There was something depressing in the air, there was much that was pathetic about Henry Drew. His birthday! Who gave a hang? Certainly not his wife, who looked at him through eyes that seemed to be counting his years with ever-increasing hate; nor, probably, the son by his first marriage, whom I had never seen, but who, according to report, hated him too.

He went over and held those cold transparent hands of his up to the fire. I noticed that they trembled slightly.

"The girls will be down soon," he said. "Before they come I want to tell you that I've been thinking over our little matter-"

"Please," I interrupted. "I'm sure your party will go off much more pleasantly if there is no mention of that." I paused. "My lawyer will call on you tomorrow."

The shadow of a smile crossed his face. And well he might smile, for he knew that I was bluffing; I had no lawyer; I had, in fact, no case against him. "You're quite right, my boy," he said. "Tonight is no time for business. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow-tomorrow, I see your lawyer."

He laughed outright now, an unkind sneering laugh, and once more hatred of him blazed in my heart. Why had I been such a fool as to come?

The doorbell rang, a loud peal, and Drew ran to the hall, where Hung Chin-chung was already opening the outer door. Through the curtains I saw a huge rosy-cheeked policeman outlined against the fog.

"Hello, Mr. Drew," he said cheerily.

"Hello, Riley," cried the old man. Running forward he seized the policeman's hand. "I'm back again."

"And glad I am to see you," said Riley. "I knew the house was closed, and seein' all the lights, I thought I'd look in and make sure everything was okay."

"We landed late today," replied Drew. "Everything is certainly okay. You'll see plenty of lights here from now on."

He stood on the threshold, chatting gaily with the patrolman. Hung Chin-chung came into the library where I sat and, taking up a log, stooped to put it on the fire. The flicker of light played on his face, old, lined, yellow like a lemon left too long in the sun, and glinted in those dark inscrutable little eyes.

Drew sent Riley on his way with a genial word and returned to the library. Hung stood awaiting him, evidently about to speak.

"Yes, yes-what is it?" Drew asked.

"With your permission," said Hung, "I will go to my room."

"All right," Drew answered. "But be back here in half an hour. You're to serve dinner, you know."

"I will serve it," said Hung, and he went noiselessly out.

"What was I saying?" Drew turned to me. "Ah, yes-the girls-the girls will be down in a minute. Bless them! That Little Mary Will-like a breath of springtime from her own mountains. Ah, youth-youth! All I have gained, all that I have-I'd swap it tonight for youth. My boy, you don't know what you've got."

I stared at him. He'll steal your shirt, and you'll beg him to take the pants too. Thus inelegantly had old Drew been described to me in China, and there was some truth in it, surely. Where was my hatred of a moment ago? Confound it, there was something likable about him after all.

I stared at him no longer, for now outside the curtains I could see Mary Will coming down the stairs. Many beautiful women had come down those stairs in the days when social history was making in that old house on Nob Hill-women whose loveliness was now but a fast-fading memory on peeling canvas.