li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange
essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the
meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone
wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member
of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with
peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people
of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that
sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?

Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must
think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those
Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the
Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so
exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as
though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him
in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable
impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.
Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It
looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his
mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between
the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he
hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her
they weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their
nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done
so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas,
and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened
to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had
kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that
nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in
the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?
What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would
happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain
simply couldn't conceive.

Out of the corner of his eye every