a darkened room. But Ching Po never
stirred. Madame Mauer thought he never would stir. She couldn't order him
off the public thoroughfare, and there was no traffic for him to block.
He was irreproachable and intolerable. After half an hour of it, she had
run out across her back garden to ask my help. He must go away or she,
too, would have hysterics. And Madame Mauer covered the squint with a
black-edged handkerchief. If he would walk about, or whistle, or mop his
yellow face, she wouldn't mind. But she was sure he hadn't so much as
blinked, all that time. If a man could die standing up, she should think
he was dead. She wished he were. If he stayed there all day--as he had a
perfect right to do--she, Madame Mauer, would have to be sent home to a
_maison de sante_.--And she began to make guttural noises. As Felicite
Mauer had seen, in her time, things that no self-respecting _maison de
sante_ would stand for, I began to believe that I should have to do
something. I rose reluctantly. I was about fed up with Ching Po, myself.

I helped Madame Mauer out of her chair, and fetched my hat. Then I looked
for Follet, to apologize for leaving him. I had neither seen nor heard
him move, but he was waiting for us on the porch. He could be as
noiseless on occasion as Ching Po.

"You'd better not come into this," I suggested; for there was no staying
power, I felt, in Follet.

He seemed to shiver all over with irritation. "Oh, damn his yellow soul,
I'll marry her!" He spat it out--with no sweetness, this time.

Madame Mauer swung round to him like a needle to the pole. "You may save
yourself the _corvee_. She won't have you. Not if any of the things she
has been sobbing out are true. She loves the other man--down by the
docks. _Your_ compatriot." She indicated me. Her French was clear and
clicking, with a slight provincial accent.

"Oh--" He breathed it out at great length, exhaling. Yet it sounded like
a hiss. "Stires, eh?" And he looked at me.

I had been thinking, as we stood on the steps. "How am I to move Ching
Po off?" I asked irritably. It had suddenly struck me that, inspired by
Madame Mauer, we were embarking on sheer idiocy.

"I'll move him," replied Follet with a curious intonation.

At that instant my eye lighted again on the pistol. "Not with that." I
jerked my chin ever so slightly in the direction of his pocket.

"Oh, take it if you want it. Come on." He thrust the weapon into my
innocent hand and began to p