"If you go any further, lady, you will fall into the water!"
My answer was a step forward.
A strong hand was laid upon my arm and I was swung around against my will.
"Poor little baby," went on the voice, which was unusually soft for a man's. "Let me hold him!"
I surrendered my child to the voice.
"Better come over where it is light and you can see where to walk!"
I allowed myself to be led into the light.
Thus I met Liu Kanghi, the Chinese who afterwards became my husband. I followed him, obeyed him, trusted him from the very first. It never occurred to me to ask myself what manner of man was succoring me. I only knew that he was a man, and that I was being cared for as no one had ever cared for me since my father died. And my grim determination to leave a world which had been cruel to me, passed away—and in its place I experienced a strange calmness and content.
"I am going to take you to the house of a friend of mine," he said as he preceded me up the hill, the baby in his arms.
"You will not mind living with Chinese people?" he added.
