Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/237

 in him was aflame. He intended to carve his victims delicately—a dish for the gods. On the terrible altar of his hatred, yes, and of his just resentment, he would lay an English woman who had never wronged him and an English son who. But he intended it all to be done as exquisitely as some finest ivory carving cut by a master Chinese hand.

When he had dismissed Sing Kung Yah he went into his study and waited.

It was the room in which perhaps he had lived most. It was here he studied; and in the many long hours of leisure which he always relentlessly kept for himself, Wu Li Chang was a devoted student. It was here he wrote; and Wu was an author of some distinction in the current literature of China—the land in which a genuine love of letters counts as nothing else does, a fine skill in literature is respected as no other human quality is. There were poems to his credit in the Imperial library at the pink-walled palace in Pekin, a book of philosophy, a comedy, and a history of the women of his house. And he contributed almost regularly to the Pekin Gazette and at long intervals to ''Le Journal Asiatique''—in French, of course.

The hour-glass—he had turned it when Sing Kung Yah had left him—was running down; almost was run.

Wu rose, and stood looking out into his garden, saying good-night to it something as Nang Ping had said "good-by" to hers four mornings ago—saying good-night, for it would be dark when Mrs. Gregory left him.

He had no doubt that she would come.

He turned from the window, and walked gravely into the next room, where he intended—in less than an hour now—to receive his guest.

It was a curious room: Chinese, but with some dif