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"I'm told polygamy is an active practice," Mrs. Wibird remarked with a rising interest. "Yes?" Taou Yuen asked. "One man a lot of wives." "The Emperor has a great many and some Manchus take a second and third. You think that is wrong here. Who knows! The Chinese women are very good, very modest. Confucius says, 'The root is filial piety." "Very admirable," Mrs.
Taou Yuen, swung round toward the advancing figure, heard a long fluttering breath behind her. Perhaps Nettie Vollar had died of fright. The terror in her own brain dried up before an overwhelming realization she had betrayed herself to the principle of evil. She was lost.
As always at the prospect of sailing he was unsettled, concerned with countless details of departure like a vessel straining at her last anchor. Seated in the library with Taou Yuen he had called her aside from her fixed passage to their room from the garden he was recounting his main plans for the near future, when he became aware of an arrival on the steps outside.
The religion of Laou-tze comes next for our consideration. Its followers are called Taouists, from the word Taou, Reason, the active principle, eternal reason. Its founder lived about the same time as Confucius, who is said to have had an interview with him.
His entire life in China had been a preparation for the realization of the present moment. The sense of danger, of anger at Gerrit Ammidon, perished before the supreme emotion called up by Taou Yuen. He wanted to embrace her satin-shod feet, to cling to her odorous hands, such hands as were never formed out of China, like petals of coral.
A further, almost philosophical, consideration engaged Taou Yuen's mind this extraordinary occasion, her being with the other alone, Nettie Vollar's fragility, were, it might be, all a part of the working of the righteous Yang. In the light of this, then, she had been brought here for a purpose ... the ending of a menace to her husband.
"I like to see a person myself of Mrs. Ammidon's kind. I've been alone all day; father's gone to Boston and Edward away I don't know where." Taou Yuen's curiosity to see Nettie Vollar returned infinitely multiplied; here, miraculously, was an opportunity for her to study the woman who was beyond any doubt an important part of Gerrit's past, present it might be, his future.
The Ammidons sat about the willow, Rhoda with a hand affectionately on her husband's arm, the children Laurel and Janet staying without remark long past their accustomed hours for bed still and white under the blanching moon. Gerrit intently studied his wife, Taou Yuen, in a concentrated manner. She, too, was in white, the Chinese mark of sorrow.
"The Chinese burn them to propitiate evil spirits," murmured Furneaux. "The Taou gods are mostly deities of a very unpleasant frame of mind. The mere scowl of one of them from a painted fan suggests novel and painful forms of torture. I've seen Shang Ti grinning at me from a porcelain vase, otherwise exquisite, and felt my hair rising."
An American would have betrayed something of her reaction to him, he could have discovered a trace, an indication, of her thoughts; but the Manchu's face was as inscrutable as porcelain. William Ammidon nodded, the old man responded to his leave-taking with a degree of warmness, Gerrit at least smiled in a not unfriendly manner. Edward Dunsack bowed to Taou Yuen, and she gravely inclined her head.
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