Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/152

 Why Wu exacted it was hard to say. Perhaps he could not have told himself. If it tortured her, more it tortured him an hundred fold. And there was little of it in detail, nothing of it in essential, that he did not already know. Much of it he knew better and deeper than she did. Perhaps to hear it from her lips was no small part of a self-inflicted punishment he had decreed his scourge since he had been so lax a father—lax a father, and he Chinese! And she motherless!

He heard her in silence—without once a word of prompting or of interruption. And not once did she raise her head or look at him. If she had looked, her faltering words must have died. For his face twitched with convulsive pain again and again, and foam beaded white on his clenched lips.

There was a long silence when she had done, and neither moved.

At last he said, "Is there something you would ask of me, some message you would give?"

Nang Ping trembled violently. But the message her soul cried out to send she dared not speak; and if she had dared, surely she must have spared him it, for she was gentle, and he had always loved her well and shown her tenderness. When she could command herself a little, she said, falteringly, "If Low Soong might have a jewel or a robe—one, from me."

"Of all that was not your mother's or my mother's, or any mothers' of theirs, Low Soong shall choose all that she will. And I promise you that I will bear that frail no ill-will. It was not for her to guard what I, your father, failed to guard."

Nang Ping tried to thank him, but she could only bow her head and lay it near his shoe. She dared not touch