China -- History -- Revolution, 1911-1912 -- Fiction; Love stories; River boats -- Fiction; Yangtze River (China) -- Fiction
“Oh, my God, Rocky!” she cried very low, “haven't you any human
feelings? Can you just come in here--into my own room--and rob me,
without a decent word?.... Haven't I played fair with you? Haven't I kept
out of your way? Haven't I?....” She moved close against him, slid her
sensitively thin hands over his shoulders; looked straight up into his
eyes, almost honestly. “Rocky, don't tell me you're this kind!”.... She
was clinging to him now.
He caught her hands, and, without roughness but with his young strength,
removed them. She let them fall at her side.
“I'm not going to wait much longer on you,” he said.
“You're hard as nails, Rocky.” Her underlip was quivering; her pale eyes
were a little darker, and seemed full of feeling. She turned suddenly to
the rough bed, and reached under the cover for her shopping bag. Hiding
it from him with her body, she opened it and took out the triangular
bottle; then lingered an instant to look at the clasps of the pearl cape
that were set with large, perfectly cut diamonds. There were five of the
clasps, and perhaps fifty of the sparkling, glittering stones. In value
they would vary somewhat-: but in themselves, even without the pearls,
they represented a fortune. She quietly closed the bag and replaced it
under the covers.
With the rough-edged little bottle in her hand she faced him.
“I knew a girl,” she said, with a far-away look in her eyes, “who took
five of these tablets and then lived two days. She suffered terribly,
of....”
He caught the bottle from her hand and threw it against the wall, where
it broke. The green pills rolled about the floor.
“Oh, well,” she remarked--“I can take them after you've gone.”
“After I've gone you can do as you think best.”
“But something will have to be done about me. Rocky. You'll have to get
me ashore. And see about burying me.... And you'll have to explain me.”
This moved him not at all. Apparently he _was_ to be one of the
Kanes--strong, pitiless, destined for success and power. There would
be weak moments; but all that her uncannily shrewd eyes saw in him.
For that matter, Miss Carmichael had known many men of the sort that
in America are termed “big”--certain of them with an unpleasant secret
intimacy--and each had possessed and (at moments) been possessed by
strong passions. It had never been wholly a matter of what is called
brain; always there had been emotional force, with a dark side as well
as a bright.
Overhead the great clumsy sails creaked. Soft feet pattered about
the deck. The nasal voices of the crew broke into a chantey. A chain
rattled.
“We must be there,” said she. “We're anchoring, I think.” And she
glanced out the window at one of the roofed-over opium hulks that lay in
those days directly opposite the bund. Finally she looked again at him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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