Chapter 15 - Page 2

Virginia shuddered.

"Where are they now--the balance of them?" she asked.

"They are dead, poor things," he replied, sadly. "Poor, hideous, unloved, unloving monsters--they gave up their lives for the daughter of the man who made them the awful, repulsive creatures that they were."

"What do you mean?" cried the girl.

"I mean that all have been killed searching for you, and battling with your enemies. They were soulless creatures, but they loved the mean lives they gave up so bravely for you whose father was the author of their misery-- you owe a great deal to them, Virginia."

"Poor things," murmured the girl, "but yet they are better off, for without brains or souls there could be no happiness in life for them. My father did them a hideous wrong, but it was an unintentional wrong. His mind was crazed with dwelling upon the wonderful discovery he had made, and if he wronged them he contemplated a still more terrible wrong to be inflicted upon me, his daughter."

"I do not understand," said Bulan.

"It was his intention to give me in marriage to one of his soulless monsters--to the one he called Number Thirteen. Oh, it is terrible even to think of the hideousness of it; but now they are all dead he cannot do it even though his poor mind, which seems well again, should suffer a relapse."

"Why do you loathe them so?" asked Bulan. "Is it because they are hideous, or because they are soulless?"

"Either fact were enough to make them repulsive," replied the girl, "but it is the fact that they were without souls that made them totally impossible-- one easily overlooks physical deformity, but the moral depravity that must be inherent in a creature without a soul must forever cut him off from intercourse with human beings."

"And you think that regardless of their physical appearance the fact that they were without souls would have been apparent?" asked Bulan.

"I am sure of it," cried Virginia. "I would know the moment I set my eyes upon a creature without a soul."

With all the sorrow that was his, Bulan could scarce repress a smile, for it was quite evident either that it was impossible to perceive a soul, or else that he possessed one.

"Just how do you distinguish the possessor of a soul?" he asked.

The girl cast a quick glance up at him.

"You are making fun of me," she said.

"Not at all," he replied. "I am just curious as to how souls make themselves apparent. I have seen men kill one another as beasts kill. I have seen one who was cruel to those within his power, yet they were all men with souls. I have seen eleven soulless monsters die to save the daughter of a man whom they believed had wronged them terribly--a man with a soul. How then am I to know what attributes denote the possession of the immortal spark? How am I to know whether or not I possess a soul?"

Virginia