“You do not believe me—nobody will believe me. Oh!” she caught at her throat and stared at him with the eyes of a caged animal. She clutched at his arms in frantic pleading. “You are as good as a doctor. Give me something that will cure me. I would offer you a lot of money, but I haven’t any. I will not go on always wanting that horrible stuff!”
“It is a long hunger. Sometimes it lasts as long as life.”
“I didn’t mean to get into it—that must count. Help me! I am afraid. You must believe me—I am not a liar! There is a cure for everything—everything,” she cried wildly. “Mrs. Ashby said so—Oh!”
Her head dropped on the counter and she wept uncontrollably.
The chemist stared down at her uncomfortably. “Just stop!” he said. “There is no other way.”
Julie lifted herself up with a dizzy lurch and plunged out of the botica. A strange being in her form walked the streets, which had become a phantasmagoria of horror. Black shapes of doom seemed haunting the avenues of life—she, the blackest shape of all, groping through under-hells for light. She belonged now to the East forever and forever. It had set its stamp of hopelessness upon her. She moved along staring with desperation and repugnance at this dark race with whose fate she had become allied.
She walked without direction, on and on, not knowing where she was going, goaded by an immeasurable despair. She wandered half way across the city, hatless, the sun scorching her head; what goal could there ever be again? All their lives even the few cured struggled, Kantz had said. A cursed pilgrimage the world, to these Wandering Jews of souls! And she wasn’t made for struggle. For a fearful fight like this in which she had only one small, slim chance—she knew in her soul she had not the force. She might struggle a little while, but it was not in her being to combat to the end. It was easier to die—but one didn’t die, that was the worst.
She stood still on a street corner staring blankly about her. There was no use in going on. There was nothing ahead ever, however far she went. She stood there dully and thought of one thing, the flaky thing that had hung to Kantz’s careless finger. Only that would lift a little while this madness of sun, and pain and strangling despair. As she gazed tormentedly about her, her mind suddenly made clear the significance of her surroundings. All this wandering had been a subconscious hunt upon which some dim urgent sense had been leading her—to the one spot where there was a chance of getting what she desired. Chinamen always had it.
The girl paused horror-struck. But against the visions she desperately set up, visions of her youth’s high quest, of a splendid new Empire of Mankind—of a Prince of the East, a throbbing insistence that had never been denied arose and claimed every atom of her being and wiped out every thought. Dim, distant visions they were now. Not one of them could help—or save her. The Hunger consumed every fiber.
Yet the anguish, the urge of her memories assailed her all the while—visions that had stirred her spirit terribly accused; voices, very dear voices pleaded with her wretched soul.