“Might as well have one,” she said; “though it does register guilt, in the movies, for a woman to smoke!” She leaned back in her cane chair and absently watched the thin blue vapour that curled up from her nose. Her rouged lips were parted in a rather hard smile. “Never occurred to you, did it, that women could stay straight easier if you men weren’t so keen on saying we were crooked? Of course I can guess what the bet was! And I can very nearly guess which of you it was who bet for me. And—on account of one of you having taken a chance on me—I may tell you a thing or two before the evening is over. I’d somehow like a man who had the nerve to take a chance like that—on my side—to win his bet!”
The muchacho approached the table for orders. He bowed obsequiously to the two officers and brushed his arm contemptuously across the shoulder of Mary Casey. He drew back suddenly, rubbing his cheek. Miss Casey’s hand had administered a smart slap on that yellow expanse. She glanced apologetically at the two Americans.
“It’s the only way to treat ’em,” she informed them. “Treat ’em rough, and in a hurry! That’s my way, and it works. If you don’t know the game, this is no place for you.”
She looked out over the floor. A stout and perspiring mestizo, with the unmistakable Chinese look, was approaching.
“I must dance with this bum. He’s one of the ‘influential patrons,’ and the management would have a fit and bounce me if I turned him down. I’ll be back after he’s walked a mile on my feet.”
The two men watched her as she steered the lumbering mestizo through the crowd. Neither of them spoke.
At the end of the dance she returned to the table and sat down as a matter of course. This was the Orient, and a long way from home and its standards of caste. And these Americans had been decent to her—kind to her.
“Ain’t it fierce, to have to dance with a man that’s a hop toad and an elephant all in one?” she inquired with a passing annoyance.
“Know the game? Sure I know the game—and a darned good thing I do!” she continued, taking up the conversation where they had left it. “I’ve known it since I was a kid. I’m twenty-three now; and I’ve been thanking my stars all that time that I knew it. You put yourself through the China Coast, and you need to know the ropes of life. You think I’d want to be one of those sweet, innocent dunces that you men always like to believe we blondes are—and that we aren’t, so many times? I’d have fallen into the paws of a Chink—I would! Innocent sweetness can’t come through the China Coast whole, and don’t you forget it! I’ve walked straight, but it wasn’t by being sweet and innocent that I did it. It was by knowing every devilment that men can be up to. They are all alike—the men I meet. Their skins are different colours, but their ideas are the same. All yellow inside, and black and brown and white outside.”
Musingly, she sipped her soda water. In this repose her mouth showed hard lines in crescents at the corners. There were wrinkles raying out from her eyes—baby eyes, at times. These eyes now turned contritely to the two officers.