I sensed that Adam would have liked to take over. “You must let me deal with these things,” he said. “It’s too much for a woman.”

“That was not Sylvester’s idea,” I told him.

“Well, if there is anything I can do…”

“Thank you, Adam.”

He moved out of The House of a Thousand Lanterns. He couldn’t very well stay there now that Sylvester was dead. He rented a small place near us.

“You’ll know I’m not far if you want anything,” he told me.

Deeply I mourned Sylvester. I had not realized how much he had meant to me until I lost him. Sometimes I would awake in the night with a horrible sense of desolation and I would lie sleepless thinking of the many kindnesses he had shown me. I determined to try to do everything he would have wished me to.

We had buried him in the English cemetery. The Chinese of the household were disappointed that we did not observe their rites. They would have liked to have seen a funeral procession to the hillside with incense and offerings and the family taking money and garments to the tomb so that Sylvester might make use of them in the world of spirits. I did, however, bow to their conventions in one respect. I dressed myself and Jason in white.

Lottie was thoughtful. “Great Lady will marry again,” she said.

“Marry!” I said. “What put that into your head?”

She spread her hands and looked at me wisely.

I said: “An English widow does not think of marriage until she has been a widow for a year.”

“So?” she said, her head on one side birdlike. “Then in a year you marry.”

She seemed content with that.

A year, I repeated to myself.

Joliffe had come to the house for the funeral. I was aware of his smoldering eyes on me.

The will was read after the funeral according to the English custom. I was not surprised, having been warned by Sylvester of its contents; I was only astonished that there was so much. It was left to me but as he had told me there was a proviso. Sylvester could be trusted to cover all contingencies. In the event of my death before Jason reached the age of twenty-one, Adam was to control affairs.

I wondered whether he had been afraid that I would marry Joliffe and wished to exclude him.

It was the day after the funeral when Joliffe came to the house. He was shown into the drawing room and when I went down to see him he approached me with outstretched hands.

I avoided them. I was afraid of his touch. That was how vulnerable I was.

He said: “I must talk to you, Jane. There is much we have to discuss. We are free now, Jane… both of us.”

I turned away. I could almost see Sylvester there in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands in dismay.

“Please, Joliffe,” I said, “I am a widow of a week. Have you forgotten that?”

“It is because of this, that we have so much to say.”

“Not here,” I said. “Not now…”

He hesitated for a moment and then he said: “Later then but soon.”

I escaped to my room and thought of Joliffe and those days when we had been in Paris together. I remembered well the reckless joy of meeting Joliffe, of falling in love with him; then there came pictures of that dreadful day when Bella had arrived. If one reaches the pinnacle of ecstasy, the descent is very great indeed.

One thing I had often said to myself during the years after I had lost Joliffe was: Never again if I could help it would I put myself in a position to suffer like that. I recalled some wise words of Sylvester: “To be involved is to suffer. One should make sure that one does not too lightly become involved.”

Another thing he had advised me: “Never make hasty decisions. Look at your problem from all angles, weigh up carefully each aspect.”

Sometimes I felt that Sylvester was very near to me, watching over me, so often did I remember his words of wisdom.

It was a few days later when Lottie came to tell me that Joliffe was in the pagoda and was asking if I would go to him there.

I went and as I entered he came up from behind me and put his arms about me.

“No, Joliffe,” I protested.

“But yes,” he answered, turning me round and kissing me in such a way that I was transported back to the days of our passion.

“Please, Joliffe,” I said. “Let me go.”

“Not yet. When shall we be married?”

“I would not dream of marrying for a year.”

“That old convention! It is not as though you were ever anybody’s wife but mine.”

I drew myself away from him. “I was never your wife. You had a wife when you went through a form of marriage with me.”

“Forms!” he said. “Names signed on dotted lines. Do they make a marriage?”

“It is generally believed to be so,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You were my wife, Jane. You and I were meant for one another. If you knew what it was like when you went away…”

“I did know, Joliffe,” I said quietly.

