ed frequently
over here that wouldn't happen in the States once in a hundred
years. Who could say that the two weren't in collusion? When a chap
like Spurlock jumped the traces, _cherchez la femme_, every time.
He hadn't gambled or played the horses or hit the booze back there
in little old New York....

"Aw, piffle!" he said, half aloud and rather disgustedly, as he
stepped out into the sunshine. "My old coco is disintegrating. I've
bumped into so much of the underside that I can't see clean any
more. No girl with a face like that.... And yet, dang it! I've seen
'em just as innocent looking that were prime vipers. Let's get to
Hong-Kong, James, and hit the high spots while there is time."

He signalled to Ah Cum; and the two of them crossed on foot into
the city.

It was not until the morning of the fifth day that the constant
vigil was broken. The patient fell into a natural and refreshing
sleep. So Ruth found that for a while her eyes were free. She
tiptoed to the stand and gathered up the manuscripts which she
carried to a chair by the window. Since the discovery of them, she
had been madly eager to read these typewritten tales. Treasure
caves to explore!

All through these trying days she had recurrently wondered what
this strange young man would have to say that Dickens and Hugo had
not already said. That was the true marvel of it. No matter how
many books one read, each was different, as each human being was
different. Some had the dignity and the aloofness of a rock in the
sea; and others were as the polished pebbles on the sands--one saw
the difference of pebble from pebble only by close scrutiny. Ruth,
without suspecting it, had fallen upon a fundamental truth: that
each and every book fitted into the scheme of human moods and
intelligence.

Ruth was at that stage where the absorption of facts is great, but
where the mental digestion is not quite equal to the task. She was
acquiring truths, but in a series of shocks rather than by the
process of analysis.

There were seven tales in all--short stories--a method of
expression quite strange to her, after the immense canvases of
Dickens and Hugo. When she had finished the first tale, there was a
sense of disappointment. She had expected a love story; and love
was totally absent. It was a tale of battle, murder, and sudden
death on the New York waterfront. Sordid; but that was not Ruth's
term for it; she had no precise commentary to offer.

From time to