VIII
BLAKE stood regarding the door. Then he lifted his revolver from his breast pocket and dropped it into his side pocket, with his hand on the butt. Then with his left hand he quietly opened the door, pushed it back, and as quietly stepped into the room.
On the floor, in the center of a square of orange-colored matting, he saw a white woman sitting. She was drinking tea out of an egg-shell of a cup, and after putting down the cup she would carefully massage her lips with the point of her little finger. This movement puzzled the newcomer until he suddenly realized that it was merely to redistribute the rouge on them.
She was dressed in a silk petticoat of almost lemon yellow and an azure-colored silk bodice that left her arms and shoulders bare to the light that played on them from three small
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