Then you knew.
She was more than good looking, and what was just a bit rarer, she was educated. There was about her a certain amount of refinement which forced itself to the surface like a life preserver under water, every once in a while, but which as the years rolled on gradually disappeared, just like any other veneer. If the constant dropping of water will wear away a stone, in just so sure a way will environment contaminate, and human nature seek the lower level.
So here is the picture:
This so-called Queen, coming into Chinatown—by what route only she can tell—and creating a mild sensation among the Orientals who inhabit the houses on those narrow, twisting streets. The story was that a dose of knockout drops had proved the turning point in her life.
John Chinaman, you know, has a keen eye for the beautiful, not only in decorative art and choice silks, but in women.
There is his one weak point, the defective link in the chain, the one vulnerable spot in the armor of his stony reserve.
The lobbygows—the errand men of the Chinese—the whites, who execute commissions for them, and do all sorts of services, both legitimate and illegitimate, who will work in the dark as well as in the light, and whose heels can be hurried by extra compensation, saw and noted this Queen also, and in seeing, they, too, admired, but more or less hopelessly. The one spot which is quick in a woman’s composition is adulation. Let her be like ice, as cold and pure and reserved as her likeness carved out of the whitest Parian marble, or the hardest of flint-like granite, and admiration will make her as soft and supple as a Cleopatra.
She comes into her own and knows it.
She smiles and looks about for a likely head upon which to drop the wreath of her favors, and if she hesitates it is because the right head has not been bowed, or that her whim bids her hold off that she may only succumb after a struggle.
I am not putting up any defense for this Chinatown Queen. She was simply a woman with moods and humors, and pretty ways. Furthermore, which is essential in most cases, she was good to look at.