“They keep coming! What,” after a pause, “do you expect to find?”
Julie did not reply at once. Ah, that was asking the riddle! Her gaze roamed over the wondrous garden and palace. The sphinx above read the look.
“This garden,” she informed Julie, “has been here for centuries—and more.”
“So of course it wouldn’t do me any good to want it!” Julie laughed outright. “And, you see, I am quite awfully poor.”
“But you come to—take something—all of them do.”
Julie sobered. “I came—but of course you wouldn’t understand—I came—” She sought for the articulation of the high and splendid mission. Words came forth disjointedly when she sought to give form to that inner fervor. The lady in the balcony listened, and as she listened to the halting speech a change passed through her blue eyes and vanished.
“How old are you?” she demanded.
Julie replied that she was nineteen.
A frown came between the splendid brows. “That is not young in the East. We begin early to experience over here. We are not afraid of life. We do not keep the young half their existence in swaddling clothes. It is only too plain that you are not a woman, in spite of your years—and the things that you are inconceivably set upon doing. Perhaps you are married.”
Julie flushed. “You see, I was considered still too young for that. I was in school.”