“Your daughter, I am sure,” Doane continued, “can be trusted to form her own attachments. She is a noble as well as a beautiful girl.”
“Indeed--you find her so, Griggsby Doane? That is pleasant to my ears. For into the directing of her life have gone my dreams of the new China and the new world. I would not have her choose wrongly now. But I do not understand her. It is difficult for me to talk freely with her.”
“I am sure,” said Doane slowly, “that if you could bring yourself to do so”--as once or twice before, in moments of deep feeling, he forgot to use the indirect Oriental form of address--“it would make her very happy.”
“You think that, Griggsby Doane?” His excellency considered this. Then added: “I will make the effort.”
“If I may suggest--talk with her not as father with daughter, but on an equality, as friend with friend.”
His excellency slowly rose; and Doane, also rising, felt for the first time that the fine old statesman fully looked his age. He was, standing there, smiling a thought wistfully, an old man, little short of a broken man. And then his dry thin hand found Doane's huge one and gripped it in the Western manner. This was a surprise, evidently as moving to Kang as to Doane himself; for they stood thus a moment in silence.
“My dearest hope, of late,” said the great Manchu--the smoothest of etiquette giving way, for once, before the pressure of emotion--“has been that my daughter's heart might be entrusted to you, Griggsby Doane.”
“No. It is plainly impossible. All life is before her. The thought has not come to her. It never will. I see now that she could not be happy with me. And I think she ought to be happy. I must ask you not to speak of this again. Let youth call unto youth. And let me be her friend.”
His excellency went below after this. Miss Hui Fei was also below, sleeping. Rocky Kane had been playing with the little princess, out on the gallery; but now, evidently watching his chance, he came forward to the informal seat the mandarin had vacated.
It was to be difficult--always difficult. The boy, plainly, couldn't live through these tense days without a confidant. Doane steeled himself to bear it, and to respond as a friend. There was no way out; would be none short of Shanghai; just an exquisite torture. It was even to grow, with each fresh contact, harder to bear. The boy was so curiously unsophisticated, so earnest and honest an egotist.