They sat on the steps of a little building (four lacquered columns and a high, tiled roof under which stood a great bronze bell) and watched the river flow sluggish and with many a bend towards the stricken city. They could see its crenellated walls. The heat hung over it like a pall. But the river, though it flowed so slowly, had still a sense of movement and it gave one a melancholy feeling of the transitoriness of things. Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.

“Do you know Harrington Gardens?” she asked Waddington, with a smile in her beautiful eyes.

“No. Why?”

“Nothing; only it's a long way from here. It's where my people live.”

“Are you thinking of going home?”

“No.”

“I suppose you'll be leaving here in a couple of months. The epidemic seems to be abating and the cool weather should see the end of it.”

“I almost think I shall be sorry to go.”

For a moment she thought of the future. She did not know what plans Walter had in mind. He told her nothing. He was cool, polite, silent, and inscrutable. Two little drops in that river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an undistinguishable part of the water.

“Take care the nuns don't start converting you,” said Waddington, with his malicious little smile.

“They're much too busy. Nor do they care. They're wonderful and so kind; and yet--I hardly know how to explain it--there is a wall between them and me. I don't know what it is. It is as though they possessed a secret which made all the difference in their lives and which I was unworthy to share. It is not faith; it is something deeper and more--more significant: they walk in a different world from ours and we shall always be strangers to them. Each day when the convent door closes behind me I feel that for them I have ceased to exist.”

“I can understand that it is something of a blow to your vanity,” he returned mockingly.

“My vanity.”

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. Then, smiling once more, she turned to him lazily.

“Why did you never tell me that you lived with a Manchu princess?”

“What have those gossiping old women been telling you? I am sure that it is a sin for nuns to discuss the private affairs of the Customs officials.”

“Why should you be so sensitive?”

Waddington glanced down, sideways, so that it gave him an air of slyness. He faintly shrugged his shoulders.

“It's not a thing to advertise. I do not know that it would greatly add to my chances of promotion in the service.”

“Are you very fond of her?”

He looked up now and his ugly little face had the look of a naughty schoolboy's.

“She's abandoned everything for my sake, home, family, security, and self-respect. It's a good many years now since she threw everything to the winds to be with me. I've sent her away two or three times, but she's always come back; I've run away from her myself, but she's always followed me. And now I've given it up as a bad job; I think I've got to put up with her for the rest of my life.”

“She must really love you to distraction.”

“It's a rather funny sensation, you know,” he answered, wrinkling a perplexed forehead. “I haven't the smallest doubt that if I really left her, definitely, she would commit suicide. Not with any ill-feeling towards me, but quite naturally, because she was unwilling to live without me. It is a curious feeling it gives one to know that. It can't help meaning something to you.”

“But it's loving that's the important thing, not being loved. One's not even grateful to the people who love one; if one doesn't love them, they only bore one.”

“I have no experience of the plural,” he replied. “Mine is only in the singular.”

“Is she really an Imperial Princess?”

“No, that is a romantic exaggeration of the nuns. She belongs to one of the great families of the Manchus, but they have, of course, been ruined by the revolution. She is all the same a very great lady.”

He said it in a tone of pride, so that a smile flickered in Kitty's eyes.

“Are you going to stay here for the rest of your life then?”

“In China? Yes. What would she do elsewhere? When I retire I shall take a little Chinese house in Peking and spend the rest of my days there.”

“Have you any children?”

“No.”

She looked at him curiously. It was strange that this little bald-headed man with his monkey face should have aroused in the alien woman so devastating a passion. She could not tell why the way he spoke of her, notwithstanding his casual manner and his flippant phrases, gave her the impression so strongly of the woman's intense and unique devotion. It troubled her a little.

“It does seem a long way to Harrington Gardens,” she smiled.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.”

Waddington looked at her reflectively. Her abstracted gaze rested on the smoothness of the river. Two little drops that flowed silently, silently towards the dark, eternal sea.

“May I come and see the Manchu lady?” asked Kitty, suddenly raising her head.

“She can't speak a word of English.”

“You've been very kind to me, you've done a great deal for me, perhaps I could show her by my manner that I had a friendly feeling towards her.”

Waddington gave a thin, mocking little smile, but he answered with good-humour.

“I will come and fetch you one day and she shall give you a cup of jasmine tea.”

She would not tell him that this story of an alien love had from the first moment strangely intrigued her fancy, and the Manchu Princess stood now as the symbol of something that vaguely, but insistently, beckoned to her. She pointed enigmatically to a mystic land of the spirit.

他们坐在一座小建筑物前的台阶上（四个上了漆的柱子和高高的倾斜屋顶，屋顶下矗立着一座巨大的铜钟），远眺河水九曲十八弯地缓缓流向疫情严重的城镇，有着垛口的城墙也历历在目，炎热的空气笼罩着城镇，就像给城镇穿了一层厚厚的柩衣一样。但是，这条河流，虽然流动得很慢，可仍然不失流动的感觉，并给人以万物昙花一现的忧伤。一切都会流逝，会有什么痕迹留下来吗？在凯蒂看来，所有人都像河流中的水滴，向前流动，每一滴水彼此靠近，然后又相互远离，汇成无名的波涛奔向大海。一切都那么的短暂，那么的微不足道。人们把过眼云烟的东西看得如此之重，被无聊琐碎的事情搞得痛苦不堪，真是可悲呀。

“你知道哈灵顿花园吗？”她问威廷顿，美丽的眼睛中带着笑意。

“不知道，怎么了？”

