CHAPTER I

Produced by Charles Franks, David Garcia and the PG Online Distributed

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[Illustration: "It has never occurred to one of you to ask _why_ I am

different from other women--to ask just what made me so!"]

THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

_Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert_

1915

CHAPTER I

To Emeline, wife of George Page, there came slowly, in her thirtieth

year, a sullen conviction that life was monstrously unfair. From a

resentful realization that she was not happy in her marriage, Emeline's

mind went back to the days of her pert, precocious childhood and her

restless and discontented girlhood, and she felt, with a sort of

smouldering fury, that she had never been happy, had never had a fair

chance, at all!

It took Mrs. Page some years to come to this conclusion, for, if she was

shrewd and sharp among the women she knew, she was, in essential things,

an unintelligent woman, and mental effort of any sort was strange to

her. Throughout her entire life, her mind had never been truly awakened.

She had scrambled through Grammar School, and had followed it with five

years as saleswoman in a millinery store, in that district of San

Francisco known as the Mission, marrying George Page at twenty-three,

and up to that time well enough pleased with herself and her life.

But that was eight years ago. Now Emeline could see that she had

reached--more, she had passed--her prime. She began to see that the

moods of those early years, however violent and changing, had been fed

upon secret springs of hope, hope vague and baseless enough, but strong

to colour a girl's life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns.

There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen,

something _would_ happen. The little Emeline Cox, moving between the

dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might

surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day! She might

become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make a

brilliant marriage.

As she grew older and grew prettier, these vague, bright dreams

strengthened. Emeline's mother was an overworked and shrill-voiced

woman, whose personality drove from the Shotwell Street house whatever

small comfort poverty and overcrowding and dirt left in it. She had no

personal message for Emeline. The older woman had never learned the care

of herself, her children, her husband, or her house. She had naturally

nothing to teach her daughter. Emeline's father occasionally thundered a

furious warning to his daughters as to certain primitive moral laws. He

did not tell Emeline and her sisters why they might some day consent to

abandon the path of virtue, nor when, nor how. He never dreamed of

winning their affection and confidence, or of selecting their friends,

and making home a place to which these friends might occasionally come.

But he was fond of shouting, when Emeline, May, or Stella pinned on

their flimsy little hats for an evening walk, that if ever a girl of his

made a fool of herself and got into trouble, she need never come near

his door again! Perhaps Emeline and May and Stella felt that the

virtuous course, as exemplified by their parents, was not all of roses,

either, but they never said so, and always shuddered dutifully at the

paternal warning.

School also failed with the education of the inner Emeline, although she

moved successfully from a process known as "diagramming" sentences to a

serious literary analysis of "Snow-Bound" and "Evangeline," and passed

terrifying examinations in ancient history, geography, and advanced

problems in arithmetic. By the time she left school she was a tall,

giggling, black-eyed creature, to be found walking up and down Mission

Street, and gossiping and chewing gum on almost any sunny afternoon.

Between her mother's whining and her father's bullying, home life was

not very pleasant, but at least there was nothing unusual in the

situation; among all the girls that Emeline knew there was not one who

could go back to a clean room, a hospitable dining-room, a well-cooked

and nourishing meal. All her friends did as she did: wheedled money for

new veils and new shoes from their fathers, helped their mothers

reluctantly and scornfully when they must, slipped away to the street as

often as possible, and when they were at home, added their complaints

and protests to the general unpleasantness.

Had there been anything different before her eyes, who knows what plans

for domestic reform might have taken shape in the girl's plastic brain?

Emeline had never seen one example of real affection and cooperation

between mother and daughters, of work quickly and skilfully done and

forgotten, of a clean bright house and a blossoming garden; she had

never heard a theory otherwise than that she was poor, her friends were

poor, her parents were poor, and that born under the wheels of a

monstrous social injustice, she might just as well be dirty and

discouraged and discontented at once and have done with it, for in the

end she must be so. Why should she question the abiding belief? Emeline

knew that, with her father's good pay and the excellent salaries earned

by her hard-handed, patient-eyed, stupid young brothers, the family

income ran well up toward three hundred dollars a month: her father

worked steadily at five dollars a day, George was a roofer's assistant

and earned eighty dollars a month, and Chester worked in a plumber's

shop, and at eighteen was paid sixty-five dollars. Emeline could only

conclude that three hundred dollars a month was insufficient to prevent

dirt, crowding, scolding, miserable meals, and an incessant atmosphere

of warm soapsuds.

