Yung Long’s young cousin was kneading, against the pipe, the dark opium cubes which the flame gradually changed into gold and amber. “Please smoke,” advised the grocer. Nag Hong Fah had shut his eyes completely, and his fat face, yellow as old parchment, seemed to have grown indifferent, dull, almost sleepy. Presently he spoke: “Your honorable sister, Yung Quai, will make a most excellent mother for the children of my late wife.” “Indeed.” There was another silence, again broken by Nag Hong Fah. His voice held a great calmness, a gentle singsong, a bronze quality which was like the soft rubbing of an ancient temple gong, green with the patina of the swinging centuries. “My friend,” he said, “there is the matter of a shimmering bracelet given by you to my late wife—” Yung Long looked up quickly; then down again as he saw the peaceful expression on the other’s bland features and heard him continue: “For a while I misunderstood. My heart was blinded. My soul was seared with rage. I—I am ashamed to own up to it—I harbored harsh feelings against you. Then I considered that you were the older brother of Yung Quai and a most honorable man. I considered that in giving the bracelet to my wife you doubtless meant to show your appreciation for me, your friend, her husband. Am I not right?” Yung Long had filled his lungs with another bowlful of opium smoke. He was leaning back, both shoulders on the mat so as the better to dilate his chest and to keep his lungs filled all the longer with the fumes of the kindly philosophic drug. “Yes,” he replied after a minute or two. “Your indulgent lips have pronounced words full of harmony and reason. Only—there is yet another trifling matter.” “Name it. It shall be honorably solved.” Yung Long sat up and fanned himself slowly. “At the time when I arranged a meeting with the mother of your children,” he said, “so as to speak to her of my respectful friendship for you and to bestow upon her a shimmering bracelet in proof of it, I was afraid of the wagging, leaky tongues of Pell Street. I was afraid of scandal and gossip. I therefore met your wife in the back room of Señora Garcia’s store, on the Bowery. Since then I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I acted foolishly. For the foreign woman may have misinterpreted my motives. She may talk, thus causing you as well as me to lose face, and besmirching the departed spirit of your wife. What sayeth the ‘Li-Ki’? ‘What is whispered in the private apartments must not be shouted outside.’ Do you not think that this foreign woman should—ah—” Nag Hong Fah smiled affectionately upon the other.