Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/230

gliding, malicious gossip of Chinatown. But when, quite casually, Yu Ching had repeated it to his wife, who was busying herself amongst the cook pots of their neat little Pell Street flat, she had given him a rapid kiss.

"You sh'd worry, yer fat old sweetness!" she had laughed. "Them Chinks is just plain jealous. You treat me on th' level—and I'll retoin the compliment, see? Besides, I'm stuck on yer snoozly old phiz! I ain't goin t' waste no time huntin' for thrills, as long as ye're true to me! I'm a good Christian—I am—"

"And I am a good Buddhist, Plum Blossom!"

"Hell's bells—wot's the difference, sweetness?"

They had been happy. And to-day he had forgotten her. He had completely forgotten her; and he knew—subconsciously, for he never reflected on the subject—that she had been faithful to him; that never, either by word or deed, had she caused him to lose faith; that she had lived up, straight and clean, to the words of the ritual: love, honor, obey.

He knew—subconsciously—that he had broken her heart when he walked out of her life, three years ago.

Very impersonally, he wondered what had become of her. Then he cut off the wondering thought. He smiled. He said to himself that she, too, had been an illusion, a mirroring of shadows in the dun dusk of his soul.

She did not matter.

Why—he put his fingers together, delicately, tip against tip—nothing mattered. …

Outside, more lights sprang up against the violet of the sky, spotting the gloom. The noises grew as,