quarter were spicy to him. He sniffed them with satisfaction as he
passed along the street, for in his mind they carried him back to
the narrow tortuous alleys of Canton swarming with life and
movement. He regretted that he had cut off his queue to please
Stella Allendale in the prenuptial days, and he seriously considered
the advisability of shaving his crown and growing a new one. The
dishes his highly paid chef concocted for him failed to tickle his
reminiscent palate in the way that the weird messes did in the
stuffy restaurant down in the Chinese quarter. He enjoyed vastly
more a half-hour's smoke and chat with two or three Chinese chums,
than to preside at the lavish and elegant dinners for which his
bungalow was famed, where the pick of the Americans and Europeans
sat at the long table, men and women on equality, the women with
jewels that blazed in the subdued light against white necks and
arms, the men in evening dress, and all chattering and laughing over
topics and witticisms that, while they were not exactly Greek to
him, did not interest him nor entertain.

But it was not merely his alienness and his growing desire to return
to his Chinese flesh-pots that constituted the problem. There was
also his wealth. He had looked forward to a placid old age. He had
worked hard. His reward should have been peace and repose. But he
knew that with his immense fortune peace and repose could not
possibly be his. Already there were signs and omens. He had seen
similar troubles before. There was his old employer, Dantin, whose
children had wrested from him, by due process of law, the management
of his property, having the Court appoint guardians to administer it
for him. Ah Chun knew, and knew thoroughly well, that had Dantin
been a poor man, it would have been found that he could quite
rationally manage his own affairs. And old Dantin had had only