“没什么，只是那个地方离这儿很远，我的家人就住在那里。”

“你想回家乡了？”

“没有。”

“我以为你过不了几个月就可以离开这儿了。瘟疫似乎会减弱，凉爽的气候应该可以让它灭绝。”

“我现在几乎舍不得离开这儿了。”

她想了一会儿自己的未来，不知道沃尔特心里做了怎样的安排，他什么也没告诉她。他总是那么不苟言笑、彬彬有礼、沉默寡言和神秘莫测。他们俩就像河里两个小水滴安静地流向了未知的将来。两个小水滴从自己的角度上看，是那么个性迥异，而在外人看来，是河水无法区分的组成部分。

“跟那些修女在一起可得小心，别让她们忽悠你入了教。”威廷顿说道，嘴角带着他坏坏的微笑。

“她们都特别忙，没人顾得上干这种事。她们也都特别棒，人都很善良。可是，我几乎不知道怎么去解释——好像她们和我之间有一堵墙，我不知道这堵墙是什么，就好像她们有一个秘密，使得她们的生活与众不同，而我还没有资格来分享这个秘密。它不是信仰，应该是某种更深刻和更有意义的东西。她们在一个和我们不同的世界里行走，对于她们来说，我们永远是陌生人。当修道院的大门每天在我身后关上的时候，我觉得在她们的眼中，我已经不复存在。”

“我能理解，这种东西对于你的虚荣是一个打击。”他嘲弄地回复道。

“我的虚荣。”

凯蒂耸了耸肩，然后，又一次微笑着、懒洋洋地转过头去看着他。

“为什么你从来没有告诉我，你和一个清朝的格格在同居？”

“这些嚼舌根的老女人都告诉了你些什么？我敢说修女们在背后谈论海关官员的私生活绝对是一种罪过。”

“你为什么那么敏感？”

威廷顿向下瞥了一眼，又向旁边看去，让他看上去很诡秘。他略微耸了一下肩。

“本来就不是什么值得嚷嚷的事，而且我也知道它会极大地影响我的职务升迁。”

“你真的很喜欢她吗？”

他抬起头来，丑陋的小脸上浮现出男人调皮的神情。

“因为我的缘故她抛弃了一切，家庭、亲人、安全和自尊。自从她把一切都抛到九霄云外跟我在一起之后，已经过去好多年了。我曾经把她送回去过两三次，但是最终她又跑回来了，我自己还离家出走过好几次，但她总能找到我。现在我已经彻底投降了，我想余生都得忍受着和她一起过下去了。”

“她一定爱你爱得发疯。”

“那真是一种相当可笑的感觉，你知道。”他回答道，眉毛上扬，面露困惑，“我丝毫也不怀疑，如果我真的离开了她，她绝对会自杀，而且并不怨恨我，反而觉得是理所应当的事，因为如果没有我，她不愿意活在世上。人们会知道，竟然还有这样一种奇怪的感情，对每个人来说，这种感情多少会有些意义的。”

“但是，这种感情是爱，是很重要的东西，被人爱反而不重要。一个人甚至不会对爱自己的人心存感激的。要是一个人并不爱她们，就只会觉得她们厌烦。”

“我没有和多个人谈恋爱的经验，”他回答说，“我只有这样一个。”

“她真的是清朝的格格吗？”

“不是，这种说法是修女们的演绎和夸张，她确实出身于清朝的一个贵族家庭。当然，清朝已经被革命推翻了，但不管怎么说，她还是一个很了不起的女人。”

他用一种骄傲的口吻说道，使得凯蒂的眼中闪过一丝笑意。

“那么你将在这里度过你的余生吗？”

“在中国吗？是的，在别处我还能干什么？等我退休了，我会去北平买一处小的宅院，在那儿度过我的下半辈子。”

“你有孩子吗？”

“没有。”

她好奇地看着他，就这样一个小个儿光头，长着一张猴子脸的男人，怎么会在一个异国的女人心中激起那么巨大的感情波澜呢，真是不可思议。她也搞不清楚他谈论她时，为什么会用那样一种说话方式。尽管他说话时显得随随便便，用的词语也显得油嘴滑舌，但还是能给凯蒂一种强烈的感觉，那个女人对他是一往情深、忠贞不贰的，这倒是让她觉得很困扰。

“回到哈灵顿花园似乎有很长一段路要走。”她笑着说。

“你为什么要说这个？”

“我什么都不明白。生活是如此奇怪。我觉得好像一个人一辈子都生活在一个小水塘边，突然有一天他面朝大海。要换了我，我会有些喘不上气来，但还是会兴高采烈的。我觉得好像一名老水手，扬帆海上去探索未知的海域，我觉得我的灵魂也在渴求探索未知的领域。”

威廷顿若有所思地看着她，而她则出神地凝视着平静的河面。两个小水滴静静地、静静地向着黑色的、永恒的大海流去。

“我能有机会见到那位满族女士吗？”凯蒂忽然抬起了头问道。

“她一句英语也不会说。”

“你一直都很关照我，帮了我很多忙，也许我应该向她表示感谢，并和她交个朋友。”

威廷顿略带讽刺地笑了笑，但还是心情愉快地回答道：

“找一天我过来接你，她会给你沏茉莉花茶的。”

她没有告诉他，这个异国爱情的故事在她第一次听说时就激起了她无尽的想象，那位清朝的格格站立在那儿，就像某个象征性的东西，虽然模模糊糊看不清，但坚持不懈地召唤着她，难以理解地把她指到了一个神秘的精神之地。