She moved, her chin fell upon her hands, propped up with her elbows on the table. Apparently Edward Dunsack was gazing at the wall beyond her. Her breast gave a single sharp heave. When Nettie looked up her face was flushed. "I wish that I were really a bad woman," she spoke in a low vibrant voice.
"What is bad and what is good?" He still seemed to ignore her, considering a question that had no personal bearing. "In one country a thing is thought wrong and in another it is the highest virtue. In one age this or that is condemned, when, turn the calendar, and everyone is praising it." He became confidential, the image of kindness. "I'll tell you what I think is wicked," he pronounced, leaning toward her, "and that is the way you two were kept apart; unchristian is what I call it."
"Gerrit doesn't care," she said.
"How do you know?" he demanded. "I cannot agree with you. I don't find a great deal in him to admire, he is too simple and transparent; but there's no doubt of this, he is faithful. One idea, one affection, is all his head will hold."
"That's a beautiful trait." A palpable wistfulness settled over her.
"It's greatly admired," he agreed; "although not by me. I believe in taking what is yours, what you need, from life. I suppose that I have been away from proprieties so long that they have lost their importance. They seem to me of no greater weight than barriers of straw. But, of course, that mightn't suit you; probably, living in Salem as you have, its opinion is valuable."
"Salem!" she exclaimed bitterly. "What has it ever been to me but an unfair judgment? I owe Salem no consideration; I can't see that I owe any to life."
"I don't want to insist on that," he proceeded deliberately. "The tragedy of your position is that married to Ammidon everything in the past would have been overlooked, forgotten. Even now—" he stopped with a gesture indicating the presence still of large possibilities.
God, what a vacillating fool the girl was! He could say no more at present, and he rose, leaving the room with Nettie staring dully across the table. He went outside, to the grass fronting on the harbor. Here, last night, he had thrown the opium into the water. It seemed to him that he had lived through a complete existence since then: the presence of Taou Yuen had created a new world. He thought she walked to him through the gloom; he saw her slender body grow brighter as she approached; he heard her speak in a low native murmur; their hands caught in an eager tangle.
He put aside, momentarily, the problem of the difficulties of going again to the Ammidons' for an easier one—the bringing of Gerrit Ammidon here. He was confident that, thrown together on the still rim of the water, at evening, the emotion born between his niece and the shipmaster and prematurely choked would revive. He had no means of knowing Ammidon's present exact feeling for Nettie; he was counting only on a general theory of men and nature at large. He was already convinced, from very wide knowledge, experience, that the other could not form a permanent attachment to the Manchu; and Nettie's great difference, together with the romance of her unhappy position, must have a potent effect on the fellow's evident sentimentality. A dank air rose from the water, like the smell of death; and, with an uncontrollable shiver, he turned back toward the house.