“Please let me speak with you,” I said. “Please let me speak with you!”
Still no sound.
Then it was that I opened the door--the shrunken door that would not
lock.
Hôtel de Chine, Peking, April 5th--or 6th.
|TIS sometime in the very early morning. Peking is still. Even in
this rookery of night birds every light is out but mine. I had to stop
writing a while back and go for a long hard walk--around the Legation
Quarter, outside the walls. But now I shall force myself to write down
the rest of it. I shall not go to bed until it is done. It is too absurd
that a scientist of proved ability and of highly trained will power
should be overcome by his emotions in this way.
I have just tiptoed to the shrunken door that so inadequately separates
her room from mine. I heard her irregular breathing: and, while I stood
there, caught a low jumble of words spoken with the thick tongue of the
sleeper.
And she stirs restlessly in her bed. Even from my chair I can hear that.
But I must tell what happened this afternoon.