“I was not thinking of putting away my wife,” he said stiffly.
“No, but you see,” she said, “Ranald is like your wife. I mean, he’s real, too.”
“He doesn’t marry you,” he said with purposeful cruelty.
“No,” she agreed. “But I think I don’t want him to. It doesn’t mean enough to me.”
He had grasped at this. “You don’t love him?”
She shook her head and the little dark curls of her hair, given her by her French mother, danced against her cheek. “No, but I trust him. Some day we will part. Perhaps it will be I who make the parting. But when that day comes he will not leave me destitute. He will provide for me—”
“Money, I suppose you mean,” he had said bitterly.
“Be reasonable,” she had said. “I need a good deal of money and he has a lot of it.”
“Suppose he marries?” He wanted to hurt her but she was not hurt.
“Even if he marries he will be grateful to me. He has a sense of obligation, you know, especially now that I have given you up.”
She had used him to make the Englishman feel an obligation!
When he accused her of this she denied it. “It is not like that,” she replied in her thoughtful musing way. “If you had been quite real, Wen Hua, I might have dared to — do anything. But for two people, both unreal, to leave the people they can trust — it would be very dangerous for us.”
“Why do you not trust me?” he had demanded.
She had lifted her dark eyes to him then. “You know yourself,” she replied.
He had not had the courage to press her. The truth from her lips might have destroyed him and he needed to believe in himself.
She had ended their talk by a soft touch on his hand. “Now you must go away,” she had told him. “You must go back to New York, to your home and to your wife. Please don’t trouble about me. I shall be all right and really quite happy. I like London. I know many people and I don’t lack friends. I am quite clear now in my mind. What has happened is what is better for us.”
“What did the Englishman say?” he demanded.
She seemed surprised. “Do you really want to know? He is very honest and he just said to me that he had heard we were meeting almost every day and he would not forbid it — only I had to make the final choice. He said I could leave him or stay with him — he would not play second fiddle. If I stayed with him, he would look after me as long as I lived. There would be enough for me in his will, if he died in the next war, which he thinks will be quite soon. But if I chose to see you, ever, he would cut me off at once.”
“Yet you have seen me,” he had urged.
“Yes, I am going back now to tell him so,” she had said. “It will be hard for a bit to make him understand that I did not want to see you, but that there was no other way. Then I shall promise never to see you again. I haven’t quite made that promise yet. Tonight I’ll make it — and keep it.”
There was the soft touch again on his hand, and she turned and lost herself in the crowd. He had stayed on, staring down into the misty gently flowing river, and toying with the idea of throwing himself from the bridge. But a passing policeman looked at him once or twice and he grew self-conscious. He did not really want to die.
He had stayed on with Mr. and Mrs. Li for a few days more, accepting now an invitation from Charlie Ting’s parents to visit them. To his surprise he found he quite enjoyed diplomatic life. It was gay and expensive, and money for everything was provided. He had a handsome Rolls-Royce at his disposal and a smart English chauffeur. He might, he thought, offer himself some day as a diplomat — an ambassador, perhaps. The idea gave him a new interest and while he considered it, he could stop thinking for a moment or so about Violet. Somewhere in the few days he found a chance to speak to Lili.
“By the by, I called upon Miss Violet Sung. She seems quite well and happy. I stayed only a few minutes because I was so busy that day.”
The coolness of his voice astonished her but she only smiled. Then he told her that he was going home, that he was quite anxious to see his wife who had been to visit his two elder children in the ancestral village where they were enjoying the old home, and that Mary was married.
Lili gave a little scream, “Oh, can they enjoy such old-fashioned things? And what man is there to marry Mary?”
He had laughed with her. “They will grow tired of the village,” he said. “I should not be surprised if they come back with their mother. My son-in-law, I hear, is a brilliant doctor of Peking — a friend of my son’s, I believe. You remember James?”
Lili dimpled perfunctorily. “Of course, and Charlie thinks he is doing some wonders in China. I am sure it is true.”
Dr. Liang did not believe that Charlie Ting had so spoken, but he inclined his head with the dignity usual to him when he received a compliment.
So he had come home again. In London he thought he had got over everything, but when he reached home he knew he had not. Mingled in his hurt love for a beautiful woman were her words: “You know yourself.” He did not want to know himself. She had shaken him very badly indeed. The affair might have ended sublimely. It might have been a splendid rejection of a selfish love; it might have been a noble acceptance of the obligations life had already put upon them. But she had taken away both splendor and nobility. She had said merely the few words, “You know yourself.” They included these few words more which she had not quite spoken, “and I know you.”
He felt fretful in his loneliness and he began to long for Mrs. Liang to come home. He could be cross with her and she would not mind because he was her husband.
When he got her telegram saying that she would arrive at three o’clock the next day, unless there were storms, he immediately began to feel better. It was something like having been ill or away or out of his usual routine. Now soon his house would be what it had always been. He felt more kindly even toward Louise and he rang her up to invite her, with Alec, to dinner. It was the hour when she was putting her baby to bed and she was abstracted but good-natured.
“Sure we’ll come, Pa,” she said. “I think Alec would like it.”
Before he knew what he was doing he was also inviting Mr. and Mrs. Wetherston. “We may as well make it a real party,” he told Louise. “If you think your parents-in-law would enjoy hearing the latest news from China, then bring them along.”
Since her father had shown no interest in the existence of any of them ever since her mother went away, Louise was pleased. “I don’t believe they have anything planned,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll want to come. It’ll be nice. It’ll be lovely to see Ma again.”
“Indeed it will,” he said with unusual warmth.
He was very much absorbed the rest of the evening in planning the dinner. After some thought he decided to order it sent in hot from a Chinese restaurant and he had a long talk over the telephone with the proprietor about special dishes and their preparation. When this was over he felt he should go to bed in order to be fresh for the next day. But he found it difficult to sleep. His mind, instead of being absorbed with memories of Violet Sung, returned to the earlier years of his life when Mrs. Liang had first come to his father’s house. She had been a fresh-faced lively-looking girl with a full red mouth. His first disappointment had been that she was not pretty. But somehow or other she was living and strong in the house, simple creature though she was, and he had soon learned to depend on her. When there was something unpleasant to be done, such as asking a permission of Uncle Tao, it was always she who did it. She had many faults, and each one irritated him separately, but they did not combine to change her quality, which was that she never thought of herself. She was not interested in herself or in her own moods. She had very few moods and they were because of some external circumstance which could easily be changed. Usually she changed it herself and restored her own good humor, or she took a long nap or she bought herself a bag of chocolate drops which she enjoyed. She liked sweets, he now remembered, and he determined to buy her a large box of them tomorrow.