Page:Sidnay McCall--The breath of gods.djvu/73

Rh Gwendolen gave a little laugh, crying, "Here is one already nearing the borders of silence! That is Yuki's way. When she begins to feel things, she draws back in her shell, and puts sealing-wax on the door. What is it now, Yuki,—lack of English,—that keeps you so dumb?"

"No, not exacterlee," said Yuki, flushing a little at the turning of all eyes. "I have not good English, of course; but I could not say to myself all that I see, even in Nipponese. When too many new thing come, it is like fat people trying to squeeze together through a door,—all get mashed, and none come through."

Dodge gazed at the speaker in quizzical admiration. "Miss Onda, I long for a phonograph record. That is a masterly exposition of a profound psychological truth!"

Yuki cast a laughing, half-pathetic glance toward Pierre. "Is it very bad names that he is calling me, M. Le Beau?"

In spite of Gwendolen's hyperbolic boast, Arizona, next day, came near to fulfilling Dodge's prophecy. The world stretched bigger and broader, as though here, instead of at the Arctic poles, the "flattening-like-an-orange" of our globe took place. The sky, immeasurably remote and tangibly arched, was a thin crystal dome soldered to earth by the lead-line of the horizon. The red sand was hot to look at. The hills, though of vaster proportions, had more of helplessness and degeneracy in their sprawling curves. Yucca grew very closely now, marching up and down the slopes like fierce explosive little soldiers with bayonets too long for them. The objectionable prickly pears vanished. In their places rose a stranger order of being, cacti in tangled bunches, as of green serpents, sometimes with the licking red tongue of a blossom,—hunched woolly lambs of growth on high, thin stilts of shaggy black,—huge green melons, ribbed, spiked, and lazy, that seemed strangely at ease on their burning couches of sand. Far off, against the rim of nothingness, dry, blue mountain shapes emerged, mere tissue filaments of hue. And now, as part of the unreal perspective, giant cacti rose, at first no more than scratches and cross-marks on a window-pane, but coming steadily close. The first that flashed, tall, stark, and tangible, into the very faces of those who watched, brought small exclamations of wonder and