“I hope,” he said to her in a lower tone, “that you will talk very nicely to Adams. There is no such thing as speech left in our principality, nor mirth except the laughter of the monkeys in the hills. Our brains are sucked out; never a new idea comes here—save what that black son of Neptune purveys every two months. Give the lad something to think about in the next cycle of years. And I am asking you privately not to regard me too closely when we ascend the hill. You happened upon me just before my monthly sewing day. There goes our mail.” He pointed to a loaded sack that a soldier was carrying up the hill. “It reminds me that there is one thing you don’t have to worry about here—that’s bills.”
The Doctor waved his hand ahead of him. “Behold, the population of Nahal is coming down from the hills to look at you. You are the first white woman to land on this spot. Number this as an indelible day.”
Julie was staring with all her eyes. Whereas a handful of people had stood but a short time ago about the wharf, the road and the surrounding vicinity were now black with natives surging in her direction. They formed a solid staring girdle around her, their unblinking eyes riveted upon her.
To them her blond fairness was miraculous. When the Doctor made her take off her hat, and her singular silvery blond hair came forth to view, lighting her dazzling skin, a deep quiet stir went through the crowd. The girl stood abashed in the midst of it. Long, long afterwards, when many others had paid tribute to her beauty, Julie remembered that moment in a wild little spot out of the world.
One grimy little child crept up towards her, and, plucking at her garments, demanded if she were not the Blessed Virgin. The men of the lonely lives turned abruptly. The others followed after them up the hill, Julie’s native coterie trailing behind her. They picked flowers for her, and offered her strange sweets.
“A queen for a day!” she laughed to Lieutenant Adams, who was walking beside her. “I shall remember Dao until the end of my life.”
“That’s the strange part of the natives; they admire our type more than their own. You are absolute beauty to them—very near a glimpse of God. I am going to send your worshipers away now, and ask you to take a walk with me; for you will be here only a couple of hours—two hours out of eternity, and I must talk! It is a long time since I said anything real. Let us waive the world, and consider that we are two people met in outer space at the end of time, and that it does not matter at all what we say.” He looked up quickly into her wondering face. “You think I’m mad. What else, in heaven’s name could I be?”
She regarded the strained, urgent face, and felt a subtle appeal being made to her—youth in hard straits, to youth.
They strolled down the main thoroughfare of the town. Knitted closely together with foliage, it presented a weird aspect. Adams explained that the Commandant liked this wild growth. They stepped into a side street, and he indicated with a grimly significant nod one house larger than the rest. Adams passed it quickly; but before turning down the lane, Julie glanced back and beheld a great shape at the window, bloated and distorted, the hair standing out all over its head. The man creature up there was in the depth of one of his worst debauches, when for a week he did not touch food but lived in an alcoholic frenzy. He was scarcely human, and Julie, who had never dreamed of the existence of such a thing, fled down the street with a smothered cry. “What is the matter?” Adams demanded.
“He was at the window. Oh! how awful! How can you live here?” A deep shame mantled the young man’s grimness. “Isn’t he a beast?”