Julie turned to Miss Hope, but stopped short before the spectacle of that lady who, having come out of the shadows, was positively trembling with inconjectural passion. Her indefinite features seemed to melt into a boiling lava, which strangely her face appeared to be. Her blue eyes vehemently shot flames. Julie watched, with interested daring, the forthcoming eruption.
“Miss Dreschell,” cried Miss Hope, bursting with wrath, “you will seek quarters elsewhere. Do you suppose it is entertaining for me to sit here all evening while you monopolize my friends! Mr. Brentwood was my friend, Miss Dreschell,”—in rising crescendo—“until you came. My room and the Calcedos’ sala have other purposes than the accommodation of the crowd of young men with which you seem to find it necessary to surround yourself. Moreover, natives of the better class have a sense of propriety, and it is not edifying to them to watch your friends—and their caresses.”
Julie stared incredulously. Then a realization of what Miss Hope must mean flashed through her. Evidently she had seen in the dusk under her window the wind-up of a gay tender little adventure with Terry O’Brien before he returned to command his mountain fastness at Tarlac. It was never, Julie knew, to come to anything, and had involved only a shadowy caress.
“But the Calcedos haven’t said anything of the kind!” Julie objected with rising anger.
“They will say so. They have some cousins coming to visit them,” Miss Hope declared, pointing positively in the direction of the door. She closed it sharply on Julie’s outraged back, leaving the girl to grope her way through the dark. Julie got to the entrance, and stood there staring indignantly into the night.
It was a charming night, all the worlds of the universe spinning gayly up above her through the light of myriads of suns. It must be really a very small concern to Uranus or to Neptune, where a hundred years are as one, whether the atom called Miss Hope or the atom called Purcell were angry or not. As for the atom called Julie dancing headlong through space—was it even remotely possible that somewhere, some place, any one atom tremendously counted? Was there a law that held over those great worlds and their activities? And must one conform to it? But how, with mystery on every side, were you to find the law? Had she, because Purcell was not so pleasing as the others, been intolerant of him? She had not been angry at the sentimental intimations of the others. She had, in fact, poetically enjoyed them. And Miss Hope—although she was, according to Julie, terribly old, might she not still cling through a thousand yearning desires to the magic garment of youth?
Julie was not sure concerning all these speculations. A strange consciousness seemed to be speaking through her, a consciousness that saw things from all angles, but which only occasionally broke into utterance.
The approach of a tall, familiar figure put a stop to this metaphysical trend of thought.
“I came once before,” Calmiden announced; “but I heard you in there with Miss Hope, so I decided to come back later. Come take a walk as far as the steps of the convento.”
“It’s getting late,” Julie demurred.