ke of life for you. Listen, please. I have spoken to you first the
formal words which make all things possible between us, and now, if I
may, I let my heart speak. Somewhere not far from Pekin I have a palace,
where my lands slope to the river. For five months in the year my
gardens are starred with blue and yellow flowers, sweet-smelling as the
almond blossom, and there are little pagodas which look down on the blue
water, pagodas hung with creepers, not like your English evergreens, but
with blossoms, pink and waxen, which open as one looks at them and send
out sweet perfumes. When you are there with me, dear one, then I shall
speak to you in the language of my ancestors, which some day you will
understand, and you shall know that love has its cradle in the East, you
shall feel the flame of its birth, the furnace of its accomplishment.
Here my tongue moves slowly, yet I stoop my knee to you, I show you my
heart, and my lips tell you that I love. What that love is you shall
learn some day, if you have the will and the confidence and the soul.
Will you come back to China with me, Maggie?"

She rested her fingers on his hand.

"You are a magician," she confessed. "I am very English, and yet I want
to go."

He stood for a moment looking into her eyes. Then he stooped down and
raised her hesitating fingers to his lips.

"I believe that you will come," he said simply. "I believe that you will
ride over the clouds with me, back to the country of beautiful places.
So now I speak to you of serious things. Of money there shall be what
you wish, more than any woman even of your rank possesses in this
country. I shall give you, too, the sister of my great _Black Dragon_ so
that in five days, if you wish, you can pass from any of my palaces to
London. And further than that, behold!"

He drew from his pocket a roll of papers. Maggie recognised it, and her
heart beat faster. Curiously enough, just then she scarcely thought of
its world importance. She remembered only those few moments of strange
thrills, the wonder at finding him in that room, as he stood watching
her, the horror and yet the thrill of his measured words. He laid the
papers upon the table.

"Read them," he invited. "You will understand then the net that has been
closing around your country. You will understand the better if I tell
you this. China and Japan are one. It was my first triumph when
patriotism urged me into the field of politics. We have a single mot