Daisy. If you think it'll be easier for you if you don't marry me, you need not. I don't care anything about that. I'll be your mistress and I'll lie hidden in your house so that no one shall know I'm there. I'll live like a Chinese woman. I'll be your slave and your plaything. I want to get away from all these Europeans. After all, China is the land of my birth and the land of my mother. China is crowding in upon me; I'm sick of these foreign clothes. I have a strange hankering for the ease of the Chinese dress. You've never seen me in it?
George. Never.
Daisy. [With a smile.] You'd hardly know me. I'll be a little Chinese girl living in the foreigner's house. Have you ever smoked opium?
George. No. [Daisy takes the Amah's long pipe in her hands.] Who does that belong to?
Daisy. It's amah's. One day you shall try and I'll make your pipes for you. Lee Tai used to say that no one could make them better than I.
George. However low down the ladder you go there's apparently always a rung lower.
Daisy. After you've smoked a pipe or two your mind grows extraordinarily clear. You have a strange facility of speech and yet no desire to speak. All the puzzles of this puzzling world grow plain to you. You are tranquil and free. Your soul is gently released from the bondage of your body, and it plays, happy and careless, like a child with flowers. Death cannot frighten you, and want and misery are like blue mountains far away. You feel a heavenly power possess you and you can venture all things because suffering cannot touch you. Your spirit has wings and you fly like a bird through the starry wastes of the night. You hold space and time in the hollow of your hand. Then you come upon the dawn, all pearly and gray and silent, and there in the distance, like a dreamless sleep, is the sea.
George. You are showing me a side of you I never knew.
Daisy. Do you think you know me yet? I don't know myself. In my heart there are secrets that are strange even to me, and spells to bind you to me, and enchantments so that you will never weary.
[A pause.