“I’m coming to take you for a drive to-morrow, to show you what’s happened while you were away.”
Their eyes caught in a moment of golden fire. The night on the roof of his house came back to her with a rush of overpowering recollections. Not until Isabel thrust herself between them, could she bring herself back into the self out of which she had been transported.
Isabel seemed volcanically to drive them apart. She stood looking from one to the other. Barry made a move toward the stairs. Isabel stopped him, the blue fire of her eyes ravaging his face. Julie moved away. As she walked down the steps, she glanced back and saw the two figures still standing at the head of the stairs. Isabel’s shadowy face was lifted—the wide gold bands glittering on her arms. She looked as she did in her moments of vision, as if her imagination perceived and was holding up to Barry the power of which she dreamed.
Julie undressed in her ornate bed-chamber, but she did not attempt to go to sleep. She leaned pensively against one of the carved bed posts, and stared out into the night, where the moon’s great searchlight, exploring the cities of the earth, was turned full on this Eastern one. A shining city, in the realms of darkness! Below lay the river with the bowed sleeping foliage of its shores. Riding its smooth current was a sliver of a boat, in it a solitary native caroling down the stream. How often had she watched other little boats riding silver waters in artless celebrativeness! Nahal, so far away! It would never be anything but her unconquerable kingdom—the dead garden of her soul.
All around her here were big deeds. What was the accolade these men possessed, and which she still had not found? Shell had ceded his life to it. Because of it Barry grappled tirelessly with races of men. Where among these architects of the future did she belong? She had enrolled her spirit among them. She had been so sure that there was a share for her in this splendid achievement. But the Great Adventure had passed her over. She was not metal for its forging.
But it was a hard way—this way of these agents of the future. Could one go on laboring forever in blind belief? The great structure these men were rearing might fall to pieces like a house of cards at the stroke of Isabel and Orcullu. If the Americans gave up the Islands, as it appeared they might do—a puff of smoke in the cosmos, and that would be the end of the whole thing.
She crept into bed, and dreamed of Barry as Atlas struggling to uphold a world that was falling over her head.
CHAPTER XVI
Julie spent the morning after the carnival arranging the transfer of her effects to the Tondo. Isabel remained in bed, and did not emerge till Barry appeared at four o’clock.