Presently she outraged her father by going into "Delphine's" millinery

store. Delphine was really a stout, bleached woman named Lizzie Clarke,

whose reputation was not quite good, although nobody knew anything

definite against her. She had a double store on Market Street near

Eleventh, a dreary place, with dusty models in the windows, torn

Nottingham curtains draped behind them, and "Delphine" scrawled in gold

across the dusty windows in front. Emeline used to wonder, in the days

when she and her giggling associates passed "Delphine's" window, who

ever bought the dreadful hats in the left-hand window, although they

admitted a certain attraction on the right. Here would be a sign: "Any

Hat in this Window, Two Dollars," surrounded by cheap, dust-grained

felts, gaudily trimmed, or coarse straws wreathed with cotton flowers.

Once or twice Emeline and her friends went in, and one day when a card

in the window informed the passers-by that an experienced saleslady was

wanted, the girl, sick of the situation at home and longing for novelty,

boldly applied for the position. Miss Clarke engaged her at once.

Emeline met, as she had expected, a storm at home, but she weathered it,

and kept her position. It was hard work, and poorly paid, but the girl's

dreams gilded everything, and she loved the excitement of making sales,

came eagerly to the gossip and joking of her fellow-workers every

morning, and really felt herself to be in the current of life at last.

Miss Clarke was no better than her reputation, and would have willingly

helped her young saleswoman into a different sort of life. But Emeline's

little streak of shrewd selfishness saved her. Emeline indulged in a

hundred little coarsenesses and indiscretions, but take the final step

toward ruin she would not. Nobody was going to get the better of her,

she boasted. She used rouge and lip red. She "met fellers" under flaming

gas jets, and went to dance halls with them, and to the Sunday picnics

that were her father's especial abomination; she shyly told vile stories

and timidly used strong words, but there it ended. Perhaps some tattered

remnant of the golden dream still hung before her eyes; perhaps she

still clung to the hope of a dim, wonderful time to come.

More than that, the boys she knew were not a vicious lot; the Jimmies

and Johnnies, the Dans and Eds, were for the most part neighbours, no

more anxious to antagonize Emeline's father than she was. They might

kiss her good-night at her door, they might deliberately try to get the

girls to miss the last train home from the picnic, but their spirit was

of idle mischief rather than malice, and a stinging slap from Emeline's

hand afforded them, as it did her, a certain shamed satisfaction.

George Page came into "Delphine's" on a windy summer afternoon when

Emeline had been there for nearly five years. He was a salesman for some

lines of tailored hats, a San Franciscan, but employed by a New York

wholesale house. Emeline chanced to be alone in the place, for Miss

Clarke was sick in bed, and the other saleswoman away on her vacation.

The trimmers, glancing out through a plush curtain at the rear, saw Miss

Cox and the "drummer" absorbed in a three hours' conversation. From two

to five o'clock they talked; the drummer watching her in obvious

admiration when an occasional customer interrupted, and when Miss Cox

went home the drummer escorted her. Emeline had left the parental roof

some two years before; she was rooming, now, with a mild and virtuous

girl named Regina Lynch, in Howard Street. Regina was the sort of girl

frequently selected by a girl of Emeline's type for confidante and

companion: timid, conventional, always ready to laugh and admire. Regina

consented to go to dinner with Emeline and Mr. Page, and as she later

refused to go to the theatre, Emeline would not go either; they all

walked out Market Street from the restaurant, and reached the Howard

Street house at about nine o'clock. Regina went straight upstairs, but

Emeline and George Page sat on the steps an hour longer, under the

bright summer moon, and when Emeline went upstairs she woke her roommate

up, and announced her engagement.

George came into the store at nine o'clock the next morning, to

radiantly confirm all that they had said the night before, and with

great simplicity the two began to plan for their future; from that time

they had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every day; they were both

utterly satisfied; they never questioned their fate. In October George

had to go to San Diego, and a dozen little cities en route, for the

firm, and Emeline went, too. They were married in the little church of

Saint Charles in Eighteenth Street, only an hour or two before they

started for San Jose, the first stop in George's itinerary. Emeline's

mother and sisters came to her wedding, but the men of the family were

working on this week-day afternoon. The bride looked excited and happy,

colour burned scarlet in her cheeks, under her outrageous hat; she wore

a brown travelling gown, and the lemon-coloured gloves that were popular

in that day. Emeline felt that she was leaving everything unpleasant in

life behind her. George was the husband of her dreams--or perhaps her

dreams had temporarily adapted themselves to George.

