nds and
wild eyes over by the window. "Kwen Lung--and I am glad he is dead!"

Such a note of hatred came into her voice as I had never heard in the
voice of any woman.

"He is vile, a demon, a mocking cruel demon! Long, long years ago I
would have killed him, but always I was afraid. I tell you everything,
everything. This is how he comes to be dead. The little one"--again
her voice changed and a note of almost grotesque tenderness came into
it--"the lotus-flower, that is his own daughter's child, flesh of
his flesh, he keeps a prisoner as the women of China are kept, up
there"--she raised one fat finger aloft--"up above. He does not know
that someone comes to see her--someone who used to come to smoke but who
gave it up because he had looked into the dear one's eye. He does not
know that she goes with me to see her man. Ah! we think he does not
know! I--I arrange it all. A week ago they were married. Tuesday night,
when Kwen Lung die, I plan for her to steal away for ever, for ever."

Tears now were running down the woman's fat cheeks, and her voice
quivered emotionally.

"For me it is the end, but for her it is the beginning of life. All
right! I don't matter a damn! She is young and beautiful. Ah, God! so
beautiful! A drunken pig comes here and finds his way in, so I give him
the smoke and presently he sleeps, but it makes delay, and I don't know
how soon Kwen Lung, that yellow demon, will wake. For he is like the
bats who sleep all day and wake at night.

"At last the sailor pig sleeps and I call softly to my dear little one
that the time has come. I have gone out into the street, locking
the door behind me, to see if her man is waiting, and I hear her
shrieks--her shrieks! I hurry back. My hands tremble so much that I can
scarcely unlock the door. At last I enter, and I see and I know--that
yellow devil has learned all and has been playing with us like cat and
mouse! He is lashing her, with a great whip! Lashing her--that tiny,
sweet flower. Ah!"

She choked in her utterance, and turning to the gilded joss which
contained the dead Chinaman she shook her clenched hands at it, and the
expression on her face I can never forget. Then:

"As I shriek curses at him, crash goes the window--and I see her husband
spring into the room! The tender one had fallen, there at the foot
of the joss, and Kwen Lung, his teeth gleaming--like a rat--like a
devil--turns to meet him. So he is when her man strike him, once. Just
o