But it wasn't the opium smokers that had trapped my attention. What I was looking at was a table a little way from mine, where two Chinese sat in the most earnest conversation. You wouldn't have thought this dive, given over as it was to amusement of a sort and debauchery of a worse, was any manner of a place to do business in, but this pair appeared to think so, for there they sat whispering and nodding and wagging fingers at one another for all the world as if it were a question of dethroning the Emperor. They were so placed that I had a profile view of both faces, and even by the bad light of the place I could see that one of these men was rather handsome, uncommonly so for a Chinese, and handsome, too, with that queer approach to the European type of beauty which will crop out now and again among well-bred Chinks; whereas the other was of such a repellent ugliness as not even I, in all my wanderings over the myriad-faced Land of Han, had ever seen exceeded or even equalled. I watched this ill-assorted couple slyly, and began to wonder what it could be that engaged them in such a deedy talk. They spoke in very low whispers, with their heads close together, and nobody in the room could have caught a word of what they were saying; but for all that it came to me with a queer sort of presentiment that there was foul play brewing. I scanned them more closely. It appeared to me the good-looking Chink was pressing some request upon the other, urging, arguing, now almost entreating; but to every advance the ill-favoured fellow returned a stolid if not absolutely ungracious refusal. At this point the curtain drew back again from the stage and about half a dozen girls, a good deal closer to a state of nature, as it seemed to me, than their art really demanded, began a sort of choric dance together. The measure started lazily enough, but quickened bit by bit with the music, rising at last to such a pitch of frenzy that the whole stage was one blurred whirl of flying beads and naked brown limbs. This was clearly to be taken as the star show of the evening. Grunts of approbation came louder and more frequent on all sides. Even the couple I was watching looked up from their chin-wagging and stared at the odd, wild spectacle on the stage. At last, with a concerted leap high into the air, the dancers came to a halt and flung themselves down on to the boards in a sort of tableau, a dusky picture of unholy seductiveness; then the curtain was drawn amid loud barks of applause.