Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/239

Yu Ching felt words rising in his throat. He choked them back. All this—Pell Street, the noises of the night, his wife—was an illusion in a sea of illusions. It was not real. It was taking place in an alien world of dreams. There was only his own soul, safe in some inner and secret sanctuary of eternity, where the riot and tumult of external life dared not intrude.

He smiled, very gently.

Somewhere, quite close to him, there was the sweet passion and pain of long, exquisite suffering, some intense yearning. But, surely, it was not in his own body, his own heart. It was just the remote experience of a life which he had once known—which he would never know again.

"All forms are only temporary—only temporary—" he mumbled.

"So yer won't talk t'me—eh?"

The question came with a harsh, vindictive grating, and something beyond fear stole with a freezing touch upon Yu Ching's placid soul. He conquered the feeling, sent it reeling back to the undergrowth of his stilled, half-remembering consciousness.

Came silence.

It seemed eternities until once more Marie Na Liu's harsh words dropped into the great, open void.

"Well—don't talk, if yer don't feel like it! But—ye'll listen t' me, awright, awright, yer damned Chink! Sure Mike! Ye'll listen—"

The voice plunged on, piercing, high-pitched.

"'Member young Nag Gin Lee? Ol' Nag Hong Fah's nephew from Frisco, who came here t' learn the business? Young feller—'member?—more my own age. Swell lookin' guy, and some classy dresser, 'member him? Say, yer damned fat old Chink! D'yer