ing to run away that night before he returned from the
neighbouring island. At the bottom of the trunk I found two of my
mother's dresses. I packed them with the other few things I owned.
Morgan the trader did not haggle over the pearls, but gave me at
once what he judged a fair price. You will wonder why he did not
hold the pearls until Father returned. I didn't understand then,
but I do now. It was partly to pay a grudge he had against father."

"And partly what else?"

"I shall never tell anybody that."

"I don't know," said the doctor, dubiously. "You're only twenty--not
legally of age."

"I am here in Canton," she replied, simply.

"Very well. I'll cable to-night, and in a few days we'll have some
news. I'm a graybeard, an old bachelor; so I am accorded certain
privileges. Sometimes I am frightfully busy; and then there will be
periods of dullness. I have a few regular patients, and I take care
of them in the morning. Every afternoon, from now on, I will teach
you a little about life--I mean the worldly points of view you're
likely to meet. You are queerly educated; and it strikes me that
your father had some definite purpose in thus educating you. I'll
try to fill in the gaps."

The girl's eyes filled. "I wonder if you will understand what this
kindness means to me? I am so terribly wise--and so wofully
ignorant!"

CHAPTER XII

The doctor shifted his books and magazines to the crook of his
elbow. He had done this a dozen times on the way from his office.
Books were always sliding and slipping, clumsy objects to hold.
Looking at this girl, a sense of failure swept over him. He had not
been successful as the world counted success; the fat bank-account,
the filled waiting room of which he had once dreamed, had never
materialized except in the smoke of his evening pipe.

And yet he knew that his skill was equal to that of any fashionable
practitioner in Hong-Kong. He wasn't quite hard enough to win
worldly success; that was his fault. Anybody in pain had only to
call to him. So, here he was, on the last lap of middle age, in
China, having missed all the thrills in life except one--the war
against Death. It rather astonished him. He hadn't followed this
angle of thought in ten years: what he might have been, with a
little shrewd selfishness. This extraordinary child had opened up
an old channel through which it was no longer safe to cruise. She
was like an angel with one wing. The simile started a la