Sun and moon

The clear sun of July shone through the garden foliage, making circles of light on the grass wherever the inter-woven branches of the locusts allowed its passage. Summer rains h...

The bell rang for tiffin. The servants were very punctilious about this bell. The custom of ringing it, imported by the amah for the seemly benefit of her two children, had beco...

Herrick decreed a retreat to the Western Hills. Seldom though he emerged from his dwelling, the man could not escape the hubbub of a city which slept and prattled out of doors....

Nancy got away gladly; she stumbled quickly into her room. The episode had made a rent across her childhood so that she could never again be the careless, innocent creature she...

The answer was of such importance that Herrick neglected Kuei-lien in his effort to find it. Herrick's wrath had gathered for a great outburst; and then Nancy, by kneeling, by h...

Nancy's sincerity shocked her companion into silence for the moment. But it was not likely to be a long silence. When they had shaken off the glamour of that golden afternoon an...

Kuei-lien tried in vain to learn what had been said between father and daughter. She could get no clue. Herrick smilingly told her that Nancy was too young to think of marriage....

Edward's elation vanished when he thought of his sister shut helplessly in the temple from which he had got free. He stood irresolute, unable to think. Then he realized that Nan...

Neither man forgot this picture of Nancy in the doorway. The quick look of surprise she gave them was not swift enough to banish traces of the terror she had been suffering, so...

Edward and David were having their own good time together. They were not troubling much about distinctions in clothes, once Edward had solved the mystery of how to wear pyjamas,...

For a long time Herrick sat in quiet, like a figure in meditation. The drowsiness of the afternoon seemed to have pervaded his spirit, the strange stillness now reigning over th...

For a full week Herrick lived behind closed doors. It was a long devastating bout, and it was a hatefully dull week for Nancy and Edward. Recent liberty made their present confi...

Nasmith did not answer. The proposal was too unexpected to fit into any compartment of his mind. Room had first to be made for it, room provided with hesitation and an agitated...

The departure had been as sudden, as arbitrary, as Herrick's few acts of decision usually were. The household had not recovered from the surprise of Nasmith's visit when orders...

The visits of Hai t'ai-t'ai were always occasions of intense importance to the family, and the woman, growing frankly elderly at the early age of thirty, played her part with su...

After Nancy's departure, the ceremonies again could take their appointed course. The firecrackers blazed and snapped, the little horns, with voices like thin piping clarionets,...

By one shrewd stroke the t'ai-t'ai had regained Kuei-lien's faltering allegiance. She was very happy over the effects of her skill and particularly pleased at her discernment in...

For a second time, after all his years in Peking, Herrick was denying the sureness of the root which his life had taken in alien soil, by turning to a casually met stranger from...

In a household where every trivial accident was snatched at by the jaded inmates as meat for hours of excited gossip, an event so unparalleled as the visit of three foreigners w...

Nancy now became the least important personage in the household. She was the centre, it was true, round which the preparations of the t'ai-t'ai were grouped, but she had discard...

The days in the Western Hills were always to be associated with the singing of birds. In the first hours of the morning they began their blithe chattering; the maples and locust...

Long before this Nancy was happily asleep. Thoughts of sun and moon had gone glimmering before the joy of her welcome. Helen and Elizabeth and their uncle had come far along the...

She was no more ready than they were to have her stay finished. Time had gone so swiftly. The first few days she had been careless of its passing, as though she had the leisure...

They found the rest of the family where they had left them. A cave to which the storm had driven them had saved the picnickers from the worst of the downpour although the swift...

Nancy and Edward made a very different return from their homecoming of a year before. The girl would not hear of her friends walking with her; farewells were so painful that she...

The seventh moon waxed and waned in a succession of trivial days. The interest of the summer, so far as Nancy was concerned, had ended with her triple battle waged against Ronal...

"I must leave you now," announced the concubine, in the same teasing voice; "it is time for you to weep. You must weep, you know. All brides are supposed to weep. Your ancestors...

The noise of crackers broke into the first light of the day. Nancy woke, scarcely understanding where she was or that this was her bridal day. She had not expected to sleep. Kue...

News of Herrick's death reached Ronald Nasmith almost as quickly as it reached the family of the dead man. The t'ai-t'ai was anxious to settle the business of his estate and los...

Ronald did not see Nancy again until the day of Timothy Herrick's funeral. On that dreary day she was more remote than ever, wearing her headdress of white sackcloth and weeping...

In the first relief that followed this kindly greeting, Nancy nearly broke down. Tears welled to her eyes, do what she would to hold them back. She could not help sobbing, but t...

"All said neatly in a phrase, as a scholar ought to say it," she thought to herself, "not a breath of complaint about her husband, not an undutiful syllable, and yet the whole s...

Kuei-Lien more than justified her connection with the Ferris household by the news she was able to bring. Not so long after Nancy herself, Ronald knew that Nancy's husband--he m...

The strokes of the clock came too quickly for Ronald. They woke him each time just when he was drowsy, telling him that it was two, three, four, and he was not yet asleep. The c...

In the morning the doctor came again. He found no change in his patient, who still lay open-eyed on her bed, evidently thinking, though she did not talk. It hurt her too much to...