Again there was a pause—while the horror sank in. Basil Gregory did not grasp it at first, and could not grasp it very quickly. But it crept into his soul little by little, and while its agony seized and strangled him, Wu stood and watched him intently, Wu with the panther light of intensest hatred in his half-closed eyes.
“You—you fiend!” The Englishwoman’s son screamed it, writhing.
Ah Sing slid a little nearer him. The two guarding moved on his either side a little closer. But neither on their faces nor on Ah Sing’s was there the slightest expression or any sign of interest.
“Why?” Wu laughed as he spoke. “Other countries, other ways! In China a daughter often sacrifices herself for a father, a son for his mother—to the utmost. You—English—reverse it, and the mother sacrifices herself for her son.”
“You fiend of hell!” And with a yell of torment the Englishman sprang almost too quick for the vigilants beside him. He wrenched one pinioned hand free and swung it up mightily. But Ah Sing—still with an expressionless face—leaned across the table, leaned between the blow and Wu Li Chang.
And almost as Gregory sprang the other servants seized and held him—they, too, with indifferent, blank faces. They would have shown far more interest sweeping wistaria leaves from the graveled paths, far, far more watching a quail fight.
“An eye for an eye!” the mandarin cried fiercely. “A tooth for a tooth. That is what you teach us, you Christian gentlemen! And,” he hissed, from enfoamed, protruding lips, “Woman for woman! We’ll teach you that!”
Basil Gregory hid his face in his hand and buried it on his shoulder.
For a space Wu Li Chang stood looking grimly at the foreigner. He did not mean to see him again. Then he spoke emphatically to Ah Sing—in Chinese—and at each sentence of the master’s Ah Sing bowed his head with an earnestness that was a promise that each word of Wu Li Chang’s should be obeyed strictly and minutely.
“Ah Sing,” the mandarin said, rising slowly and taking the beater from where it hung beside the gong. He said something slowly, and then struck once on the great brazen disk, gave a further direction, and struck the gong twice. And Basil Gregory uncovered his eyes, lifted his head limply and stood watching and listening, agonized, fascinated. When Wu had finished his orders Ah Sing bowed still lower than he had done before, and then went slowly from the room, but not by the door through which they had brought Basil into it.