But, indeed, he was an exceptionally good fellow. He was handsome, big,

dashingly dressed. He was steady and successful in his work, domestic in

his tastes, and tenderly--and perhaps to-day a little pityingly--devoted

to this pretty, clever girl who loved him so, and had such faith in him.

His life had kept him a good deal among men, and rather coarse men; he

had had to do more drinking than he cared to do, to play a good deal of

poker, to listen to a good deal of loose talk. Now, George felt a great

relief that this was over; he wanted a home, a wife, children.

The bride and groom had a cloudless three weeks of honeymoon among a

score of little Southern towns--and were scarcely less happy during the

first months of settling down. Emeline was entirely ignorant of what was

suitable or desirable in a home, and George had only the crude ideals of

a travelling man to guide him. They enthusiastically selected a flat of

four handsome, large, dark rooms, over a corner saloon, on O'Farrell

Street. The building was new, the neighbourhood well built, and filled

with stirring, interesting life. George said it was conveniently near

the restaurant and theatre district, and to Emeline, after Mission

Street, it seemed the very hub of the world. The suite consisted of a

large front drawing-room, connected by enormous folding doors with a

rear drawing-room, which the Pages would use as a bedroom, a large

dining-room, and a dark kitchen, equipped with range and "water back."

There were several enormous closets, and the stairs and hall, used by

the several tenants of the house, were carpeted richly. The Pages also

carpeted their own rooms, hung the stiff folds of Nottingham lace

curtains at the high narrow windows, and selected a set of the heavily

upholstered furniture of the period for their drawing-room. When

Emeline's mother and sisters came to call, Emeline showed them her

gold-framed pictures, her curly-maple bed and bureau, her glass closet

in the dining-room, with its curved glass front and sides and its

shining contents--berry saucers and almond dishes in pressed glass, and

other luxuries to which the late Miss Cox had been entirely a stranger.

Emeline was intoxicated with the freedom and the pleasures of her new

life; George was out of town two or three nights a week, but when he was

at home the two slept late of mornings, and loitered over their

breakfast, Emeline in a loose wrapper, filling and refilling her coffee

cup, while George rattled the paper and filled the room with the odour

of cigarettes.

Then Emeline was left to put her house in order, and dress herself for

the day--her corsets laced tight at the waist, her black hair crimped

elaborately above her bang, her pleated skirts draped fashionably over

her bustle. George would come back at one o'clock to take her to lunch,

and after lunch they wandered up and down Kearney and Market streets,

laughing and chatting, glad just to be alive and together. Sometimes

they dined downtown, too, and afterward went to the "Tivoli" or

"Morosco's," or even the Baldwin Theatre, and sometimes bought and

carried home the materials for a dinner, and invited a few of George's

men friends to enjoy it with them. These were happy times; Emeline,

flushed and pretty in her improvised apron, queened it over the three or

four adoring males, and wondered why other women fussed so long over

cooking, when men so obviously enjoyed a steak, baked potatoes, canned

vegetables, and a pie from Swain's. After dinner the men always played

poker, a mild little game at first, with Emeline eagerly guarding a

little pile of chips, and gasping over every hand like a happy child;

but later more seriously, when Emeline, contrary to poker superstition,

sat on the arm of her husband's chair, to bring him luck.

Luck she certainly seemed to bring him; the Pages would go yawning to

bed, after one of these evenings, chuckling over the various hands.

"I couldn't see what you drew, George," Emeline would say, "but I could

see that Mack had aces on the roof, and it made me crazy to have you go

on raising that way! And then your three fish hooks!"

George would shout with pride at her use of poker terms--would laugh all

the harder if she used them incorrectly. And sometimes, sinking

luxuriously into the depths of the curly-maple bed, Emeline would think

herself the luckiest woman in the world. No hurry about getting up in

the morning; no one to please but herself; pretty gowns and an adoring

husband and a home beyond her maddest hopes--the girl's dreams no longer

followed her, happy reality had blotted out the dream.

She felt a little injured, a little frightened, when the day came on

which she must tell George of some pretty well-founded suspicions of her

own condition. George might be "mad," or he might laugh.

But George was wonderfully soothing and reassuring; more, was

pathetically glad and proud. He petted Emeline into a sort of reluctant

joy, and the attitude of her mother and sisters and the few women she

knew was likewise flattering. Important, self-absorbed, she waited her

appointed days, and in the early winter a wizened, mottled little

daughter was born. Julia was the name Emeline had chosen for a girl, and

Julia was the name duly given her by the radiant and ecstatic George in

the very first hour of her life. Emeline had lost interest in the

name--indeed, in the child and her father as well--just then; racked,

bewildered, wholly spent, she lay back in the curly-maple bed, the first

little seed of that general resentment against life that was eventually

to envelop her, forming in her mind.

