Late Afternoon. (still the 18th.)

HELOISE understands now. And she agrees that I am right. She will accept the loan I suggested. And she will go to Paris.

She called up this afternoon—while I was writing.

“Anthony,” she said, “take me for a walk. It is stuffy here. I want some air.”

So she started out, and I met her near the eastern end of Legation Street.

“Just a little walk, Anthony,” she said. “I'm not getting any exercise these days. I don't seem to want to go out alone any more.... Up on the wall, Anthony, where we can feel the wind. And there won't be so much dust.”

So we climbed the ramp, and walked from the Hatamen to the Chienmen and back—two miles. South of us extended the Chinese city, that lies outside the historic stronghold of the Manchus. Northward, as far as we could see, stretched the Tartar capital, now all fresh green foliage with bits of curving tile roofs peeping out in gray-brown patches. For Peking is a city of trees.

We could see the brick walls of the Imperial City, and, within that, of the Forbidden City itself; with its acres of glazed yellow roofs.

The Tartar wall is all of fifty feet high, and nearly as broad on the top. Grass grows there; and there are parapets, and the casual ruins of stone barricades where men have fought.

I told Heloise, while we walked, that I had worked it all out. I told her, too, of a curious coincidence of this very morning. I picked up a magazine in the hotel lounge, and, turning the pages, found my attention arrested by an interview with some great singers. In that paper the three finest living operatic sopranos agreed that marriage, home, domesticity, could play no part in their lives.

I felt it my duty to tell her about this. We simply have got to face these facts. And I must help keep up her courage with my own. Once she finds herself established at Paris, her work going on, the stimulus of new acquaintances and of fine music and of the stir and rush of the Western World all about her, it will not be so hard, I think. At present, the loneliness, the sense of distance from her own kind, and the perplexing reactions of the tragedy that we have both had to pass through, combine to bring her deep emotional self closer to the surface than normal.

Then, of course, she is quite dependent on me. We do not speak of this; but I know well enough that it is every moment in her thoughts.

We did not stay out long. It is most difficult when we are together. I am going to start my own work at once. It is the only way to keep steady—I can see that. I have letters to the American Minister. I shall present them tomorrow.

We lingered at the door of her hotel. Neither of us wanted to say good-by. We stood there for several moments without speaking. Then she said:

“Will you come in?”

I shook my head.

She took a few slow steps into the doorway; then stopped.

“I shall not change, Anthony—in Paris!” she said, and hurried in without looking back.

I have succeeded in getting reservations for her on the Trans-Siberian, leaving Harbin on the 23rd. That means starting from Peking on the 21st—in three days.

She says that she will not mind the long journey alone. I wish I knew of some American or English family that is going through to Moscow on that train. But I feel pretty sure that she will make the acquaintance of some fairly congenial group of tourists.

Sometimes I think of troubles that may come to her in case she should meet with no such good fortune; and then my head becomes hot and I have to clench my hands and walk out in the air. There will be men of course—and ten long days of that train! Certain ugly phrases of Sir Robert's float to the surface of my thoughts and stay there to irritate me. I can't help dwelling a little on the sinister code of the white men who travel in the East.

But it is no good thinking of these things. Heloise says they are only the chances of life, and that we have to take those. “And Anthony,” she added to-day, “they can annoy me, but they can't hurt me—they can't make any difference.”