Asia was a dead letter. Had he come because a two-week package tour of the People's Republic was cheap and exotic? Or because it would spare him dull hours of summer research at the small New England college where he taught? Not that, either. The research would have to be done, sooner or later, one way or the other; long nights followed by a slim volume only initiates would read. The job was waiting when he got back. Say he had come to escape the shards of a divorce that still hurt, a year later. Was that the real reason? Part of it, maybe, but only a lesser part, if Stratton was in the mood to be honest with himself. Carol was gone and he did not really miss her, although sometimes he ached to be with the boy.

Boredom. That was closer to the truth, wasn't it? His friends would know it intuitively. Stratton had worked hard to become a scholar. He was a legitimate historian, an able professor of emerging reputation. And… so what? Passing years that dulled the senses, blank-faced students in vacuous procession. What next, Stratton? Mid-life crisis. Male menopause. Maybe there was no next.

So he had come to China. To throttle the boredom. No, there was something deeper. He was also testing the scar tissue, the way an athlete will gingerly measure the recovery of an injured limb. Something else, too. Thomas Stratton, as he alone knew, had come to weigh the man he had become against the one he had once been.

At Peking Airport, standing before the immigration officer in white jacket and red-starred cap, visions of yesterday had come flooding in with a gush he had battled to control. The man had fingered his passport without interest.

"Is this your first time in China?" the inspector had asked in slow, careful English.

"Yes," Stratton had lied. "Yes, it is."

"You are perspiring. Are you ill?"

"No. It is hot."

The man had stamped his passport and Stratton had sought the refuge of protective coloration in the gaggle of art historians.