He clutched his face in his hands, and looked out through the foliage across the sea. “What is life, anyway? There must be more of existence than what we manage to find. Sometimes I can feel whispers of it. Do you think I’m mad, or just soul-sick of my kind of a world? You see I’m only a poor devil in purgatory, trying—and not succeeding—to fight my way out.”
“You have been splendid,” she said tremulously. “Does it mean anything to you to know that I think that?”
He straightened quickly. “It means a lot. This hour has put something into my veins.”
Suddenly the boat whistled from the harbor. He took her hand, and said with a feeling which he could ill conceal: “The Blessed Virgin did not visit Purgatory for nothing this day.” Then he added: “I shall see you. Perhaps they will let me come to Guindulman—Ah, anyway, I shall see you!”
Julie from the boat waved a farewell to the khaki-clad figure standing on the pier, Mr. Purcell watching her intently all the while. “Military gentlemen,” he informed the universe in a meditatively resentful way, “are always irresistible to women.”
CHAPTER V
In darkness, rain, and perturbation, Julie landed at her destination. A storm had blown up from the Sulu Sea, to which they were quite close. Before the light had faded, however, the Captain had pointed out as Guindulman a spot in the long, low stretch of gray green against the gray sea, where a lonely torch light shot up in the dusk and was gone. Julie’s companion had managed to make the latter part of the voyage somewhat too disturbingly intimate, and she hoped fervently that their ways would soon part.
In a large house near the wharf, they found that a white woman, a teacher, was quartered. She sent word that she would look out for Julie. Mr. Purcell was directed to the Officers’ Mess.
Miss Hope, a succinct person with the ineradicable stamp of pedagogical command upon her, greeted Julie, and explained conditions while the girl changed her drenched clothing. Of the two available intra-suelo rooms rented from the prosperous native family above, one could be turned over to Julie—the one, the girl noted, that was closest to the malaria-soaked ground. Because of the military occupation, the village was badly crowded.