University of Virginia Library

III.

Carrie had returned home tired out with a day's watching by the bedside of a sick Chinese woman.

"Why are you so good to everybody but yourself?" enquired Han Yen, meeting the girl as she entered the house in the dusk of the evening and following her into the sitting room.

"I am good to myself," answered Carrie cheerfully. "I'm accustomed to helping the poor Chinese. Indeed, I don't know what I shall do with myself after I give them up for you, Yen."

"I shall not require you to give them up altogether," replied the boy tenderly, "It is a work for humanity which you are doing and I hope to be able to help you with it."

"Why, dearie, what are you talking about?" exclaimed Carrie.

"About—when we shall be happy."

"You mean—when we go to China."

"No—here. I cannot go back to China for many years—perhaps never."

"Why?"

"Carrie's voice sounded sharp.

"Because I must work for my living—and for yours," answered the boy, "and if I were to return to China I would have to work for the government until I had repaid what I owed for my education here."

"Oh! Then you are not rich!"

"Rich!" echoed Han yen. "My father had to sell his land to enable me to complete my studies. Otherwise I would not have been able to compete at the Pekin examinations."

"You always used to say that you were going back to China."

"Yes," said Han Yen. "It was my great ambition to return to China and work for her—and alone I could have done so. But now, I shall not be alone—and I have a higher and loftier ambition than to work for China—it is to work for humanity—with you."

"I do not understand you," gasped Carrie.

"But you will," said Han yen. "Listen. I have yet to tell you how much I love you, and how all my heart is weeping and laughing for you. I am giving up all for you, to be with you, to work for you. I am not returning to my native land, because all my thought is you—and everything else is as naught."

The girl shrank before the rising emotion in the boy's face and voice.

"Good night, Yen, dear," said she, her hand upon the door knob, "I am so tired that I can't sit up one moment longer. See you to-morrow."

And then she stole away to the kitchen and said to her mother:

"What do you think? Yen's people are poor and after we are married, he will have to stay in America and live and work here just like a common Chinaman."

"Lands sakes!" ejaculated Mrs. Bray. "Ain't that awful! And I've been telling all around that you was to marry a Chinese gentleman and was to go to China and live in great style!"

"And he isn't a Christian either," murmured Carrie.