Sonya seemed to take the thought from him. “I have already told my cousin,” she said quickly, “that you must swear your allegiance to the king at once. We need you. You men look very strong, very masterful.” She said it frankly, merely as a statement of fact, but there was an unconscious admiration in her gaze. “We need you and we . . . perhaps we need the girls.” She said the last with a singular, enigmatic emphasis. “Right,” said Jim heartily. “You fix it up for us, get the audience. I want to be out of here. We’ve been tied here like time-keepers in a tower.” “Our king will die. That is sure now. Our girls must act; it is now or never!” VIII REBELLING VIRGINS It was from Sonya that we first learned any tangible details of this new realm. She and I, with Dolores and Alice, were seated by Dr. Weatherby’s bedside. Two days had passed. His condition was unchanged. We were sure now that he would never regain consciousness. The old king too, was more gravely ill than before. He had sent for us so that at his bedside we might take the oath of service. Jim had gone with Ren. The rest of us remained beside the dying doctor. The end would come soon, at any time now, doubtless. Sonya was talking softly. I turned from the bedside to regard her earnest face. “This city,” she was saying, “we call Kalima. There was an ancient tribe dwelt here; the chief, they thought he was a god, the god Kali.” She was addressing Alice, but now she turned to me. “Our land lies in a great depression of this globe’s surface. Once, perhaps, it was the bottom of some great sea. It rises into mountains everywhere. It is not large; we are less than a quarter of a million people. The caves are at the foothills. “You will hear more of them later.” She had waved aside a question of Dolores’. “On the Great Island, not far from here, is what we call the Village of the Virgins, where now about three hundred of our girls are living in rebellion.” “Rebellion against the government?” I asked. “Yes. Against the man-made laws.” She smiled her quiet, grave smile. “You have come, you strangers, at a time to find our nation in what we girls think is a condition very grave. You, my friends, will understand very well what we girls are protesting against. And now, with our prince and princess vanished, and our king about to die, the time has come to—” She checked herself suddenly. Alice was regarding her with a blue-eyed gaze of quite obvious admiration. Dolores moved over on the low couch; her hand plucked at the hem of Sonya’s smock as it lay just above her knees and touched the smooth white metal band that encircled her leg. “Sonya, what is that? Just for ornament? It’s very pretty.”