IN TOWN Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day.

The same slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like wanderers lost in a tunnel.

The same inexplicable noises endured, the same smells.

Under lamps, the shaven foreheads still bent toward microscopic labor.

The curtained window of a fantan shop still glowed in orange translucency, and from behind it came the murmur and the endless chinking of cash, where Fortune, a bedraggled, trade-fallen goddess, split hairs with coolies for poverty or zero.