For she knew Ng Ch’u. For forty years she had lived in intimate daily alliance with him, physically and psychically. She knew that he was a one-idead man who always surrendered completely to the eventual aim and object of his slow, patient, persistent, slightly nagging decision; who never took the second step before he was sure of the first; who possessed, at the core of his meek, submissive soul, a tremendous, almost pagan capacity to resolve his mind in his desire, and his desire in the actual, practical deed. Yes--she knew him. And never since that day in the little Manchu-Chinese border town when she had become his bride, according to the sacred rites, with all the traditional ceremonies complete from _kuei-chü_ to _laoh-shin-fang_, had she doubted either his kindliness or his wisdom; never, tho often she walked abroad, in Pell Street, to swap the shifting, mazed gossip of Chinatown, had she envied the other women--whites and half-castes and American-born Chinese--their shrill, scolding, flaunting, naked freedom; always had she been satisfied to regulate her life according to the excellent Confucius’ three rules of wifely behaviour: not to have her marital relations known beyond the threshold of her apartment, either for good or for evil; to refrain from talkativeness and, outside of household matters where she reigned supreme, to take no step and to arrive at no conclusion on her own initiative. Ng Ch’u was in trouble. He was the Great One. Presently he would conquer the trouble. What, then, was there to worry about? * * * * * And so, dinner over, she busied her fat, clever little hands with strips of blue-and-blue embroidery, while he prepared for himself the first pipe of the evening--“the pipe of august beginning,” as he called it. “Ah!” he sighed contentedly, as he kneaded the opium cube with agile fingers, stuck the needle into the lamp, the flame of which, veiled by butterflies and moths of green enamel, sparkled like an emerald, dropped the red-hot little pellet into a plain bamboo pipe without tassels or ornaments, and, both shoulders well back, inhaled the soothing fumes at one long whiff--“this black bamboo pipe was white once--white as my youth--and the kindly drug has colored it black with a thousand and ten thousand smokes. It is the best pipe in the world. No pipe of precious wood or ivory or tortoise-shell or jade or carved silver can ever come near that bamboo.” He stopped; prepared a second pipe. The fizzing of the amber opium drops as they evaporated over the lamp accentuated the silence. Presently he spoke again. “Moon-beam!” “Yes, Great One?” She leaned forward, across the table. Her wrinkled, honey-colored old face, framed by great, smooth wings of jet-black hair, loomed up in the ring of light from the swinging kerosene lamp. “An ancient pipe,” he repeated, “blackened with a thousand and ten thousand smokes. _Ahee_--” he slurred; then went on, “such as--”