"I want you to stop calling me birahi. I am not your love, can never be your love, nor can you ever be mine."
"But why, bi—my brave one?"
"Because—because, I am a wicked one, an orang gila, a destroyer of good, a man of no heart, or worse, a black one."
"Oh, Allah, what lies!" giggled the maid.
"Yes, and a liar, too," declared Peter venomously, permitting his fair features to darken with the blackest of looks. Was she flirting with him? "A man who never told the truth in his life. A bad, bad man," he finished lamely.
"But why are you telling such things to me, my brave one?" came the provocative answer.
She was flirting with him.
Nevertheless, he merely grunted and relapsed again into the form of meditative lethargy which of late had grown habitual if not popular with him.
A little after noon the train thundered into the narrow, dirty streets of China's most flourishing city, geographically, the New Orleans of the Celestial Empire; namely, Canton, on the Pearl River.
As Peter and his somewhat amused young charge emerged into the street he cast a furtive glance back toward the station, and was dumfounded to glimpse, not two yards away, the man with the red, deeply marked face. His blue eyes were ablaze, and he advanced upon Peter threateningly.