head, smiling unconvinced, and all its jeweled filigree twinkled and winked in the opalescent half light. "They are women. All women understand love, even before the man comes to teach them. We are born so. Your honorable mother and the honorable Hilda, they understand; Nang Ping is sure they do, the wise and virtuous ladies."
"Not—not altogether. You see, things are different with us. Secret love is not looked upon like—like married love."
The girl laughed softly. "Then let it be no longer secret!" she purred contentedly, warmly willing to make his people hers, their ways her ways. "You shall tell them!" she said brightly, laying her little hands palm down on his.
"Oh! but, Nang Ping," Basil began miserably. But Nang would have none of that. She nestled to him closer still. "Basil," she interrupted, "if our love were not secret, but married love, and I flew away with you before my honorable father came back, then would thy honorable mother like me in her house?—if I did that—for love make brave for everything?"
Gregory was almost choking. But he controlled himself: that was the least he could do for her now. "Dear child!" he said huskily, and then he kissed her. There was tenderness in his kiss, and passion and bitter remorse. She felt the passion and the tenderness. He broke from her gently and moved away, standing looking down moodily at the darkening lotus flowers, distressed, all his light-hearted happiness of idle, selfish weeks gone, gone forever. "Oh, Nang Ping!" presently he said ruefully, "it would be better if you had never met me," and he moved restlessly still a little farther away.
