“And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost sight of this ideal?”
“Never.”
“But—your wife?”
Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.
“A man may not always have the same wife,” he replied cryptically. “The honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring unselfishly in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men as she has always done—and as an honorable and upright woman is expected to do—may one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never knows. Or she may leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that some little maiden of Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest and tender, will consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?”
Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:
“She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said, almost sadly. “She will come to your house only to cheat you.”
Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.
“We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir,” he answered, “and it is this: ‘He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.’ She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It is all I ask.”
There came a soft rapping on the outer door—three raps, a pause, and then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.