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After the visitors had gone, Pau Lin, who had been watching her husband’s face while the young artist was in the room, said to him:

“She can be happy who takes all and gives nothing.”

“Takes all and gives nothing,” echoed her husband. “What do you mean?”

“She has taken all your heart,” answered Pau Lin, “but she has not given you a son. It is I who have had that task.”

“You are my wife,” answered Wou Sankwei. “And she—oh! how can you speak of her so? She, who is as a pure water-flower—a lily!”

He went out of the room, carrying with him a little painting of their boy, which Adah Charlton had given to him as she bade him goodbye and which he had intended showing with pride to the mother.

It was on the day that the baby died that Pau Lin first saw the little picture. It had fallen out of her husband’s coat pocket when he lifted the tiny form in his arms and declared it lifeless. Even in that first moment of loss Pau Lin, stooping to pick up the portrait, had shrunk back in horror, crying: “She would cast a spell! She would cast a spell!”