The cup was full. She drank a little chokingly. That was enough. Room now! She looked in terror at Wu’s door, then emptied the tiny phial into her cup.
Wu’s cup did not occur to her—she was too distraught.
Shaking pitifully, she wound the scarf again about the little bottle and dropped both into a satsuma vase.
She tottered gropingly back to her seat beside the table, the poisoned cup close to her hand. “My God!” she whispered, not to herself, “if it must come to that, give me strength.”
Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.
She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly on his face, pity for his vicarious victim—and she a woman—in his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. He was sacrificing to his ancestors and to his gods. But the flesh reeking from his priestly knife, hissing in the fire, smoking on the altar of his tremendous rage, was repugnant to his appetite, a stench in the nostrils of this Chinese.
He wore now loosened garments of crimson crêpe—color and stuff an Empress might don for her bridal. He carried no fan. It was laid away. But on the hem of his gorgeous negligée a border of peacocks’ feathers was embroidered, each plume the fine work of an artist.
“Well, chère madame!” he said softly, and then she looked up and saw him and his relentless purpose, and shrank back with a little moan.
Wu smiled and drew nearer. “Do I now find favor in your eyes?” he murmured wickedly—insinuation and masterly in his honeyed tone. “No? Oh! unhappy Wu Li Chang! My heart bleeds, stabbed by your coldness, you lovely and oh! so desired English creature, you fair, fair rose of English womanhood. Ah! well—I have no vanity, luckily for me, and so that is not hurt also, since it does not exist. One important matter,” he said, almost at his side, drawing slowly nearer still, “I did not mention. It is only fair that you should understand fully my terms—only fair to say that your son knows that your sacrifice will set him free——”
Florence Gregory rose to her feet. She searched his face. “You—you will set him free?”