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 "Why didn't you even write? Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

He seemed a little proud of himself. "I wanted it to be a surprise."

He led her to the sofa and sat there, patting her hand and smiling, and comforting her while she wept and wept. "A surprise," she echoed. "A surprise . . . after twenty-six years. . . ." After a time she grew more calm, and suddenly she began to laugh. She kept saying at little intervals, "If you knew how I've waited!"

"I'm rich now, Emma," he said with the shadow of a swagger. "I've done well out there."

"Out where . . . Jason?"

"Out in Australia . . . where I went."

"You were in Australia?" He wasn't in China at all, then. The story was so old that she had come to believe it, and with a sudden shock of horror she saw that they would now have to face the ancient lie. He hadn't been in China, and he hadn't been killed by bandits. Here he was back again, and you couldn't keep a man like Jason shut up forever in the house. The Town would see him. She began once more to cry.

"There, there, Em!" he said, patting her hand again, almost amorously. "Don't take it so hard. You're glad I did come back, ain't you?"

"I don't know . . . I don't know. You don't deserve anything . . . even tears . . . after treating a wife the way you've treated me. Don't think I'm crying because I'm glad you're back. It's not that. I ought to turn you out. I'd do it, too, if I was an ordinary woman."

She saw then that she still had to manage every-