Then came the float that Julie had been waiting for—Isabel’s marble barge, carved and tinted with indigo, lit from stem to stern, and crowded with Asiatic figures, from the steppes of the Tartar to the borders of the Kurd. In the center of these human arabesques sat Isabel enshrined. She had wonderfully contrived it all, and there could be no doubt about the preëminence of the float.
Then quite suddenly the attention of the beholders was drawn to a tall brown man who stood on top of the barge with a long propelling pole in his hand. In the striking suggestion of his posture and the occasional glimpses of his brown uplifted features, he managed to convey a significance that transcended the glory below. There below reposed the ancient, static, and unstable magnificence of the East; but above—alert, upright, asking its question of the future and the judgment of white men—was the Man-Soul of Asia. The boat drifted off into the shadows, but that brown image remained, graven on the brains of those who saw it.
“That was Barry!” Julie said half under her breath. She stared around at this strange galaxy of people, whose background of the East gave them a touch of fantasy. These days of the Empire, or creation—when a fragment of the East was shaking under a stupendous renovation! And back of it, these dauntless men and women who were stirringly pledged to the resurrection! A new world must take shape under their will, a world of the best ideals.
There was an exhilaration in the air, an elixir working upon an ancient life. An intoxication came over Julie as she watched and listened to the music. The faces melted into a phantasmagoria, a marching host dedicated to the East and sweeping on to shape its mighty fate. Visions and dreams pulsated to the music—strains of India, Malaysia, of far Mongolia woven into its throbbing war-like tones. There must be some place in the march for her! Some time in the Experiment that place would unfold and give her a part in the big things these men’s brows portended. Hope quivered through her like the life-giving warmth of the sun.
They arose from their seats, and started to mingle in the throng. Julie felt some one seize her arm. It was Ellis Wilbur, the girl who had pointed people out to her that first memorable night in Manila.
“How is the girl-hermit? I am so glad to see her back—though I wager that Providence has taken no note of the things she has done.”
Julie returned the greeting warmly.
“Did you see Barry McChord?” Ellis asked. “Isn’t it just like him to drive the things home with hammer and tongs?
“Do you feel at home in this Cataclysm here?” she demanded abruptly. “I don’t! Yet it makes my mind spring as if I had found another dimension for it. A long time hence, no doubt, I shall look back upon it with the thrill of some splendid adventure in which I ever so little engaged. I’m not a participant. I don’t care about the East, but I do care very much about the courage of this attempt to disperse the dust of ages; of which the smell is all over the East, in the hovels of the poor and the decayed dwellings of kings.”
As she started away, she remarked: “Isabel, I hear, has lost the best one of her stupendous bracelets in the water, and is frightfully cross. Don’t let her quarrel with anybody.”