“A pipe?” suggested the latter.
“Thanks! A simple pipe of bamboo, please, with a plain bamboo mouthpiece and no ornaments!”
“No, no!” protested Yung Long. “You will smoke a precious pipe of jade with a carved amber mouthpiece and crimson tassels!”
He clapped his hands, whereupon one of his young cousins entered with a tray of nacre, supporting an opium-lamp, pipes and needles and bowls, and horn and ivory boxes neatly arranged. A minute later the brown opium cube was sizzling over the open flame, the jade pipe was filled and passed to Nag Hong Fah, who inhaled the gray, acrid smoke with all the strength of his lungs, then returned the pipe to the boy, who refilled it and passed it to Yung Long.
For a while the two men smoked in silence—men of Pell Street, men of lowly trade, yet men at whose back three thousand years of unbroken racial history, racial pride, racial achievements, and racial calm, were sitting in a solemn, graven row—thus dignified men.
Yung Long was caressing his cheek with his right hand. The dying, crimson sunlight danced and glittered on his well-polished finger-nails.
Finally he broke the silence.
“Your wife is dead,” he said with a little mournful cadence at the end of the sentence.
“Yes.” Nag Hong Fah inclined his head sadly; and after a short pause: “My friend, it is indeed reasonable to think that young men are fools, their brains hot and crimson with the blinding mists of passion, while wisdom and calm are the splendid attributes of older men—”
“Such as—you and I?”