"Something as they call you, I think. I have never known the sheer excitement of a human presence such as you have brought to me. It’s because I can lose myself in you. China has a new atmosphere when I’m with you—" "I am interested. I like your praise." Her voice came lingeringly to him. "You are not so young as I thought," she went on. "And yet you are young. You are still preparing, and yet you have passed the multitudes of men—oh, so far." "Presently I began to see the new birth of China. It became clearer and clearer as I learned more of the native mind. Now that I think of it, this new birth which is not yet consummated, is like the gray glistening moth of your Irish house that lay in the desk through the long winter. All that the usual white man sees, even now, is the weathered rusty chrysalis of the old, but I see the wings. They are still pinned. The body is moist and craving, but it looks great and good to me. I met some of the young men who are ready to give their lives for it—a kind of inspired group of young men, like Hugo’s group that nearly became famous. And there is one American whom I was honoured to meet—oh—just recently. My story is rapidly getting up to date. This American, a hunchback and a prophet, has given himself to old mother China. He dreams about the peace that is ahead for the world, and his dreams are straight as the hammer to the anvil because he has no sentiment, knows all about war—even the cleansing of war—has written a text-book on military tactics which is the biggest and newest thing in American and British camps—yet a dreamer about peace—" Her face was close to his in the dusk, a yearning in her eyes that shook his heart. A chill went through him because this yearning was not for him. He saw that he had touched her in the center of her mysterious being—saw that a man with a dream was more to her than any man’s action. "Tell me more," she whispered. "Nifton Bend—have you, too, heard of him?" "Not until now. Is that the Hunchback’s name?"