Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/216

brother," he would say. "But from a wooden cup with no ornaments," he would add.

And then, according to the proper rules of conduct prescribed by the ancients, the master of the house would insist three times, and he would drink the hot, spiced wine from the jade cup.

It was so to-night.

He entered, exchanged the customary Pekinese civilities, sipped his cup of wine, and smiled at his host who smiled back.

"Will you smoke?" asked the latter.

"Gladly."

"A pipe of jade, or a pipe of tortoise-shell with five yellow tassels?"

"Either would be too flattering for me. Are you not my brother, very wise and very old? And am I not the unworthy and very little one? Let me, I beseech you, smoke my old bamboo."

"Your lips will endow even an old bamboo with harmonious beauty far more precious than all the precious metals of the Mountains of the Moon," his host replied courteously, and bowed.

He filled both pipes. The folds of smoke joined over the lamp whose flame was hidden by a filagree screen of butterflies in green enamel.

"The opium will clear the clouds from our brains," continued the master of the house slowly. "It will purify our judgments, make our hearts more sensitive to beauty, and take away the tyrannical sensations of actual life—the sources, these, of all vulgar mistakes. Will you smoke again?"

"With pleasure."

Both men drew in the acrid fumes with all the strength of their lungs.