The Kid brought Dixie's breakfast of rice and eggs and tea to the gallery.
“The cook was only wounded a little,” he explained. “Tom's got him working now.”
Dixie was reclining on a Canton chair of green rushes over a bamboo frame, her head resting languidly near the tuberoses. Now and again she drew in deeply the rich odor. And beyond the fringe of flowers and the carven railing she could see the river. Junks moved slowly by, sliding down with the current—somber seagoing craft out of Tientsin and Cheefoo and Swatow and even Canton. By a village were clustered open sampans, and slipper-boats with their coverings of arched matting. The small craft of the fishermen with suspended nets or with roosting, crowding cormorants clustered here and there along the channel-way. Everywhere farmers and their coolies were at work in the fields. A family—father, mother, boys and girls—worked tirelessly with their feet a large irrigating wheel at the water's edge.
The Kid seated himself on the deck and mournfully looked on while she ate. Perversely she delayed her narrative, playing with time and life. In her oblique way she was happy, exercising her gift for gambling on a scale new in her experience. Indeed, for the thrill she now experienced, Dixie Carmichael would have paid almost any price. Life itself—the mere existing—-she held almost as cheaply as the Chinese. Deliberately, with nerves steady as steel instruments, she finished her simple breakfast and then put the bowls aside on the deck.
Lying back, averting her face, gazing off down the river, she began the narrative that she had framed within the hour. Her manner, calm at first, soon offered evidences of deeply suppressed emotion. Her voice exhibited the first unsteadiness the Kid had ever heard in it. She drew out an embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her blouse and pressed it once or twice to her eyes, as, with an air of dogged determination, she talked on.
The narrative itself dealt with her girlhood near San Francisco, her chance meeting with Tex Connor, then a well-known character on the western coast of America, her girlish infatuation with him, and an elopement that she had supposed would end in marriage. Instead she found her life ruined. Connor had beaten her, degraded her, driven her into vice. She ran away from him; reached the China Coast; settled down with every intent to become what she termed, in his and her language, a square gambler.
“When I took up with you a little last year, Jim, it seemed to me that at last I'd found a man I could tie to. You never knew my real feelings. I'm not the kind that tells much or shows much. I guess perhaps my life's been too hard. But—oh, Jim!—well, you're, seeing the real girl now. I'm pretty well beaten down, Jim.... You're getting the truth from me at last. I've got to tell it—all of it—for your own sake. You're in worse trouble than you know, right now. The cards are stacked against you, Jim. Your life even”—her voice broke; but she got it under control—“I'm going to save you if I can.”
Moodily he watched her.
“If it was anybody but Tex! He's merciless. He's strong. He never forgets.... Listen, Jim! Tex came clear from London to find me. And he found out about—us—you and me. That I was growing fond of you. He never forgets and he never forgives. Oh. Jim, can't you see it! Can't you see that that's why he took you on—so he could watch you, keep you away from me? Can't you see what a game I've had to play? God, if you'd heard what he said to me back here this very morning—Oh, it's too awful! I can't tell you! He's so determined! He gets his way, Jim—Tex gets his way!.... Oh, what can I do!”
“No, wait—I've got to tell you the whole thing. You said he was planning to cross me. He'll do that, of course. I don't think I care much about that. But you, Jim—oh, you poor innocent boy! If you could only see! You'll never get your hands on one of the viceroy's jewels.”