Part 36 (1/2)

He had grown to hate all things Chinese. In the short time in which he had been in New York he had discarded with the utmost patience the traits which are so persistently a.s.sociated with the Chinaman. To be thought American; to have the freedom, the quick appreciation of life that belongs to the Occident, that had been the goal toward which he had striven; the goal he prided himself he had almost reached.

Suddenly he became aware of a hand on his arm.

In the dark he felt the pressure of bony fingers against his flesh.

Looking down he saw that a woman had crept up from behind him; that she had put out her hand in an effort to detain him.

It was in the center of a block. The thick blackness that hung loosely, an opaque veil all about him, was almost impenetrable. Yet as he looked at her with his small, piercing eyes, he thought he saw her lips moving in crimsoned stains splashed against the whiteness of her face.

”What is it?” He asked.

He saw her raise her eyelids at his question. He found himself gazing into her eyes; eyes that were twin b.a.l.l.s of fire left to burn in a place that had been devastated by flames.

”It's hot;--ain't it?”

He stood silent for a moment trying to realize that the woman had every right to be there; trying to understand with an even greater endeavor that she was in reality a flesh and blood woman, and not some mysteriously incarnate soul crawling to his side out of the sinister night.

”Les,--it's velee hot.”

Something in his tone caused her to start; caused her to look around her as though she were afraid.

”I wouldn't have spoke,” she stammered. ”I wouldn't have spoke only it's such a fierce night.” Then as he did not answer her immediately, her voice rose querulously. ”It's a fierce night; ain't it, now?”

That was the word for which he had so vainly searched throughout the vocabulary of his carefully acquired English. The word the woman had given him, that expressed the sullen menace of the night about him.

”It is--fie--” He made an effort to accomplish the refractory ”r.” ”It is fierce.”

The hand she had withdrawn from his arm was reached out again. He could feel her fingers sc.r.a.pe like the talons of a frightened bird around his wrist.

”You get it too, mister?”

”Get what?”

”The kind of feeling that makes you think something is going to happen?”

She drew the back of her free hand across her mouth. ”Ain't it making you afraid?”

Somehow the woman's words aroused within him a dread that was a prophecy. He made one attempt at holding to his acquired Americanism.

The Americanism which was slowly receding before the stifled waves of Oriental foreboding, like a weak, protesting thing that fears a hidden strength. For he knew the foreboding was fate; and he knew too that when fulfilled, it would be met with all the stoicism of a Chinaman.

”You feel aflaid?”

The fingers about his wrist clattered bonily together; then clinched themselves anew.

”Yes,” she whispered. ”I guess that's it. I guess I'm afraid.”

For a moment he thought of the lateness of the hour.

”I'm velee solee,” he said. ”I'm solee, but I must be going.”