With her
forehead uncovered, she looked very young, almost a child, a careworn
child; a child with something on its mind.
What surprised Heyst was the non-appearance of Wang. The Chinaman had
always materialized at the precise moment of his service, neither too
soon nor too late. This time the usual miracle failed. What was the
meaning of this?
Heyst raised his voice--a thing he disliked doing. It was promptly
answered from the compound:
"Ada tuan!"
Lena, leaning on her elbow, with her eyes on her plate, did not seem to
hear anything. When Wang entered with a tray, his narrow eyes, tilted
inward by the prominence of salient cheek-bones, kept her under stealthy
observation all the time. Neither the one nor the other of that white
couple paid the slightest attention to him and he withdrew without
having heard them exchange a single word. He squatted on his heels on
the back veranda. His Chinaman's mind, very clear but not far-reaching,
was made up according to the plain reason of things, such as it appeared
to him in the light of his simple feeling for self-preservation,
untrammelled by any notions of romantic honour or tender conscience. His
yellow hands, lightly clasped, hung idly between his knees. The graves
of Wang's ancestors were far away, his parents were dead, his elder
brother was a soldier in the yamen of some Mandarin away in Formosa.
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