The little boy stood erect and silent against her limbs. She lifted the rug and drew it about his waist to hold him close. She was lost to everything else. Romney had fancied her the most exquisite and delicate creature, but this face that he saw now had the plain earthy passion of a river-woman talking to her first-born—a love of the child’s body and face and lips, the love of a woman who loves the very soil of play on her child. Paul had been running the decks for two days, making enough noise to give the missionary the reputation of being a widower. The child was moist from running at this moment, and the woman buried her face in his throat. Romney wished whimsically that he were the missionary so he could come into the picture for the sake of meeting the woman. The child was drawing away. Her dark eyes were untellably hungry already. Paul must have told his name, for she was saying: "Such a right name for a noble boy. And where are you going?" "To Hankow." "It’s like a fairy-tale—a young man going to Hankow to seek his fortune—" "My father does not like me to read fairy-tales—" Paul’s eyes were full of pictures. Romney did not hear what she said to that, but circled the little deck again, thinking of her eyes and voice. They went with the yellow rug. As Romney returned, the child pulled back from the woman, announcing: "That’s my father." And now for the first time Romney’s eyes and the woman’s met. The child had pointed his way, though the missionary was behind him. Her look came up with something that seemed to say, "I beg of you—don’t disappoint me." Then Romney forgot the peculiarity of that, in the sudden sense that she was like the blood-sister of some one he had known. At the same time flat in his consciousness was the fact that he had not known any such "some one." She was young, but this was not the look of a girl at all—the look of a hungry imperious woman who had known love and been denied—adult understanding, the shoals of cheap illusion passed. She was looking beyond him at the real father of Paul. Under his own calm, Romney was intensely sensitized. Something had happened to him from her eyes. He felt he was out somewhere in the deep waters of life wherein she sailed—the shallow problems already put from them, all decoration, convention and imitation thrust aside. The missionary and the little boy had passed. And now Romney did a very good thing for him, and something that he would not have thought possible before this day. He drew a chair close to the yellow rug, saying: "May I?" "Yes."