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“Oh—can’t you see? It’s just as that old dowager said it would be.”
“What old dowager?”
“That sharp-tongued Englishwoman who gave the dinner in Shanghai. She saw you talking and laughing with me and she said: ‘I fancy he’ll be just like all the other boys who are shut up in China for a few years. They think themselves madly in love with the first white girl they meet who isn’t positively deformed.’ ”
“The old cat!”
“It was catty—but it was true. It’s exactly what has happened. That’s why I couldn’t be so frightfully unfair to you as to seize you when this madness is on you and bind you to me for life—before you have seen your own country again, where there are millions of girls nicer than I am.”
“Rot.”
“No, it isn’t. Go ashore and look them over, The streets of San Francisco are
