It
is that of a farm in the province of Ho-Nan. Beyond the farm stretch
paddy-fields as far as one can see. Men and women and boys and girls
move about the farm, happy in their labors, and far, far away dwell
the mountain gods, who send the great Yellow River sweeping down
through the valleys where the poppy is in bloom. It is to possess that
farm, most honorable sir, and those paddy-fields that I covet wealth."
"And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost
sight of this ideal?"
"Never."
"But--your wife?"
Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.
"A man may not always have the same wife," he replied cryptically.
"The honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring
unselfishly in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men
as she has always done--and as an honorable and upright woman is
expected to do--may one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never
knows. Or she may leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that
some little maiden of Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest
and tender, will consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?"
Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:
"She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa," he said, almost sadly.
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