Perhaps when Stephanie came—and suddenly one winter’s day, she was there. Snow fell thickly that day upon the deserted streets. He sat looking at it from the tall window of the library, watching it festoon roof lines and telegraph wires and doorways, fascinated by its beauty as he could always be fascinated by beauty. The telephone rang on the desk before him, his grandfather’s leather-covered desk here in his grandfather’s library. He took up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” Stephanie’s voice replied. “Yes, it is I.”
“Paris?”
“Not Paris. Here—in New York.”
“You didn’t tell me you were coming now. I had a letter from you only yesterday. I was planning to write to you today. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I am telling you, am I not?”
“But such a surprise!”
“I am always surprising, is it not so?”
“Then where are you?”
“Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-Sixth and Fifty-Seventh, where my father’s new shop is located.”
“When did you come?”
“Last night, too late to call. It was a bad flight. There were very rough winds tossing us up and down. It was terrible! I could have been frightened if I had allowed myself to be. But the servants came one week ahead of us, and all was ready for us. We fell asleep. Now my father is already inspecting the shop. I have finished breakfast. Will you come here?”
“Of course. I may be delayed by this snowstorm. But I will leave at once.”
“Is it far?”
“Depends—the traffic will be slow.”
“Are you not walking?”
“I may have to walk.”
“Then I accustom myself here, waiting.”
“And I will hurry.”
“Only being careful meanwhile.”
He laughed. Her English was so perfect, each word perfectly articulated and yet so charmingly imperfect. The idiom was a mixture of Chinese and French expressed in English.
“Why are you now laughing?” she demanded.
“Because now I am happy!”
“You are not happy before?”
“I realize I was not, just as now I realize I am.”
“How are you not coming immediately, then?”
“But I am—I am! I leave this instant, not another word!”
He laughed, again, put the receiver in its cradle, dashed to his rooms to get into proper clothes—he’d been lazy when he woke to see the snow flying across the windows and after showering and shaving he had put on one of his grandfather’s luxurious brocaded satin dressing gowns, a wine red with a gold silk lining. Shaving! He had been growing a young mustache, but would she like it? It made him look older and that was an advantage. Sung heard him scurrying about and knocked on the door and came in.
“Excusing me, sir, it is too bad snowing. You going somewhere?”
“A friend from Paris.”
He was knotting his tie—a blue suit, a striped tie of wine and blue, then suddenly he remembered.
“By the way, she’s half-Chinese!”
“She? Which half, sir?” Sung smiled a small prim smile, suitable to his small size. “Father Chinese is good, sir. Never mind Mother.”
Rann laughed. “Always a Chinese!”
“Mother dead?” Sung asked hopefully.
“Damned if I know,” Rann said, staring at himself in the glass.
Sung was taking an overcoat out of a closet. “Please, you wear this, sir. Inside is very warm fur.”
“I don’t think I shall be very cold but I’ll take it along anyway.”
“If no taxi,” Sung said, concerned.
“I’ll walk!” he retorted.
Rann found a taxi nevertheless, covered with snow but cruising along slowly and he leaped into it.
“Fifth Avenue—between Fifty-Sixth and Fifty-Seventh. I’ll tell you where to stop.”
The ride would be endless but the snow was magnificent, floating down in the clouds of white through which small black figures, bent to the wind, labored their way. He was in haste yet as ever he was diverted by all he saw, his restless mind storing every sight, every sound, against an unknown future. This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night. He forgot nothing, useless and useful. Useful! But for what? Never mind the question, never mind the answer. It was enough to be as he was, himself, every instant alive to everyone and everything. Time never crawled, not even now, as the cab lumbered through drifts and lurched over frozen ruts.
Nevertheless, when he reached the house on Fifth Avenue, the great shop, its windows curtained with snow, he made haste to ring the bell on the door of the adjoining house, a red door on which he saw in brass Chinese characters her father’s name. He had learned to write that name with a rabbit’s-hair brush and dense black Chinese ink—all that in Paris, before ever he went to Asia himself. The door opened immediately and he went in on a gust of snow-laden wind. Rann recognized the manservant, a Chinese, and was recognized by him with a wide and welcoming grin.
“Miss Kung?” he inquired.
“Waiting, sir. I take your hat, coat, sir.”
She did not wait. She came downstairs, smiling, graceful in her long Chinese robe of jade-green brocaded satin. The only change was in her hair. She had wound it about her head, a shining black coif. He stood waiting for her. Amazing that he had not realized her beauty! Her cream pale face, the oval of Asian song and poem, the dark Asian eyes—he had seen these in Korea and even in his brief stops in Japan, but the tincture of American blood defined the Asian lines. In Asia she would be called American, though here, in New York, she was Asian.
“Why do you look at me so?”
She paused on a step and waited.
“Have I changed?” she demanded.
“Perhaps it is I who am changed,” he said.
“Yes, you have been in Asia,” she said.
She moved toward him, put out her hands, and he clasped them in his.
“What luck for me that you are here!” he said.
He looked down into her face, a face radiant and yet with its usual calm. Her control never broke. The surface was smooth, yet she communicated warmth. He hesitated, and decided not to kiss her. Instead, he put her left hand to his cheek and then dropped it gently. She drew him by her right hand toward a closed door.
“My father is waiting for us,” she said.
He hesitated, her hand still in his. He searched that lovely face.
“Yes, you have changed!” he accused.
“Of course,” she said calmly. “I am no longer a child.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, deeply. Neither drew back.
“I shall have to know you all over again,” he said.
“You—” She hesitated. “You are not a boy anymore either. You are altogether a man. Come! We must go to my father.”
MR. KUNG SAT IN A huge carved chair to the right of a square table of polished dark wood, which stood against the inner wall. He wore a long, plum-colored Chinese robe and a black satin vest. The large room was an exact replica of his library in Paris. On the table stood a Chinese jar. He was examining the jar through his tortoiseshell Chinese spectacles. When Rann entered, he smiled but did not rise. As though they had met an hour ago, he said in his usual mild voice, a trifle high for a man’s voice and gentle, “This is a vase which belongs to a famous American collection. It may be for private sale. Some of the best Chinese collections are here in your country. Extraordinary—I cannot yet understand. My shop already is busy with American collectors—very rich men! Look at this vase! It is from some ancient Chinese tomb—Han dynasty, more than a thousand years. Probably it had wine in it for the dead. Usually such has an octagonal, faceted base. The material is red clay, but the glaze is this bright green—very beautiful! The sheen—you notice? A silvery iridescence!”