But now she did not excuse herself. By her frank eyes and by the sudden faint red in her cheeks he knew she felt the touch and that she knew he did. They looked at each other quickly, and turned away again, and she said tranquilly, “Shall we go in for breakfast?”
And he answered as tranquilly, “I must just wash my hands.”
So the moment passed.
Afterwards he thought a little of it and his mind flew to bring him the memory of that other touch so long ago, given by the maid now dead. Strangely, beside that ardent open touch, this new light touch seemed less than nothing and still the other burned more real. He muttered to himself, “Doubtless she did not know she did it. I am a fool.” And he resolved to forget it all, and to control his mind more sternly against such thoughts, for he truly did not welcome them.
So through the months of that last spring Yuan lived in a strange double way. Within himself he held a certain place of his own, secure against this woman. The softness of the new season, the mildness of a moonlight night when he and she might walk together down the street under the budding new-leaved trees into lonely roads leading to the country, or the stillness of a room where sometimes they sat alone while the musical steady rains of spring beat upon the window panes, even such hours alone with her could not break through into that place. And Yuan wondered at himself, not knowing how he could be so stirred as he sometimes knew he was and yet not want to yield.
For in some ways this white woman could stir him and yet hold him off, and by the same things he loved and did not love. Because he loved beauty and never could escape it, he often saw her beautiful, her brow and neck so white against her dark hair. And yet he did not love such whiteness. He often saw her lighted eyes, clear and grey underneath her dark brows, and he could admire the mind which made them shine and flash, and yet he did not love grey eyes. So, too, with her hands, quick, vivid, speaking, moving hands, beautiful and angular in strength. But he did not love such hands somehow.
Yet was he drawn to her again and yet again by some power in her, so that over and over in that busy spring he would pause in the midst of his work in fields or in his room or in the hall of books, to find her suddenly in his mind. He came to ask himself at such times, “Shall I miss her when I go away? Am I bound somehow to this country through this woman?” He dallied with the thought that he might stay on and study more, and yet he could ask himself plainly, “Why do I really stay? If in truth for this woman, to what end, seeing I do not want to wed one of her race?” Yet he felt a pang when he thought further, “No, I will go home.” Then he thought further that perhaps he would never see her again, once he was gone, for how could he return again? When he thought he might never see her again, then it seemed he must indeed put off his going.
So might the questioning have dragged itself into an answer and he stayed on, except there came across the sea news which was like his country’s voice demanding him.
Now these years while Yuan had been away he had scarcely known how his country did. He knew that there were little wars, but to these he paid no heed, for there had been always little wars.
In these six years Wang the Tiger wrote him of one or two such petty wars he undertook; one against a little new bandit chieftain, and a second time against a lord of war who passed unbidden through his regions. But Yuan passed quickly over such news, partly because he never loved wars, and partly because such things seemed not real at all to him, living in this peaceful foreign country, so that when some fellow pupil called out blithely, “Say, Wang, what’s this new war you’re getting up in China? I see it in the papers. Some Chang or Tang or Wang—” And Yuan, ashamed, would answer quickly, “It is nothing — no more than any robbery anywhere.”
Sometimes his lady mother, who wrote him faithfully once a season, said in her letters, “The revolution grows apace, but I do not know how. Now that Meng is gone we nave no revolutionists in our family. I only hear that at last from the south the new revolution breaks. But Meng cannot yet come home. He is there among them, for he has written so, but he dares not yet come home, even if he would, for the rulers here are afraid and still very bitter in their hunting of those like him.”
But Yuan did not lay aside wholly the thought of his own country and as he could he followed all the news he could find of that revolution, and he seized eagerly on every little printed line which told of some change, such as, “The old calendar of the moon is changed to the new western calendar,” or he read, “It is forbidden any more to bind the feet of women,” or he read, “The new laws will not let a man have more wives than one,” and many such things he read in those days. Every change Yuan read with joy and believed, and through all he could see his whole country changing, so that he thought to himself and wrote to Sheng so also, “When we go back next summer we will not know our land. It seems not possible that so soon, in six short years, so great a change has been brought about.”
To which Sheng wrote back after many days, “Do you go home this summer? But I am not ready. I have a year or two yet I want to live here, if my father will send the money for it.”
At these words Yuan could not but remember with great discomfort that woman who put Sheng’s little poems to such languid heavy music, and then he would not think of her. But he wished Sheng would hasten and go home. It was true he had not yet won his degree, although he had spent more time at it than he should, and then troubled, Yuan thought how Sheng never spoke of the new things in their own country. But he excused Sheng quickly, because indeed it was not easy in this rich peaceful land to think of revolutions and of battles for a cause, and Yuan did too forget these things often in his own days of peace.
And yet, as he knew afterwards, the revolution was even then coming to its height. Surely in its old way, up from the south, while Yuan spent his days upon his books, while he questioned himself what he felt for this white woman whom he loved and did not love, the grey army of the revolution, in which Meng was, crossed through the heart of his country to the great river. There it battled, but Yuan, ten thousand miles away, lived in peace.
In such great peace he might thus have lived forever. For suddenly one day the warmth between him and the woman deepened. So long they had stood where they were, a little more than friends, a little less than lovers, that Yuan had come to take it as a thing accepted that every evening for a while they walked and talked together after the old pair slept. Before these two they showed nothing. And Mary would have said very honestly to any question, “But there is nothing to tell. What is there between us except friendship?” And it was true there had never been a speech between them which others could not hear and wonder nothing at it.
Yet every night these two felt the day not ended unless they had been alone a little while together, even though each talked idly only of the day’s happenings. But in this little hour they grew more to know each other’s minds and hearts than by days of other hours.