“It is in accordance with the law,” he replied.
“Ah!”
“No one demands it.”
“Ah!”
“You are not a man of the Middle Kingdom.”
A slight smile curled the bishop’s thin lips as he drew a package from his robe and threw it down upon the table.
The magistrate carelessly, even with hauteur, opened it. As he read, a pallor came into his yellow face and his hand shook as though with palsy when he refolded the document. Again he turned his eyes toward the grim warships in the river; again to the calm, stern array of marines and their cannon unchained and alert.
He leaned over his table as one in a stupor.
Immovable the bishop towered over him, his lips tight drawn, his eye fixed.
The magistrate lifted the Vermilion Pencil.