She was always well and full of life and vigour, surrounded by all that can make life worth living.

In China she is never well; she is almost forgetting what is the sensation of health; she is anaemic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; she can have no pleasure, no amusement whatever; her only relaxation is taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting.

She is cooped up in a Chinese house in the unchanging society of a married couple--the only exercise she can permit herself is a prison-like walk along the top of the city at the back of the mission.

Her lover, a refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week's journey away, in Chungking, a depressing fever-stricken city where the sun is never seen from November to June, and blazes with unendurable fierceness from July to October.

In England he was full of strength and vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player.