“That?” Wu laughed, and at the sound Ah Wong’s blood curdled in her breast; “yes, that’s an interesting thing. It has rather a curious history.”
Her procrastinated anxiety for her son, her thwarted hunger to see him, were unnerving her, and she was growing anxious on her own account, though that she scarcely realized and in no way could have explained.
“Oh?” she forced herself to say. But she said it lamely, and she could say no more.
Apparently Wu noticed nothing amiss. “Perhaps rather a gruesome one,” he said with a note of apology.
“Oh!” his guest said with a shudder; “well, then, don’t tell me! At the moment I don’t quite feel——”
“Then,” Wu interrupted her quickly, solicitously, even, “I will spare you its story,” but added more crisply, “for the present, at any rate.”
He moved easily about the room and proceeded in the most leisurely way to point out his treasures. “This,” he said, lifting a bowl from its place in one of the cabinets and bringing it to her, “will interest you very much. This is one of the famous dragon bowls—one of the first three ever made.”
“Indeed,” she said, “how very interesting!” But she could not hide her torture or her indifference.
Wu smiled cruelly into the priceless dragon bowl, and carried it back to its shelf even more slowly than he had brought it. “Up here”—he pointed to over one door—“I have what your English collectors call a three-border plate. I have a set of six. Up there”—he pointed to the top of another cabinet—“is another with five borders. It is almost unique. Li Hung Chang has one, Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager Empress has one, but they are very, very rare. And this”—indicating another bowl conspicuously placed on a carved ebony stand of its own on a malachite pedestal—malachite carved into coarse but exquisite lace—“is a Shangsi bowl. There are several in the house. Each one is worth something like two thousand pounds.” He took it in his hands and turned it about very, very slowly, now this way, now that, gloating over it as if he’d never be done. The woman could have screamed; and, in spite of her, a heavy sigh escaped. But Wu seemed not to hear it. He returned the Shangsi to its stand at last and crossed the room to a larger stand, and, laying down his fan, which he had held till now, took up a sea-green vase, beautifully molded, enormously glazed. “You must look at this, dear Mrs. Gregory,” he told her cordially, “you must look at this well. This is a particularly fine piece—this sea green glaze, Mrs. Gregory—one of the earliest productions of the ceramic art.”
Her face was twitching now with nervousness. He seemed to notice her perturbation for the first time, and said contritely, “But I fear I weary you with my treasures,” and carried the glaze back, very, very slowly, and put it down.