Somewhere not far from Pekin I have a palace, where my lands slope to the river.

For five months in the year my gardens are starred with blue and yellow flowers, sweet-smelling as the almond blossom, and there are little pagodas which look down on the blue water, pagodas hung with creepers, not like your English evergreens, but with blossoms, pink and waxen, which open as one looks at them and send out sweet perfumes.

When you are there with me, dear one, then I shall speak to you in the language of my ancestors, which some day you will understand, and you shall know that love has its cradle in the East, you shall feel the flame of its birth, the furnace of its accomplishment.
Here my tongue moves slowly, yet I stoop my knee to you, I show you my heart, and my lips tell you that I love.

What that love is you shall learn some day, if you have the will and the confidence and the soul.
Will you come back to China with me, Maggie ?" She rested her fingers on his hand.
"You are a magician," she confessed.

"I am very English, and yet I want to go." He stood for a moment looking into her eyes.