Chapter II

It was a cool, quiet evening, after a hot day. A new moon was in the sky.

“How beautiful above! How unbeautiful below!” exclaimed Mark Carson involuntarily.

He and Pan had been gazing down from their open retreat into the lantern-lighted, motley-thronged street beneath them.

“Perhaps it isn’t very beautiful,” replied Pan, “but it is here I live. It is my home.” Her voice quivered a little.

He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hands.

“Pan,” he cried, “you do not belong here. You are white—white.”

“No! no!” protested Pan.

“You are,” he asserted. “You have no right to be here.”

“I was born here,” she answered, “and the Chinese people look upon me as their own.”

“But they do not understand you,” he went on. “Your real self is alien to them. What interest have they in the books you read—the thoughts you think?”

“They have an interest in me,” answered faithful Pan. “Oh, do not speak in that way any more.”

“But I must,” the young man persisted. “Pan, don’t you see that you have got to decide what you will be—Chinese or white? You cannot be both.”

“Hush! Hush!” bade Pan. “I do not love you when you talk to me like that.”

A little Chinese boy brought tea and saffron cakes. He was a picturesque little fellow with a quaint manner of speech. Mark Carson jested merrily with him, while Pan holding a tea-bowl between her two small hands laughed and sipped.

When they were alone again, the silver stream and the crescent moon became the objects of their study. It was a very beautiful evening.

After a while Mark Carson, his hand on Pan’s shoulder, sang:

“And forever, and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes,
The moon and its broken reflection,
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.”

Listening to that irresistible voice singing her heart away, the girl broke down and wept. She was so young and so happy.

“Look up at me,” bade Mark Carson. “Oh, Pan! Pan! Those tears prove that you are white.”

Pan lifted her wet face.

“Kiss me, Pan,” said he. It was the first time.

Next morning Mark Carson began work on the special-feature article which he had been promising his paper for some weeks.