his mind clear of everything except the search for his tao, the search for his salvation. This tao was to him a concrete thing, to be concretely achieved, since it was to link him, intimately and strongly, not with, as would have been. the case had he been a Christian, an esoteric principle, a more or less recondite theological dogma, but with a precious and beneficent influence that, although invisible, was not in the least supernatural. For he was of the East, Eastern; he did not admit the existence of the very word "supernatural." To him everything was natural, since everything, even the incredible, the impossible, the never-to-be-understood, had its secret, hidden roots in some evolution of nature, of the Buddha, the blessed Fo, the active and eternal principle of life and creation.

Perhaps at the very first his search had not been quite as concise, had rather shaped itself to his perplexed, groping mind in the terms of a conflict, a distant and mysterious encounter with the forces of fate, of which his wife's death had been but a visible, outward fragment.

Then, gradually and by this time it had become spring, wakening to the white-and-pink fragrance of the southern breezes spring that, occasionally, even in Pell Street, painted a sapphire sky as pure as the laughter of little children he had stilled the poignant questionings of his unfulfilled desires, his fleshly love, and had turned the search for his tao into more practical channels.

For,

Practical, though of the soul! again, to him, a Chinese, the soul was a tangible thing. Matter it was, to be constructively influenced and molded and clouted and fashioned. It had seemed to him to hold the life of tomorrow, beside which his life of to-day and yesterday had faded into the drabness of a wretched dream. He had wanted this to-morrow, had craved it, sensing in it a freedom magnificently remote from the smaller personal existence he had known heretofore, feeling that, presently, when he would have achieved merit, it would stab out of the heavens with a giant rush of splendor and, blessedly, blessedly, overwhelm

him and destroy his clogging, individual entity.

But how was this to be attained? Had he been a Hindu ascetic, or even a member of certain Christian sects, he would have flagellated his body, would have gone through the ordeal of physical pain. But, a Mongol, thus stolidly unromantic and rational, almost torpidly sane, he had done nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he had continued to take good care of himself. True, he had begun to eat less, but not purposely; simply because his appetite had decreased. And his real reason for keeping his wife's Pekinese spaniel tucked in his sleeve was because "Reverential and Sedate" reminded him when it was time for luncheon or dinner, hours he might otherwise have forgotten.

The idea of suicide had never entered his reckoning, since he held the belief of half Asia, that suicide destroys the body and not the soul; that it is only a crude and slightly amateurish interruption of the present life, leaving the thread of it still more raveled and tangled and knotted for the next life, and yet the next.

He had passed over the obvious solution of devoting himself to charity, to the weal of others, as it had seemed to him but another instance of weak and selfish vanity, fully as weak and selfish as the love of woman; and the solace of religion he had dismissed with the same ready, smiling ease. Religion, to him, was not an idea, but a stout, rectangular entity, a great force and principle, that did its appointed duty not because people believed in it, but because it was. The Buddha would help him, if it be so incumbent by fate upon the Buddha, regardless, if he prayed to him or not, if he memorized the sacred scriptures, if he burned sweet-scented Hunshuh incense-sticks before the gilt altar or not. For the Buddha, too, was tied firmly to the Wheel of Things. The Buddha, too, had to do his appointed task. Thus, Li Ping-Yeng had decided, prayers would be a waste of time, since they could not influence the Excellent One one way or the other.

How, then, could he acquire sufficient

merit so as to reach his tao, beyond the good and the evil?

Of course, first of all, mainly, by tearing from his body and heart even the last root of the liana of desire, of love, of regret for his, wife; by again and again denying, impugning, destroying the thought of her, though, again and again, it would rise to the nostrils of his remembrance, with a stalely sweet scent like the ghost of dead lotusblossoms.

She was on the shadow side of the forever. Her soul, he would repeat to himself, incessantly, defiantly, belligerently, had leaped the dragon gate. Broken were the fetters that had held him a captive to the tinkle-tinkletinkle of her jeweled ear-rings. A mere picture she was, painted on the screen of eternity, impersonal, immensely aloof, passed from the unrealities of the

earth life to the realities of the further cosmos. He must banish the thought of her, must forget her.

And he did forget her, again and again, with the effort, the pain of forgetting choking his heart.

Sitting by the window, his subconscious mind centered on his tao, his salvation, the blessed destruction of his individual entity, "Reverential and Sedate" huddled in a fold of his loose sleeve, scrutinizing street and sky with unseeing eyes, he would forget her through the long, greasy days, while the reek of Pell Street rose up to the tortured clouds with a mingled aroma of sweat and blood and opium and suffering, while the strident clamor of Pell Street blended with the distant clamor of the Broadway mart.

He would forget her through the long, dim evenings, while the sun died

in a sickly haze of coppery brown, and the moon came up, stabbed on the outer horns of the world, dispassionately calm, sneeringly indifferent to the hearts of man, and the hiving stars swarmed and swirled past the horizon.

He would sit there, silent, motionless, and forget her while the stars died one by one, and the wind came driving the dusk to the east, and the sky flushed with the green of young morning, like a curved slab of thick, opaque jade, and again came the morning and the sun and the reek and the maze and the soot and the clamors of Pell Street.

Forgetting, always forgetting; forgetting his love, forgetting the tiny bound feet of the Plum Blossom, the Lotus Bud, the Crimson Butterfly. Her little, little feet! Ahee! He had made his heart a carpet for her little, little feet.

Forgetting, reaching up to his tao with groping soul; and then again the

thought of his dead wife, again his tao slipping back; again the travail of forgetting, to be forever repeated.

AND so one day he died; and it was Wuh Wang, the little, onyx-eyed, flighty wife of Li Hsü, the hatchetman, who, perhaps, speaking to Tzu Mo, the daughter of Yu Ch'ang, the priest, grasped a fragment of the truth.

"Say, kid," she slurred in the Pell Street jargon, "that there Li PingYeng wot 's kicked the bucket th' other day, well, you know wot them Chinks said-how he was always trying to get next to that-now-tao of his by trying to forget his wife. Well, mebbe he was all wrong. Mebbe his tao was n't forgetting at all. Mebbe it was just his love for her, his always thinking of her, his not forgetting her that was his real tao."

"Mebbe," replied Tzu Mo. "I should worry!"