erience, that the hearts of lovers
sometimes break at parting, he finally relinquished the cool, small
hands and thrust his own deep into his pockets.

There was no good reason, apart from his own selfishness, why he should
give a pang of any form to the trustful young heart which fluttered so
close at his side.

"Where does your aged grandmother live, small one?" he asked her
briskly, in the most unsentimental tones imaginable.

"I have the address here, _birahi_," she replied, diving into her satin
blouse and producing a slip of rice paper upon which was scrawled a
number of dead-black symbols of the Chinese written language.

"A rickshaw man can find the place, of course," he said. "Now, look
into my eyes, small one, and listen to what I say."

"I listen closely, _birahi_," said the small one.

"I want you to stop calling me _birahi_. I am not your love, can never
be your love, nor can you ever be mine."

"But why, _bi_--my brave one?"

"Because--because, I am a wicked one, an _orang gila_, a destroyer of
good, a man of no heart, or worse, a black one."

"Oh, Allah, what lies!" giggled the maid.

"Yes, and a liar, too," declared Peter venomously, permitting his fair
features to darken with the blackest of looks. Was she flirting with
him? "A man who never told the truth in his life. A bad, bad man," he
finished lamely.

"But why are you telling such things to me, my brave one?" came the
provocative answer.

She _was_ flirting with him.

Nevertheless, he merely grunted and relapsed again into the form of
meditative lethargy which of late had grown habitual if not popular
with him.

A little after noon the train thundered into the narrow, dirty streets
of China's most flourishing city, geographically, the New Orleans of
the Celestial Empire; namely, Canton, on the Pearl River.

As Peter and his somewhat amused young charge emerged into the street
he cast a furtive glance back toward the station, and was dumfounded to
glimpse, not two yards away, the man with the red, deeply marked face.
His blue eyes were ablaze, and he advanced upon Peter threateningly.

It was a situation demanding decisive, direct action. Peter, hastily
instructing the girl to hold two rickshaws, leaped at his pursuer with
doubled fists, even as the man delved significantly into his hip-pocket.

Peter let him have it squarely on the blunt nub of his red jaw, aiming
as he sprang.

His antagonist went down in a cursing hea