Abruptly at an invisible warning, Julie’s eyes swerved sharply. A sinister brown face gleaming like an evil star from a chaotic mass of black hair appeared half concealed among the potted palms. Julie rose almost defensively.
“Isabel!” she exclaimed, with a tremulous voice. She did not wish this changeling, who could assume at will the soul of either of two races, to see how disturbed she was.
The Malay woman bore down upon her in stormy silence.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” Julie said, agitatedly casting about her for a means to meet this mood. “I lead a hard, busy life.” She spoke of the difficulty of her existence as if the fact of it might somehow appease Isabel, who drew nearer and fixed upon Julie a gloomy concentration.
There was something almost thirst-like in this examination. Isabel appeared to be straining for something that lay beyond the girl’s own consciousness. The sun had given Julie a glow of color, and when she essayed to smile the old miracle of look transfigured her like a sudden star lighting brightly the weariness of earth. Isabel waved a demolishing hand before it.
“Futile, futile flame! I knew it would burn itself out. You want me to believe,” she went on fiercely, “that you are in a deep struggle—that you are giving your soul to be ground up for some fine cause. But you can’t deceive me. I know that you are a malingerer—and that, whoever’s bones may be broken by the wheels, they will assuredly not be yours. In the vigil, the peril, the anguish of this fool’s dream, you have had no part. You have sat and waited—like an imbecile sphinx—for something to come along and solve your foolish riddle. The very stars have sung in your ears, and you have not heard. Nothing has touched you—nothing can!”
In sullen challenge, she swept on. “Why were you not content with your little hillcock, and your wretch of a man-ant? Why have you to stretch out your foolish disastrous hands to pull a world to pieces? You know,” she rushed on, fiercely, “that our friend Barry along with the rest of them—stands on the brink of complete catastrophe; that the great structure he believed he had created is about to fall about his head; you know too what the love of these things is to him—yet you thrust yourself between him and a single saving chance; you who could blow away out of the world like a feather, without consequence to any one! It is always exasperatingly weak things like you who plant their feet in the course of fate. I have sent for you to tell you that you had better take yourself out of the way.”
Julie stared with a beating heart at this being to whom she was as a kindling to a flame.
“I don’t know what you mean by my being in the way,” she stammered weakly. Isabel stood somberly glaring at her. What was in this woman’s mind? What was it all about? Her eyes turned to escape this dark distorted vision, and ran along the wall’s stream with an armory of poisoned weapons, each of which was forged to deal death in a particularly monstrous way.
Her mind struggling with its fears caught at the vague intimation of hope for Barry in Isabel’s wild utterances. “Oh, do you mean that he could be saved—out of the wreck? You could do it, Isabel, of course. Oh, don’t,” she pleaded desperately, “let him be driven out!”