"Her eyes glistened like black opals in the mellow orange light."
Li Kan was a very rich man, yet he kept a small hotel in Hankow and had the simplest of tastes. Nothing aroused his anger. Nothing aroused his enthusiasm. He viewed life in a very impersonal manner. It interested him. All sorts and conditions of people came to his house, poor and rich alike, wanderers who anchored like ships for a moment at his wharf and then drifted on.
Whence did they come? Whither were they going? These were the questions Li Kan liked to ponder as he smoked a long bamboo pipe of vile tobacco. For hours he would sit in a corner of his tea room engrossed in his own meditations. He seemed to live in a perpetual dream. One night as he slept he heard the tinkle of a camel's bell, a camel that was doubtless part of a caravan headed for the North, a caravan trading in adventure.
"Why should I not journey abroad?" he mused. "I am rich. Perhaps I would have adventures as boundless as the sea."
The tinkle of the camel's bell continued. It was a lure beckoning him onward into unknown lands. Throughout the night he lay sleepless, his brain bursting with plans and ambitions. He would set out on a mission of drollery, to see life, to be amused, and if possible, to bestow a bit of philosophy upon those who chanced to come within the radius of his charm.
