“The pipe, Ssu Yin—only once more. And tomorrow——”
“Spawn of frog begets but frog; the wise man does not give his cloak to the stealer of his coat; and to cure a habit by indulging it is to push a stone with an egg.”
“No, Ssu Yin, I mean it this time——”
“Dragging the lake for the moon in the water, adding fuel to put out a fire,” ran the relentless river of Ssu Yin’s scornful proverbs.
Nevertheless, Ssu Yin arose and led the way to the sleeping-room. He set forth within Allister’s reach a bamboo pipe with black tassels and a mouthpiece of jade, lighted the lamp, and from a receptacle within his capacious sleeve jealously produced three miniature cylinders of amber-hued opium.
Cynically, Ssu Yin observed the trembling hands of the white man as he held one of the precious morsels over the flame, watched it sizzle, dissolve, evaporate. He waited until the operation thrice had been performed, each puff sending Allister nearer to the paradise of drugs, and stood gazing at the young man’s emaciated features long after the squalid room had been translated, for Allister, into a pearly grotto through which he stepped forth on the winged feet of inexhaustible youth into a world of unimaginable color, transcendent beauty and unspeakable delight.
“A just debt—a just debt is mine,” muttered Ssu Yin, solemnly, “and it is thus that I have paid. For this have I merited no less than the reproach of the gods.”
When Allister returned again from the lotus fields of Elysium, his eyes were more fevered, his yellowed skin closer drawn over cadaverous cheeks, and his weakness even greater than before.
This was the tomorrow of which he had spoken to Ssu Yin.