"Ah, yes—poor Tessie!"
"Tessie?"
"I always called her that. It wasn't strictly Tahulamajian, but she adored the name."
"So the Queen is dead?"
"Yes, Queen Tess died early in the spring. She was terribly old, but game right up to the last minute. You never saw such gameness. The funeral was immensely impressive."
"Whole populace turned out, of course?"
"Rather. Ostracism threatened against any who stayed away without a valid excuse! And they carried her along, all dressed up in her robes of state, and even with a crown on. Poor, dear Tessie! How often she used to say to me in private, when the mats were all snug over the doors: 'You know there are times,' she'd say, 'when I have my doubts about all this sovereign divinity business. It's down in the state books that I'm one of the direct line, descended from Mentise-huhu and the gods of the Sea Foam. But there are times when I have my doubts,' she used to say. 'There are times when I seem to be just Tessie, and between you and me, I'm coming to suspect that there never were any gods of the Sea Foam at all!'"
O'Donnell smiled at her look of momentary abstraction. What a life Marjory's had been—what a life! Here he found her, at last, in the heart of a religious colony. But at one time she had sold bonds in Wall Street; she had been an agent for a Pacific steamship line; she had been a political organizer in the North-west; and she had once served as associate editor of a newspaper. Yes, she had always struck O'Donnell—himself so simple and homely of nature—as most violently revolutionary. He remembered how, in the early days, she used to march in suffrage parades. She had taken up Socialism and dropped it; had smoked; and he distinctly recalled her having used, in her time, quite sporty language. Once she had had something to do with the races, and had worn a derby. And yet....
"Well," he mused, "after all it's the same Marjory."