When they left the ball, the Americans departing en masse for mutual protection, Calmiden gave very clear expression to his displeasure.
“I can’t understand you—the things you do. What came over you to consent to dance with that half-breed? Imagine their getting up a ball and coming bristling to the teeth with weapons, just to tease us! That ought to be enough for you forever! What makes you act as if you belonged to this hideous game?”
“I do,” Julie under the fever of the night recklessly replied. “I understood this particular thing, and I was going to see it through!”
“Even against my wishes? To dance with Malay cut-throats—you a star!”
“I would have danced with the devil under the same conditions.”
“Julie, talk sense. However am I to understand you? Chasing chimeras that will bring you nowhere—whereas you and I are all that count. Give up these terrible notions. You don’t know what you are about—what, my God, all this may lead you to!”
They parted at Julie’s door with a feeling of estrangement, like the prick of pain.
The next day Calmiden left for Solano, to secure some supplies for the garrison. He went on a boat which had come into Nahal harbor the night before, bringing mail.
At school, Julie, who had not yet received her mail, learned that salary checks had arrived for both James and Miss Hope. At noon she hurried home, fluttering with anticipation and relief. The thirty dollars was nearly all gone. At the thought of Purcell, she shivered.
With trembling fingers she opened her letters. One was from Mrs. Calixter. She thrust it aside to hunt further for the check; but her money had, inconceivably, not come. The disaster of the wrecked boat had been rectified for everybody but her; all the others now had their checks. What sinister design was back of this? Soon her desperate situation would become known, and against such publicity her pride forcibly rebelled.