In his room Edward Dunsack recalled that he had promised himself to throw away the remainder of the opium on this and succeeding nights. In view of that his movements were inexplicable: he got out from a locked chest the yen tsiang, a heavy tube of dark wood inlaid with silver ideograms and diminutive earthen cup at one end. Then he produced a small brass lamp, brushes, long needles, and a metal rod. Taking off his clothes, and in the somber black folds of the silk robe, he made various minutely careful preparations. Finally, extended on his bed, he dipped the end of the rod into opium the color of tar, kept it for a bubbling moment near the blaze of the lamp, and then crowded the drug into the pipe. He held the bowl to the flame and drew in a long deep inhalation. A second followed and the pipe was empty. He repeated this until he had smoked a mace.
A vivacious and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a nonsensical strutting business life was.
The confines of his room were lost in an amber radiance that filled all space; it was at once a light and a perfume and charged with a sense of impending rapture. A sparkling crimson shape floated down from infinite skies—Taou Yuen. She wore a bridal costume, cunningly embroidered with the phoenix, a hood of thin gold plate, and a band of red silk about her brow bore the eight copper figures of the beings who are immortal. Her hair was ornamented by the pure green jade pins of summer, her hanging wrists were heavy with virgin silver, while her face was like the desirous August moon flushed in low vapors.
He raised his bony arms—the wide silk sleeves falling back—his emaciated yellow hands. From under his dark eyelids there was a glitter of vision like the sheen on mica… Taou Yuen floated nearer.
Edward Dunsack woke suddenly, at the darkest ebb of night, and started hurriedly to his feet. A sickening vertigo, a whirling head, sent him lurching across the room. He came in contact with a chest of drawers, and clung to it with the feeling that his legs were shriveling beneath him. His consciousness slowly returned, and with it a pain like ruthless tearing fingers searched his body. The rectangle of the open window, only less dark than the room, promised a relief from the strangled effort of his breathing, and he fell across the ledge, lifting his face to a starless and unstirring heat. Waves of complete physical exhaustion passed over him. An utter horror fastened on his brain.
"Oh, God," he said, with numb lips, "we thank Thee for this, Thy daily blessing—" He broke off with an effort. That was his father pronouncing a grace. "Oh God—" he said again, when it seemed to him that in the darkness he saw the blank placidity of a Buddha carved from gray stone. Tears ran over his sunken cheeks, salt and warm like blood.
VI
The night was so oppressive, continuing such an unusually sultry period for the season, that Sidsall, ordinarily impervious to the effects of weather, was unable to sleep. Although the door between her room and her parents' was shut, she heard her father—his step, at once quick and firm, was easily recognizable moving about beyond. Her restlessness increased and she got up, crossing the floor to the window open on the garden, where she knelt, the thick plait of her hair across her cheek and shoulder, with her arms propped on the ledge. The depths of sky were hidden in a darkness like night made visible; and, in place of moving air, there were slow waves of perfume, now from the lilacs and now from the opening hedge of June roses.
Her brain was filled by a multitude of minor images and speculations, but fixed at their back was the presence of Roger Brevard. She approved of him absolutely. He had exactly the formal manner that gave her a pleasant sense of delicate importance, and his clothes were beautiful, a sprig of rose geranium in a buttonhole and his gloves and boots immaculate. She liked rather slight graceful men, she thought, with the quiet voices of a polite ancestry. Naturally Olive Wibird preferred less restrained companions, although Heaven knew that Olive appeared to make all kinds welcome. Olive's opinion of Roger Brevard would have been very different if he had asked her to dance.
Sidsall recalled the quadrille he had led her through at Lacy's party; he had been a perfect partner, at once light and firm. He had been a habitual caller at Java Head before that occasion, and had come in the same manner since. That is, casually viewed, his visits seemed the same; but in reality there were some small yet significant differences. They were all held in his attitude of the afternoon when he had stayed talking exclusively to her on the steps.