“Tell me about this domain of dreams?”
His gaze traveled far, very far off, it seemed. “My territory of the soul goes over Asia. I have stood on a tower of the Wall and have looked over the stretches of the desert, towards the heights of the Himalayas, beyond the reach of eyes. Below me lay the great uncomprehending land across which men were moving in their bitter inadequate fates. I wanted to march with them, soul to soul. I wanted to stir them to struggle and revolt. I wanted them to find a new vision. Those,” he said, turning back to her, “are still my hopes!”
“I’ve never seen China,” Julie said, after a pause. “I have always wanted to.”
“It will be the most staggering fact of the future. One scarcely dares speculate upon it, it is so incalculably vast and undecipherable. Think of the potentialities of three times our soul muster. Conceive of the disaster to the world if by any accident in a generation or two this human force arrayed itself on the wrong side! In the Boxer Rebellion, the people were hitting blindly at the world, when in reality they meant to strike at their own rotten government.”
His voice dropped. “What some of us who love China want to do is to put her on the right side of the bars—change the habit of mind of centuries; wipe out those old ivory chess-men in Pekin, and set the young China on her winged way. And for that we are willing to go to almost any lengths.”
“Aren’t you trusting a stranger with secret affairs?”
“You were never a stranger!”
Under this bestowal of faith, Julie recalled the night on the roof.
“I want to thank you,” she said with feeling, “for helping me in Nahal. I was in sore straits.”
“If I had known—” he said.