XXIII

bold relief against the background of the tawdry, shallow people around him. She thought of the concept which had always sprung to her mind when she had heard the word Chinese or Chinaman⁠—it always had been of a slant-eyed Oriental shuffling across a laundry floor or a bestial, treacherous villain upon the stage or moving-picture screen. But even allowing for the contrast between that stereotyped concept and the man she had met at the Crosbys’, Hseh-Chuan had towered far above the other guests, she decided. It wasn’t fair to compare him, who must be an exception even in his own country, with poor pathetic Mrs. Crosby nor even with Bert Bellamy, product of the sophistication of his age. She remembered a phrase she had read in an essay by James Branch Cabell⁠—“Man is, they say, the only animal that has reason; and so he must have also, if he is to stay sane, diversion to prevent his using it.” Cynical, scoffing, it was true, but after all was that not the premise upon which life nowadays seemed to be conducted? And were not the Eulalia Crosbys and the Bert Bellamys and the Jimmie Forresters, yes, the