulant little wrinkle that changed with each passing thought. “Assuredly,” he answered. “In California, it is always spring-time, Jasmine Blossom.”