“Then why do you hesitate?”

“I was young and reckless, inexperienced of the world. I shall never be that again. I have become serious.”

“The businesswoman!” he said. “All Hong Kong is talking of you. They wonder how long it will be before you have a husband to take the burden from your shoulders.”

“If burden it is, it is one I am determined to relinquish to no one. Sylvester has trained me well over many years. He believed me capable. I have a son to work for. Perhaps I have enough in life.”

“What nonsense! You will have many sons. You are not a woman to put love out of your life forever.”

“I have to discover what sort of a woman I am, Joliffe. I’m constantly surprising myself.”

“You were hurt, weren’t you? I love you, Jane. I didn’t want to tell you about Bella. Not then. I would have told you later when you were older and more tolerant of youthful follies. Besides I thought it was an incident closed forever. And then she came back from the dead as it were—and you left me! Oh Jane, how could you have done that!”

“It seemed to me the only way.”

“Conventional Jane, she couldn’t love without the marriage lines and she can’t go to her true husband now because she must wait a year after the death of a husband who was no husband.”

“Joliffe, please don’t talk about Sylvester. He was good to me. He meant a great deal to me. Perhaps our relationship was something you couldn’t understand.”

“I understand it perfectly.”

“No, Joliffe, you don’t. He was my best friend for years. I owe everything to him… even meeting you.”

“How like you, Conventional Jane, to put an aura round the dead. They immediately become sanctified in the minds of some people. Sylvester was a man of genius in business. He also had his eyes to the main chance. He married you because he wanted a nurse, a pupil and a son, and you could provide all those needs. Let’s be practical. Here in this place we can talk freely. That house stifles me.”

“That was why you wished to see me here?”

He nodded. “Part of the house and yet not it. There’s something about the pagoda. I always thought so.” He looked at the crumbling figure of the goddess, at the shaft of sunlight penetrating the roof. “I used to come here as a boy. And I thought: In the pagoda I can talk to Jane.”

“There is nothing we have to say as yet,” I answered. “I need time to think. I am unsure of many things.”

“You need your specified year,” he said.

“Yes, I need my year.”

“And you will not marry within that year?”

“I will not.”

“And how am I to live a year without you?”

“I suggest in the same way that you have been living so far.”

“You ask a lot, Jane.”

“When we truly love we are prepared to give a lot.”

He regarded me steadily. “I have never felt towards anyone else as I do towards you. I shall live for the time when we are together. One year to the day I shall be back for you. Then we shall go through that ceremony the second time, only the next time it will be binding.” Then he came to me again and took me into his arms and he kissed me and there was the same magic in his embrace that I remembered so well.

A few days later Adam told me that Joliffe had left Hong Kong.


* * *

There was not a great deal of time for riding. I wondered whether I should engage a governess for Jason but it would have probably meant bringing someone out from England and I enjoyed those lessons so much. Jason was so bright and it was not merely maternal pride which made me think so; and Lottie’s quaintness amused me and her eagerness to learn delighted me. I could not give up my little schoolroom which I had set up in one of the top rooms. I had put up a big wooden table and there was a cupboard in which books could be kept. Over the table hung the center lantern. Jason loved to be allowed to light the oil lamp inside it. From the window we could see the pagoda, which dominated the view from all windows on that side of the house.

I was confiding a great deal in Toby. I made a point of going to the Go-Down every day after the first few weeks. I was learning more and more from Toby and he was delighted to teach me. Our friendship grew warmer. I knew he was a man whom I could trust. I told him I would not stay in Hong Kong forever. There would come a time when I could no longer teach Jason and he would have to go away to school. That would be in a few years’ time and I would not consider the idea of his being in England while I was here.

“There’s time to work that out,” said Toby.

“Plenty of time,” I answered. “Sylvester was delighted to be able to leave everything in your good hands. That was the only reason he could stay in England as long as he did.”