ppose, is as old a story
as civilization itself. I'd been knocking about the world for a good
many years, and I'd had time to think. One day I found myself in the
interior of China with a few coolies and a man who I suspect was a
ticket-of-leave Englishman. I can see the place now the yellow fog, the
sand piled up against the wall like yellow snow. Desolation was a mild
name for it. I think I began with a consideration of the Englishman who
was asleep in the shadow of a tower. There was something inconceivably
hopeless in his face in that ochre light. Then the place where I was
born and brought up came to me with a startling completeness, and I
began to go over my own life, step by step. To make a long story short,
I perceived that what my father had tried to teach me, in his own way,
had some reason in it. He was a good deal of a man. I made up my mind
I'd come home and start in where I belonged. But I didn't do so right
away--I finished the trip first, and lent the Englishman a thousand
pounds to buy into a firm in Shanghai. I suppose," he added, "that
is what is called suggestion. In my case it was merely the cumulative
result of many reflections in waste places."

"And since then?"

"Since then I have been at Grenoble, making repairs and trying to learn
something about agriculture. I've never been as happy in my life."

"And you're going back on Friday," she said.

He glanced at her quickly. He had detected the note in her speech:
though lightly uttered, it was unmistakably a command. She tried to
soften its effect in her next sentence.

"I can't express how much I appreciate your telling me this," she said.
"I'll confess to you I wished to think that something of that kind had
happened. I wished to believe that--that you had made this determination
alone. When I met you that night there was something about you I
couldn't account for. I haven't been able to account for it until now."

She paused, confused, fearful that she had gone too far. A moment later
she was sure of it. A look came into his eyes that frightened her.

"You've thought of me?" he said.

"You must know," she replied, "that you have an unusual personality--a
striking one. I can go so far as to say that I remembered you when you
reappeared at Mrs. Grenfell's--" she hesitated.

He rose, and walked to the far end of the tiled pavement of the pergola,
and stood for a moment looking out over the sea. Then he turned to her.

"I either like a pe