University of Virginia Library

II

"I was a little fellow of just about their age when my mother first taught me to kow-tow to my father and run to greet him when he came into the house," said Liu Venti, speaking of the twins who were playing on the lawn.

"Dear husband!" replied Pau Tsu, "you are thinking of home—even as I. This morning I thought I heard my mother's voice, calling to me as I have so often heard her on sunny mornings in the Province of the Happy River. She would flutter her fan at me in a way which was all her own. And my father. Oh, my kind old father!"

"Aye," responded Liu Venti, "our parents loved us!"

"Let us go home," said Pau Tsu after a while.

Liu Venti started. Pau Tsu's words echoed the wish of his own heart. But he was not as bold as she.

"How can we?" he asked. "Have not our parents sworn that they will never forgive us?"

"The light within me today," replied Pau Tsu, "reveals that our parents sorrow because they have thus sworn. Liu Venti, ought we not to make our parents happy, even if we have to do so against their will?"

"I would that we could," replied Liu Venti, "but there is to be overcome your father's hatred for my father and my father's hatred for yours."

A shadow crossed Pau Tsu's face; but only for a moment. It lifted as she softly said: "Love is stronger than hate."

Little Waking Eyes ran up and clambered upon his father's knee.

"Me too," cried Little Sleeping Eyes, following him. With chubby fists he pushed his brother aside and mounted his father also.

Pau Tsu looked across at her husband and sons.

"The homes of our parents," said she, "are empty of the voices of little ones."

Three moons later, Liu Venti and Pau Tsu, with mingled sorrow and hope in their hearts, bade good bye to their little sons and sent them across the sea, offerings of love to parents of whom both son and daughter remembered nothing but love and kindness, yet from whom that son and daughter were estranged by a poisonous thing called Hate.