There was a light other than the moon. It was not a sudden light but Edward realised it suddenly. The dawn was creeping up behind him to devour him unawares. The centre of the universe had shifted. The dawn was a subtler miracle than was the moon; the dawn succeeded to the empire of the moon. Light ran like a snake along the tops of the Western Hills. There was a spear of flame along the eastern horizon. Little escaping clouds caught fire; there was an ominous look of molten gold where the east made ready the first step of the stair for the sun’s ascent. The sun pointed its sword abruptly at Peking. The golden roofs of the Imperial City most gloriously received the challenge. The city threw away its cloak of mystery and the birds sang. A blue cart, its long peak stretching forward as far as the ears of the mule that drew it, its little fretted windows set into the blue tunnel that covered it, heaved slowly along a red track from the east into the sunstricken city. The dam of day had burst. Edward thought, “Emily is somewhere, drowning, asleep in that lake of sunlight. I can find her now. I have begun finding instead of losing now....” Where does hope set its roots? Out of what blessed and silly seed does hope rise like a flower, fed by nothing more reasonable than a piercing of sunlight through air full of birds’ songs? It is curious how joyfully we pluck and wear at our hearts that fatal hope that has sprung from the seed of a dream or of the little wind that passes across the morning. “Hope is a true thing,” thought Edward when he looked, later in the morning, at the hotel register. There were the names. “Mr. and Mrs. Tam McTab—not so well but unfortunately more correctly known as Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Watson—” (Tam had written facetiously). “Miss Emily Frere”—(in a small impudent writing). “Master Stone W. Ponting.” The clerk said that they had left some weeks ago—here was the date—all except the young gentleman, Master Ponting, he was over there—the one drinking a lemon squash. Stone W. Ponting was about thirteen years old; his thick, upstanding hair seemed gray with dust; dirt and freckles obscured his complexion; his hands were dark with dirt. “You’re Stone Ponting, aren’t you?” said Edward nervously. “Mrs. Melsie Ponting’s boy?” “Yump,” said Stone, speaking into a glass of lemon squash. Edward was afraid of him. He never really believed that boys of thirteen had no longer the power to twist his arms. “Have you heard your mother speak of me—Edward R. Williams?” But Stone, who had an abnormally long tongue, was using it to explore the outside of his lower cheek, in the hope of prolonging by a second or two the taste of lemon squash. Apparently failing in this he peeled the paper from a strip of chewing gum and inserted the contents. He did not answer Edward but, on the other hand, did not destroy hope of an answer by shutting his mouth. The chewing gum, though active, remained in the public gaze.