r guide. He had engaged a man
supposed to know Chinatown inside and out, and the rendezvous was at 9:30
in Portsmouth Square, the "lungs of Chinatown"--close to the memorial
statue of Robert Louis Stevenson.

It was quiet there, and pleasant in the starlight, faintly gilded by the
street lamps. The young moon of the sixth month, which had sunk with the
sun when Angela was in Monterey, had not yet dropped beyond distant house
roofs. Its pearly profile looked down, surrounded by a clear-cut ring,
like the face of a pale saint seen through the rose-window of a cathedral.
Soon the guide came, a little dark man with a Jewish face, a German name,
an American accent, and the polite manner of an Oriental.

"What would you like the lady to see?" he asked.

"Everything you advise," said Nick. "We've dined in a Chinese restaurant,
and seen the things everybody sees. Now we'll do a few barber shops and
drug stores, and anything else queer you can think of."

"There's an old fellow," suggested the guide, "who used to be head
musician in the big Chinese theatre. He has a place of his own now, about
four storeys underground, where he tinkles on every sort of Chinese
instrument. Probably the lady would like to visit him. And I know a house
where children sing and dance. It's underground too; and the poor little
brutes, who go to two kinds of schools till nine o'clock, are at it till
midnight. But the lady needn't mind. If she doesn't go, somebody else
will, so the kids are kept out of their beds all the same--the more money
the merrier. You may get to see a Chinese funeral too, though I ain't sure
of one to-night----"

"I guess the lady wouldn't enjoy butting in at a funeral," said Nick.

"No, she wouldn't!" Angela added hastily. "But I should love to see them
playing fan-fan--isn't that what they call the gambling game?--and--and
smoking opium."

"Afraid the gambling can't be managed," said Mr. Jacob Schermerhorn, sadly
shaking his head, as if the good days were gone. "But you'd like a little
curio store I'll take you to--owned by an American lady married to a
Chinese, and wearing the costume. They sell relics of the fire. And a
joss-house is interesting----"

"But the opium smoking----" Angela persisted, suspecting that he meant to
slide off the subject.

"That's not easy. Opium smoking's forbidden, and----"

But Angela grew obstinate. "I shan't feel I've seen Chinatown unless I've
seen that. The books say it goes on."