A long untidy addition sum of names lay before him on the page. The result of the sum was—nothing. He turned to another fruitless page. Another. “Miss E. L. Spring, Walthamstow.... Mr. Irwin Scales, Binset, Somerset ... Mrs. Irwin Scales....” The date of those was about right. E. L. Spring? It was a blasphemy. Walthamstow?... But the date was all right. E. L. Spring was the only woman with the initial E. There were dark horses all over the page, fiendishly concealing the most important part of their names... Miss Framlingham, Delhi, India ... Miss Wherry, London ... Miss Burnett, Canterbury ... Miss Something Illegible, San Francisco, Calif.... They all sounded like thin women with withered necks and little green veils hanging from the backs of their hats, not like Emily. He returned to the chair beside his empty cocktail glass. His eyes had tears in them so he pretended there was a fly in one of them. His throat was compressed by distress. He could not have spoken aloud. “I thought I left myself behind,” he thought. “But I am still Edward Williams in China. Myself has caught me up. Look at me, crying now in a hot chair in Hongkong, I who used to cry in the cold draught that ran through my dreadful room in San Francisco.” The heat was like stagnant steam. He felt sick and very deaf. The only sounds he could hear through the exasperating roaring of his ears were the sharp cries of the chair-bearers outside the open window, trying to attract patronage. The cool vacant faces of English women moved up and down in the shadow of the arcades outside. Edward could not hear the clicking of their high heels, they seemed to him to move subtly like ghosts. It was terribly hot. “I shall cry frankly unless I move about.” He hung his self-conscious head as he left the hotel. He tried to interest himself in the Chinese names above the shops. No—not China now; China was a horrible half-name now. The Peak leaned like a cloud over the houses. He could see a little train sliding up the mountain, like a fish which some giant fisherman was drawing up from the sea. He found the station. The train was full, but, as Edward approached it, an official, seeing him, turned out a Chinese clerk in order that Edward might find a place. Edward looked angrily at the patient alert face of the ousted Chinese on the platform. “I don’t care if his business is urgent,” thought Edward. “I hope his wife is dying. It isn’t fair that only I should be hurt.” “Oh, my dear ...” screamed the hot English girl in front of Edward to her hot friend. All the women in the car were fanning themselves and talking in a frenzy of foolish energy about men.