ust. Oh, useful enough in business circles, since they can
usually speak both languages, which is, of course, an advantage. But
socially, impossible. In time, he passed into a banking house, where
certain of his qualities were appreciated, but outside of banking hours
he was confronted with a worse problem than that which had beset his
father. He felt himself too good for the Chinese. His mother's people
did not appeal to him, he did not like their manners and customs. Above
all things he wanted to be English, like his father, whom in his
imagination he had magnified into a sort of god. But his father's people
would have none of him. Even the clerks in the bank only spoke to him on
necessary business, during business hours, and cut him dead on the
street. As for the roysterers and beach-combers gathered in the bars of
the hotels, they made him feel, low as they were, that they were not yet
sunk low enough to enjoy such companionship as his. It was very
depressing and made him feel very sad. He did not at first feel any
resentment or bitterness towards his absent father, disappeared forever
from his horizon. But it gave him a profound sense of depression. True,
there were many other half-breeds for him to associate with--the China
Coast is full of such--but they, like himself, were ambitious for the
society of the white man. What he craved was the society of the white
man, to which, from one side of his house, he was so justly entitled. He
was not a very noticeable half-breed either, for his features were
regular, and he was not darker than is compatible with a good sunburn.
But just the same, it was unmistakable, this touch of the tar brush, to
the discriminating European eye. He seemed inordinately slow witted--it
took him a long time to realise his situation. He argued it out with
himself constantly, and could arrive at no logical explanation. If his
mother, pure Chinese, was good enough for his father, why was not he,
only half-Chinese, good enough for his father's people? Especially in
view of the fact that his father's history was by no means uncommon.
His father and his kind had left behind them a trail of
half-breeds--thousands of them. If his mother had been good enough for
his father---- His thoughts went round and round in a puzzled, enquiring
circle, and still the problem remained unsolved. For he was very young,
and not as yet experienced.

He was well educated. Why had his father seen to that? And he was wel