“And the natives are fighting us, all over the islands,” Mrs. Calixter remarked, “and doing it in a particularly barbarous and senseless way.”
“Have you any idea as to where you are going?” Mr. Calixter demanded.
Julie moved restively: “No—but it all sounds rather awful.”
“Well, we’re aiming to—and will make this the finest colony on earth. There are the men here to do it; men with the genius for pioneering, and a glorious fever to break the wilderness. The Department of Education is the greatest idea of all. You must remember that. It is the only thing that will touch the soul of the people. All the rest, just yet, seems to fall outside.”
“There are hosts of interesting people here,” said Mrs. Calixter, smiling cryptically. “People with histories made over night, and making history themselves splendidly, too. Perhaps you will stay in Manila. At any rate, you will catch an unforgettable glimpse of—all this, as you flit through. This afternoon, late, we will drive on the Luneta, where you will see a cross section of the whole East. Later, we are to go to a ball. All the empire-builders will be there. So keep your young soul awake.”
After luncheon everybody mysteriously disappeared. Julie was left alone in the silent, hot, perfumed world. Not a sound came to her from anywhere; existence seemed suspended. What had become of the contents of the world?
She decided to open up her baggage—which, thanks to Mr. Calixter, had already arrived—and lay out the dress she should need for the evening. After five o’clock, Mrs. Calixter had said, Manila drove forth in full dress to the Luneta. Julie gathered up a ball gown and went over to the glass to appraise its relationship to herself. She was enchanted with the maturity of the garment. Through it she and the world met at last; it suggested the finally opened door of the universe in which she was free to find her dreams. She whirled, a gay dervish, in front of her mirror.
Suddenly she stopped, awed by the strange reflection she saw of herself. Odd multiplied personages attenuated from it. She couldn’t begin to think that she knew them, though each at an angle offered some startling familiarity. She had merely wished to exact from the mirror reassurance of her woman’s incontestable inheritance, but these strange images carried her out of the background of the glass into a boundless territory of conjecture.
Motionless now she beheld reflected a unique, youthful face framed by silvery blond hair, with a pair of green eyes of unusual hue, while flung upon the face, as upon a screen, was an abstraction of personality like a superimposed self. This abstract personality revealed itself tangibly, on occasions, in a transfiguration of light disclosing something inscrutable, eternal, and absolute.
A cryptic sentence of her aunt’s flashed through her mind. “There’s a singular thing that comes into your face—” which was followed by another, “You think, you are strong. It will take many a road to show you that you are not.” That old subjection was over now, forever. Julie shivered a little.