"Very well, you may go."
Nancy turned obediently and went out of the room. Even Kuei-lien had the decency to wait until the child was out of earshot before she gave vent to her mirth.
"Ha, ha, ha!" she laughed. "What a speech! Afraid to leave her father alone with his enemy. Whom does she mean? Does she mean me?"
Her amusement was not very convincing. It seemed forced, bolstered up by weak bravado.
"Yes, she means you," retorted her master, "she means you and she means all this mischievous rubbish."
With a sweep of his hand he brushed the glasses, the opium pipe, the little lamp, from the surface of the table. They fell with a crash to the floor.
"Don't be so wasteful," protested the concubine, more entertained by this flare of temper on Herrick's part than by Nancy's grim sentence. "What a shame to break all these things. You'll need them again."
"Yes, that is the beastly part of it," Herrick acknowledged, "I shall need them again—but not now—not now. And I don't need you either. You may go."
"Your eloquence is not so impressive as your daughter's," said Kuei-lien, as she retreated. Her indomitable capacity for being merry never deserted the girl, even at times of defeat.
Left to himself at last, Herrick began to repair the disorders of the past few days. He shaved, dressed himself neatly, returned to his books and his pens. But throughout the mechanical functions which helped to bring back self-respect, his mind was filled with the vision of Nancy's face, her impassive demeanor, in unreproaching contact with the signs of his own collapse. Again and again he mumbled the girl's words. It was a curiously saving trait in Herrick's character that he did not resent them.