She bustled into the kitchen and scrambled eggs foo-young and chopped green cabbage to braise in peanut oil, and boiled water for noodles. In less than half an hour the two ladies settled themselves to a simple but substantial meal. When they had eaten heartily and had drunk several bowls of tea, Mrs. Pan was telling Mrs. Liang what she did when an American Chinese young woman tempted Mr. Pan from the path of virtue, and Mrs. Liang yielded to the temptation to confide in Mrs. Pan and told her that only her own firmness had kept Dr. Liang from taking Violet Sung as a concubine. Furthermore a young American had fallen in love with Louise and that was why Mary had taken her to China, and Peter had gone along to care for them both.
Mrs. Pan listened avidly and then she said, “But why did James go to China?”
Mrs. Liang leaned closer. “Lili Li,” she whispered. “It was Lili Li who — well, we told him she was not good for him. Rich girls are too lazy. James is very hard worker. So he went to China now.”
“How I wish you live in Chinatown,” Mrs. Pan said warmly.
“I wish, also,” Mrs. Liang said with equal warmth. She confided still further. “In that case I wished your Sonia for my daughter-in-law.”
Mrs. Pan was overwhelmed. “Oh, Mrs. Liang,” she exclaimed. “So much happiness for us! But Sonia would not go to China, perhaps.”
“If she had married my son James, maybe he would also be here.”
Both ladies forgot China and mourned silently for a moment over what was now never to be.
Mrs. Pan recovered first. “Anyhow,” she said with renewed cheer, “maybe sometime you live here as neighbor.”
“How nice!” Mrs. Liang replied. “But I think not. Liang likes to be lonely.”
It was midafternoon before Mrs. Liang went home. She entered the quiet apartment. It was quite empty. “Neh-lee!” she called, but there was no answer. The maid had finished her work and gone. Dr. Liang was nowhere to be seen. She could do nothing except try to settle herself. But the day had been exciting for her and she went into the kitchen and feeling restless she decided to clean out the icebox.
In a remote corner of a small French restaurant Dr. Liang was talking with Violet Sung. Some vague feeling of revenge had prompted him to call her when his wife telephoned. Violet Sung was at home, feeling, she said, at loose ends.
“So am I,” Dr. Liang had said. “Will you lunch with me?”
She hesitated a moment. Then she said delicately, “Are you sure you want me?”
“Quite sure,” he said.
So they had met in the restaurant she suggested, a place where she often went when she was alone, because Ranald did not like French food. They were quite reconciled, the mutual bond between them stronger than ever. But she knew now that there were arid stretches in Ranald’s mind. He was profoundly intelligent and spiritually undeveloped. Physically he was far more passionate than she, and he often wearied her. Yet after the first few acknowledgements of weariness she had learned to pretend, for he grew angry with her did she seem less desirous than he. English women were like that, he declared, but he had not expected frigidity in a combination of France and China. At this she had smiled and said nothing and after that pretense was easy. Her mind at all times was free of her body, and within the privacy of her skull her thoughts roamed the universe. Ranald, acute rather than intuitive, did not perceive her absence from her body.
With Dr. Liang she felt an intimacy that had nothing to do with the flesh. She was deeply attracted to the handsome tall Chinese gentleman, whose black hair was silvery at the temples. Physically he pleased her without rousing desire. His pale skin, clear-cut lips, and long intelligent eyes, his beautiful hands and slender graceful figure, were pleasantly symbolic of his cultivated mind. The coarse red and white skin of Western men, their hairiness and thickness, their high noses and protruding bones, were privately disgusting to her. Yet she had always been shy of Chinese men. Her father’s strictness and rectitude had moved her and yet had made her afraid of him. She could not imagine a Chinese lover. The approach was different to any she knew. Chinese men, when they noticed women at all, gave them a grave courtesy which implied the conviction of equality.
When Dr. Liang had telephoned her today it had been almost telepathy. She had been sitting alone in her room in one of her long fits of musing which were trancelike, and she had been thinking of him, not romantically, but with a divining imagination, as she thought of many persons, men and women, who interested her. Had she been more active physically, she might have put down some of these musings on paper and made stories out of them, but she never moved if she could help it, except to dance. She could sit motionless for hours when she was alone, merely thinking about one person and another, remembering, probing, hearing again the sound of a voice, seeing the trick of a gesture. Thus was her inner solitude peopled. Upon such a reverie the telephone had broken and when she lifted the receiver she had heard Dr. Liang’s voice.
Now seated opposite him in the restaurant which at this late hour was almost empty she felt a deep sense of peace. She had little wish to talk at any time and she floated upon the restfulness of the moment.
Dr. Liang looked at her with appreciation. She had slipped her brown mink cape from her shoulders and the deep violet wool of her simply fashioned gown and small hat melted into the richness of her dark hair and eyes and her creamy skin. He had never seen so beautiful a creature.
“When I am with you I always feel like speaking only truth,” he said. “So I will tell you that you are entirely beautiful today.”
“Only today?” she asked half smiling.
“Always, but today with an aura.”
“Let’s speak Chinese, shall we?” she said. “I can’t very well, but I long to be able to — perfectly, I mean, with one word slipping into another, and yet each quite clear.”
“Then we will speak Chinese,” he replied. “I also prefer our own tongue. It has been spoken so long by human beings that it is shaped to human need. Had your father one of those hand pieces of jade or amber?”
“He held always a piece of onyx,” she said, smiling. Her Chinese was pure and good, but her vocabulary was not large and she longed to know all the words she needed.
“And it became shaped to his own hand,” Dr. Liang went on. “It was polished by his flesh until it shone in the light of a candle, did it not? It lay in his palm and he felt never empty handed.”
“He did find comfort in it,” she agreed. “When I was a child I never knew why. I said to him, ‘Baba, why not hold my kitten or some flowers? Why always the same thing?’ And he said, ‘I like it because it is always the same.’”
“Yes,” Dr. Liang replied. He murmured a few words to the waiter without asking Violet what she wished to eat, and she liked this. She avoided making up her own mind even about food. It was easier to eat what was chosen for her, and she had confidence in his choice. When a delicate broth appeared, a sift of crisp croutons upon the clear surface, she drank it well content, and in silence, and after it she enjoyed the small fresh fish, browned in butter. It was a change from the beefsteak and mashed potatoes which Ranald ate every day.
French pastries were almost Chinese, and Dr. Liang made a long and careful scrutiny of the tray before they chose. She liked his Chinese carefulness about food, that every mouthful might be savored.
They talked very little during the meal and this was Chinese, too. When tea came on, and he was very firm in his directions that the tea leaves should be brewed without the cloth bags, they looked at one another across the table and Dr. Liang felt the impulse, rare indeed, to speak from his heart.
“My wife is jealous of you,” he said with his hint of a smile. “That, for you, doubtless, is no new thing in wives.”