disposal of the opium to-morrow; there was no hurry; he had no intention
of becoming a victim to the drug. That would be an inconceivable
stupidity, the negation of all the philosophy he had gained. Very
occasionally--

His thoughts swung to the surprising fact of Ammidon's Chinese wife: if,
as he had first suspected, she were a common woman of the port who had
made a fool of the dull sailor he perceived the making of a very
entertaining comedy. There would be the keenest irony in exposing her to
himself before the complacent ignorance of her husband. He knew such
women: convicted in Chinese, perhaps before the entire Ammidon family,
not a muscle of her face would betray surprise or concern. She might try
to murder him, very ingeniously, but never descend to the intrigue, the
lies, of a Western woman placed in the same position. She'd stoically
accept the situation. These visions ran rapidly, vividly, through his
brain; he was accustomed to them; a greater part of his waking life was
filled with such pictures, infinitely more alluring, persuasive, than the
disappointing actuality. He got out of his clothes, and, in a loose gown
of black silk, sat at his open window, his chin sunk in the palm of a
hand, his face set against the night.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, he listened with a fleering
mouth to his father's long dogmatic grace before meat. His sister sat
opposite their parent, her gaze lowered in a perpetual amazement, her
entire person stamped with a stupid humility. There was nothing humble,
however, in Nettie; the crisp French coloring positively crackled with an
electric energy; her mouth was set in a rebellious red blot. Studying
her, Edward Dunsack saw that she was prettier than he had first realized
on his return to Salem. He speculated over the story she had told him
yesterday about Gerrit Ammidon's attachment. What an incredible idiot