Wu Li Chang bowed his head in promise. And she did not for one instant doubt his word. It was her unconscious tribute paid to his individuality—and, too, it was tribute of Christian Europe to heathen China. Undeserved? That’s as you read history and the sorry story of the treaty ports. Verdicts differ.
“That, of course, is understood—and pledged,” the mandarin said quietly, “when—you—have paid—his debt.”
She shuddered sickly. Wu smiled, and then his choler broke a little through its smooth veneer. “It is just payment I exact—no jot of usury: virtue for virtue. I might have seized your daughter—for myself, or to toss to one of my servants—but that could not have been payment in full. You, you in your country, you of your race, prize virginity above all else; we hold maternity to be the highest expression of human being, and the most sacred. So, because he took what should have been most sacred in the eyes of an English gentleman—and he a guest, both in my daughter’s country and in her home—I take what is, in my eyes, a higher, purer thing—and I your host. And, too”—his voice hissed and quivered with hate—“the degradation of his sister would not have afflicted him enough—he does not love his sister with any great love. His love of you, his mother, is the one quality of manhood in his abominable being. He would have suffered at her shame and outlived the pain; yours he will remember while he lives—and writhe. It will spoil his life, make every hour of his life more bitter than any death, every inch of earth a burning hell.” He paused and waited, and then—he slid behind the table, put his arms about the palsied woman, and whispered, pointing to the other room, his face brushing hers, “And now, dear lady, will you not come to me?”
For an instant they two stood so—she paralyzed, unable to move.
Music high and sublimely sweet pierced through the shuttered window: a nightingale was singing in Nang Ping’s garden, near the pagoda by the lotus lake. Wu Li Chang had heard many nightingales, and from his babyhood. Florence Gregory had heard but one before—once, long ago, in England.
She wrenched away from Wu with a cry—of despair; and he let her go.
She sank on to her stool and took up her cup—she tried to do it meaninglessly—and slowly raised it to her lips.
“Oh!” Wu told her tenderly, “my lips also are dry and parched with the heat of my desire——”
But he had no desire of her. And even in her torment she knew it, and that in the coldness of his intention lay the inflexibility of her peril.
“I too would drink.” He lifted up his own cup. “Ah!” he exclaimed, putting it quickly down again, “I see that you have sipped from your cup—your lips have blessed its rim.” Standing behind her, he slipped his hands slowly about her neck, took her cup in them, and lifted it over her head, and faced her. “Let me also drink from the cup that has touched your lovely lips.”