There was something so authoritative, so decisive and prepared, in the statement that Romney identified it with a clean side. It had to do with climbing out.... This man was on the dot. His eyes were full of fire, yet hard-held, steady and kind; full of reason and order. Three days. Ti Kung meant three days. There was no lying, no leaning in that. He had a design. There was something to Romney in his own weakness and vacillation, like the splendour of God in this capacity of vision, this steadiness of eye and clarity of speech; white strength of hand and hard-held manhood. "And what now?" he remarked. Even in this rare moment of self-examination, he did not know it, but he asked that last question like a child. He was spared the pathos. "We’ll go to my home," said Dr. Ti Kung. "It’s not a ’rickshaw this time. I have ordered a carriage. I take great pleasure in bringing you to my home." Romney drew his hand across his chin. The other touched his arm. "All that will be attended to. Don’t let’s think of it. You will find that all is ready for you." *3* The scent of soap in the fountain-place of the Ti Kung house might be considered by some a preposterous detail, but it was real to Romney. It had to do with Longstruth’s, on a certain night when he had felt himself to be a far more reckonable person even than on the day of the field-meet at Palo Alto which brought him a trophy or two. It was on a night about mid-way in the Moira Kelvin revelations when it suddenly appeared that she was wavering a little. Hope lifted and he had felt fit to conquer continents. But that had passed. He had somehow diminished again. It is true that she had been shaken during their last moments together, but that was different. Romney was man enough not to take any advantage there—even in thought. He understood her that night. She was in a scope of a more common attraction. She had hated herself in it. Had he pressed that advantage, it would merely have meant to unseal a crater for hell to break forth not only for himself but for her. Before knowing her, he might have considered the savage splendour of that passion as having to do with a woman’s great gift, but he glimpsed in the days preceding what it would mean to the man who could force the capitulation of the full creature. Even in the blinding of those moments of parting, he knew he was far from that magnitude.