e pillar of smoke roll up on the horizon ten or fifteen miles away,
and gradually spread farther and farther. The air was very still, for
the heat can still be baking in the midday of this autumn month, and
that smoke hung on the skies like some funeral pall. Into the hearts
of a whole country-side it must have struck a blind terror, for the
peasants still believe that they are all to die as soon as the troops
move out. The panic is thus only being added to; and a sort of blind
scourging of people who may not be in the least guilty can never be of
use. There is also still the same palsy on everyone and everything in
Peking. No one really knows what is going to happen. No one very much
cares. They say that this is being debated in Europe, and that there
are divided counsels which may bring about a split and really turn the
various corps now nominally allied to one another into active enemies,
as I dream when I see those jealous guards at the Palace entrances....

Yesterday some Chinese whom I had known in the old days came
stealthily to see me, and as soon as they were alone with me, without
excuse or warning, they fell on their knees and began bitterly
weeping. How sad, indeed, they were, these respectable people of the
Chinese _bourgeoisie_--so sad that for a long time I could not
persuade them to speak. Yet even as they wept they were dignified in a
curious way, and you felt that you were in the presence of men who had
only been cruelly wronged. At length they began speaking. They had
lost everything, absolutely everything, they said, what with the
Boxers and the sack, all this long, unending Reign of Terror. But that
they did not mind. They were bitter and beyond consolation because
they had lost the intangible--their honour. Each one had had women of
their households violated. One, with many hideous details, told me how
... soldiers came in and violated all his womankind, young and old.
That account, muttered to me with trembling lips, was no invention.
Their blanched and haggard faces showed that it was only the truth
they were speaking. About such elemental tragedies no one lies.

I tried to comfort these poor men as best I could. I told them old
sayings which had once been familiar to me; it was hard to know really
what to do. Yet they at length became more philosophic, and said they
understood that this was a visitation which the nation had deserved.
China had been utterly wrong; it had been madness. Then they r