the one nor the other of that white
couple paid the slightest attention to him and he withdrew without
having heard them exchange a single word. He squatted on his heels on
the back veranda. His Chinaman's mind, very clear but not far-reaching,
was made up according to the plain reason of things, such as it appeared
to him in the light of his simple feeling for self-preservation,
untrammelled by any notions of romantic honour or tender conscience. His
yellow hands, lightly clasped, hung idly between his knees. The graves
of Wang's ancestors were far away, his parents were dead, his elder
brother was a soldier in the yamen of some Mandarin away in Formosa. No
one near by had a claim on his veneration or his obedience. He had been
for years a labouring restless vagabond. His only tie in the world
was the Alfuro woman, in exchange for whom he had given away some
considerable part of his hard-earned substance; and his duty, in reason,
could be to no one but himself.

The scuffle behind the curtain was a thing of bad augury for that Number
One for whom the Chinaman had neither love nor dislike. He had been awed
enough by that development to hang back with the coffee-pot till at last
the white man was induced to call him in. Wang went in with curiosity.
Certainly, the white woman looked as if she had been wrestling with
a spirit which had managed to tear half her blood out of her before
letting her go. As to the man, Wang had long looked upon him as being in
some sort bewitched; and now he was doomed. He heard their voices in
the room. Heyst was urging the girl to go and lie down again. He was
extremely concerned. She had eaten nothing.

"The best thing for you. You really must!"

She sat listless, shaking her head from time to time negatively, as if
nothing could be any good. But he insisted; she saw the beginning of
wonder in his eyes, and suddenly gave way.

"Perhaps I had better."

She did not want to arouse his wonder, which would lead him straight to
suspicion. He must not suspect!

Already, with the consciousness of her love for this man, of that
something rapturous and profound going beyond the mere embrace, there
was born in her a woman's innate mistrust of masculinity, of that
seductive strength allied to an absurd, delicate shrinking from the
recognition of the naked necessity of facts, which never yet frightened
a woman worthy of the name. She had no plan; but her mind, quieted down
somewhat by the very ef