Buddha-like immobility was claiming
her, but it had not yet effaced that expression of murderous malice
with which the smoker contemplated the unconscious woman who lay upon
the bed at the other end of the room.
As the moments passed the eyes of Mrs. Sin grew more and more glazed.
Her harsh voice became softened, and presently: "Ah!" she whispered;
"so you wait to smoke with me?"
Immobile she sat propped up amid the cushions, and only her full lips
moved.
"Two pipes are nothing to Cy," she murmured. "He smokes five. But you
are not going to smoke?"
Again she paused, then:
"Ah, my Lucy. You smoke with me?" she whispered coaxingly.
Chandu had opened the poppy gates. Mrs. Sin was conversing with her
dead lover.
"Something has changed you," she sighed. "You are different--lately.
You have lots of money now. Your investments have been good. You want
to become--respectable, eh?"
Slightly--ever so slightly--the red lips curled upwards. No sound of
life came from the woman lying white and still in the bed. But through
the partly open door crept snatches of Sin Sin Wa's crooning melody.
"Yet once," she murmured, "yet once I seemed beautiful to you, Lucy.
For La Belle Lola you forgot that English pride.
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