“Yes. About eighteen hundred of them. Most are just about at the legal age. They left the cities, went to the Great Island, and there they have built themselves a village. They grow food there; they work; they are self-supporting. To many old women and a few girl-children, they have given sanctuary.” “And the government does nothing about it?” I exclaimed. “They did, at first. Men were sent to the Virgins’ Island to get some of the old women; but the girls forcibly resisted them. Some of the girls were killed. Nothing much has been done about it since. The government, I think, does not know what to do.” She was scornful. “Our girls are very beautiful. It would not be profitable to kill them.” Alice said, “You reach the marriage age in a year, Sonya? Have any men recorded their names for you?” “Oh yes,” she said. “There were eight, I think, when I last went to the records.” “But you wouldn’t marry any of them? Or perhaps I should not ask.” “Why not? There is no secret in such things. One man whose name is recorded for me I love very dearly. Our prince.” A sound from Dolores interrupted her. Dolores was sitting with hands to her forehead and eyes closed. She murmured, “I caught someone’s thoughts! Now they come again.” We waited through a breathless silence. Then Dolores murmured, “The prince. You called him Altho? It is he!” Sonya gripped her. “What is he thinking? Tell me! Tell me quickly!” Then she too, received the thoughts. She sat tense. “Oh, the princess is dead! Killed!” “Killed!” echoed Dolores. Then her face went vague: she was getting nothing more. But evidently Sonya was still in communication. She cried aloud involuntarily, “Altho! Dearest, dearest Altho! Where are you? Tell Sonya. Oh, he does not know! Or he cannot tell me! He says—” it was a stark whisper of horror—“he says soon he will be killed too.” She sprang to her feet, then abruptly sat down again. “Altho! Altho, where are you?” The communication broke. Her face went vague, puzzled, empty. And then despairing. Beyond the window, in the street below the balcony, a sudden murmur of voices floated up to us. We went to the balcony. It was night now, a night of pale stars in a cloudless sky. Shouting people were coming up the street. They appeared in a moment at the bottom of the hill, a crowd of men, a hundred or more. They came forward, swept around the corner, and vanished. Above the babble was a single sentence. A man called it. Others took it up. Sonya murmured, “They say, ‘Our king is dying.’ And the princess dead! And your grandfather. . . . Death everywhere!” The man in the street shouted again. And Sonya sprang from the couch. “He says, ‘Our king is dead.’” She laughed hysterically. “Death everywhere! I must go to the Island of the Virgins. Will you come? I can take you. The virgins are ready! We must act at once!” IX THE NAMELESS HORROR