Daddy had been in San Francisco long enough to get pretty well acquainted with Chinatown. He had kept around there from the first, to escape notice, and he had got to be mighty good friends with one of the actors who spoke English fairly well. When he was chased by the detective he had made straight for Moy Kip’s room, and asked to hide out. The Chinese are used to fooling the police, and Kip just threw a gown over Daddy’s shoulders, painted his face, and put him on the opium bunk. When the officer went through the actors’ rooms, he looked in, but didn’t see any more than I saw at first. Then Moy Kip watched me through the little window over the stage, and as soon as the detective left the place they sent for me. Daddy and I were taken to a room three stories under the sidewalk, where we hid for a week, going upstairs at meal-times. It was just like one big family of about eighty men, but only one or two women. The little rooms we had were dark and dirty and close, and the smell was something awful. I couldn’t have stood it alone, but Daddy was safe. That was enough for a while. But living Chinese fashion, without sunlight or decent food, didn’t agree with Daddy at all, and he fell sick. It wasn’t only the air that was ailing him, it was the fear of capture, too, and with all the hardship and worry his fever got steadily worse. A Chinese doctor in big spectacles and a long white mustache came in to see him, and mixed him up some black, horrid, smelly stuff, made of sea-horses and lizards, and Moy Kip burned punks in the joss-house upstairs, but he didn’t get any better. He was always worrying about something when he was delirious, and I couldn’t make out quite what it was about till one day, just before the end, when his mind cleared and he told me. Moy Kip wanted to marry me! Daddy didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t bear to ask me to marry a Chinaman, and he didn’t like to refuse the man who had been right kind to him. You can imagine how I felt about it. It would have been bad enough if Moy Kip had been an ordinary Chinaman, but, being an actor, he belonged to almost the lowest caste. Undertakers and barbers and boatmen are the only ones below. Actors can’t even mix equally with ordinary coolies. Besides, Kip being the principal “white-face” actor or comedian, the manager didn’t let him leave the theatre much, for fear he’d be kidnapped by highbinders and held for ransom. If I married him, the life would be something awful. And now, to make it all worse, my poor old Dodo was taken away. He died in my arms after being sick a week. I was alone in the city, without money or friends, except the Chinese actors. I was almost crazy for sunlight and fresh air, and the sight of decent people. Moy Kip was the only one of the crowd of Chinamen in the building who could speak English very well, and he had also been my father’s friend. He was educated after a fashion, and, for a Chinaman, kind and gentlemanly.