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 CHAPTER XX

Wu, when he had laid Nang Ping on her mats and covered her, went to his library, and sat thinking through the night.

When he had lifted her, he had not glanced at the Englishman, nor had he even looked in the direction of prison or prisoner since. The servants had their orders. Those orders would be obeyed. With Basil Gregory, Wu had nothing more to do—yet.

All night long he scarcely moved by so much as the drumming of finger or toe, by so much as the quiver of a lash. None of Nang Ping's restlessness was shared by him. He was beyond restlessness. His agony was absolute. Mothers suffer acutely when daughters "fall"—good mothers and bad. But such mothers' sorrow can never equal the red torment of fatherhood so punished. Nature holds stricter justice between sex and sex than she is credited. And such partiality and unfair favoritism as he does show now and then is given, as is the gross favoritism of man-made laws constantly (in Europe and in Asia), to women.

Analyze what law of life you will, and the resultant conclusion will have something to testify of Chinese wiseness. The punishment of a crime never falls solely upon the direct miscreant. Blood and love must pay their debt. And the Chinese legal code which allows and decrees that kindred shall suffer (even to capital punish