startled; then, in a spasm of nervous tension, she covered her ears with her hands.
Wu took a step towards her. "Do you not find the music agreeable?" he asked her in a creamy voice.
"No," she almost sobbed, "it is horrible! Horrible! I—I can't bear it—as I feel now." And she sank down miserably on a stool and leaned a little against the table.
Wu smiled—a cruel, relentless smile. But he moved to the low, wide window, pushed back the opaque slide, and called out abruptly, "Changhoopoh." The music stopped instantly.
"Oh, thank you!" the woman cried.
"I am sorry it distressed you," he said in an odd voice; "perhaps these notes"
"They jarred on me dreadfully," she sighed.
"It is a pity," the mandarin told her, "for the music was in your honor."
"I'm sorry," she faltered, twisting and untwisting her little handkerchief—Wu was fanning himself again, slowly, contentedly—"not to appreciate it more. You must please forgive me," she pled, "but I am so dreadfully overwrought." She turned to him with a wan smile that tried to be confident, but failed, and with a brave attempt to appear at ease that was sadder than her tears would have been, "Now, Mr. Wu, please tell me. Where is my son? What do you know about him? Oh! if you only understood a mother's anxiety!"
Wu Li Chang looked into her eyes with a narrow smile that was half a taunt, half a caress. "Ah!" he said, laughing a little, "the old, old mother-vanity. Why is it, I wonder, that motherhood lays claim to all the love, all the tenderness, and to all the misery of parentage? And it is so, world-wide. Our own women are so. But"—his voice grew stern—"fathers feel too! Fathers love
