She shouted at his fat, receding back:
“A bracelet, that’s what I want! That’s what I’m gonna get, see? Gold an’ diamonds! Gold an’ diamonds, yer yellow pig, yer!”
It was at that moment that Yung Long passed her house. He heard, looked up, and greeted her courteously, as was his wont. But this time he did not go straight on his way. He looked at her for several seconds, taking in the soft lines of her neck and shoulders, the small, pale oval of her face with the crimson of her broad, generous mouth, the white flash of her small, even teeth, and the blue, sombre orbit of her eyes. With the light of the lamp shining in back, a breeze rushing in front past the open window, the wide sleeves of her dressing-gown fluttered like immense, rosy butterfly-wings.
Instinctively she returned his gaze. Instinctively, straight through her rage and heartache, the old thought came to her mind:
Swell looker—that Chink!
And then, without realizing what she was doing, her lips had formed the thought into words:
“Swell looker!”
She said it in a headlong and vehement whisper that drifted down, through the whirling reek of Pell Street—sharp, sibilant, like a message.
Yung Long smiled, raised his neat bowler hat, and went on his way.