Athalie

He saw a massacre--or the remains of it--where fifteen thousand yellow

men and one white priest lay dead. He saw Republican China, 40,000

strong, move out after the banditti, shouldering its modern rifles,

while its regimental music played "Rosie O'Grady" in quick march time.

He saw the railway between Hankow and Pekin swarming with White Wolf's

bloody pack, limping westward from the Honan-Anhui border with

dripping fangs. He peered into the stinking wells of Honan where women

were cutting their own throats. He witnessed the levity of Lhasa

priests and saw their grimy out-thrust hands clutching for tips

beside their prayer-wheels.

In India he gazed upon the degradation of woman and the unspeakable

bestiality of man till that vile and dusty hell had sickened him to

the soul.

Back into Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the

awful Yankee--shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco,

digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia,--everywhere the

Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing,

quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running

older and better civilisations than his own crude Empire where he has

nothing to learn from anybody but the Almighty--and then only when he

condescends to ask for advice on Sunday.

And Clive, nevertheless, longed with a longing that made him sick, for

"God's country" where all that is worst and best on earth still boils

in the vast and seething cauldron of a continent in the making. There

bubbles the elemental broth, dregs, scum, skimmings, residue,

by-products, tailings, smoking corruption above the slowly forming and

incorruptible matrix in its depths where lies imbedded, and ever

growing, the Immam, the Hope of the World--gem indestructible, pearl

beyond price. Difficilia quae pulchra.

And once, Clive had almost set out for home; and then, grimly, turned

away toward the southern continent of the hemisphere.

In Lima he heard of an expedition fitting out to search for the lost

Americans, Cromer and Page, and for the Hungarian Seljan. And that

same evening he met Captain Dane.

They looked at each other very carefully, and then shook hands. Clive

said: "If you want a handy man in camp, I'd like to go."

"Come on," said Dane, briefly.

Later, looking over together some maps in Dane's rooms, the big blond

soldier of fortune glanced up at the younger man, and saw a lean,

bronzed visage clamped mute by a lean bronzed jaw; but he also saw two

dark eyes fixed on him in the fierce silence of unuttered inquiry.

After a moment Dane said very quietly: "Yes, she was well, and I think happy, when I left New York.... How

long is it since you have heard from her?"