They had told her that because of this or that she would not have a

"hard time," and she had had a very hard time. They had told her that

she would forget the cruel pain the instant it was over, and she knew

she never would forget it. It made her shudder weakly to think of all

the babies in the world--of the schools packed with children--at what a

cost!

Emeline recovered quickly, and shut her resentment into her own breast.

Julie, as she was always called, was a cross baby, and nowadays the two

front rooms were usually draped with her damp undergarments, and odorous

of sour bottles and drying clothes. For the few months that Emeline

nursed the child she wandered about until late in the day in a loose

wrapper, a margin of draggled nightgown showing under it, her hair in a

tumbled knot at the back of her head. If she had to run out for a loaf

of bread or a pound of coffee, she slipped on a street skirt, and

buttoned her long coat about her; her lean young throat would show, bare

above the lapels of the coat, but even this costume was not conspicuous

in that particular neighbourhood.

By the time Julia was weaned, Emeline had formed the wrapper habit; she

had also slipped back to the old viewpoint: they were poor people, and

the poor couldn't afford to do things decently, to live comfortably.

Emeline scolded and snapped at George, shook and scolded the crying

baby, and loitered in the hall for long, complaining gossips with the

other women of the house.

Time extricated the young Pages from these troubled days. Julia grew

into a handsome, precocious little girl of whom both parents could be

proud. Emeline never quite recovered her girlish good looks, her face

was thin now, with prominent cheek bones; there was a little frowning

line drawn between her eyes, and her expression was sharp and anxious,

but she became more fond of dress than ever.

George's absences were a little longer in these days; he had been given

a larger territory to cover--and Emeline naturally turned for society

toward her women neighbours. There were one or two very congenial

married women of her own type in the same house, pleasure-loving,

excitable young women; one, a Mrs. Carter, with two children in school,

the other, Mrs. Palmer, triumphantly childless. These introduced her to

others; sometimes half a dozen of them would go to a matinee together, a

noisy, chattering group. During the matinee Julia would sit on her

mother's lap, a small awed figure in a brief red silk dress and deep

lace collar. Julia always had several chocolates from the boxes that

circulated among her elders, and usually went to sleep during the last

act, and was dragged home, blinking and whining and wretched, by one

aching little arm.

George was passionately devoted to his little girl, and no toy was too

expensive for Julia to demand. Emeline loved the baby, too, although she

accepted as a martyrdom the responsibility of supplying Julia's needs.

But the Pages themselves rather drifted apart with the years. Both were

selfish, and each accused the other of selfishness, although, as Emeline

said stormily, no one had ever called her that before she was married,

and, as George sullenly claimed, he himself had always been popularity's

self among the "fellows."

In all her life Emeline had never felt anything but a resentful

impatience for whatever curtailed her liberty or disturbed her comfort

in the slightest degree. She had never settled down to do cheerfully

anything that she did not want to do. She had shaken off the claims of

her own home as lightly as she had stepped from "Delphine's" to the more

tempting position of George's wife. Now she could not believe that she

was destined to live on with a man who was becoming a confirmed

dyspeptic, who thought she was a poor housekeeper, an extravagant

shopper, a wretched cook, and worse than all, a sloven about her

personal appearance. Emeline really was all these things at times, and

suspected it, but she had never been shown how to do anything else, and

she denied all charges noisily.

One night when Julia was about four George stamped out of the house,

after a tirade against the prevailing disorder and some insulting

remarks about "delicatessen food." Emeline sent a few furious remarks

after him, and then wept over the sliced ham, the potato salad, and the

Saratoga chips, all of which she had brought home from a nearby delicacy

shop in oily paper bags only an hour ago. She wandered disconsolately

through the four rooms that had been her home for nearly six years. The

dust lay thick on the polished wood and glass of the sideboard and glass

closet in the dining-room; ashes and the ends of cigarettes filled half

a dozen little receptacles here and there; a welter of newspapers had

formed a great drift in a corner of the room, and the thick velour day

cover of the table had been pushed back to make way for a doubled and

spotted tablecloth and the despised meal. The kitchen was hideous with a

confusion of souring bottles of milk, dirty dishes, hardened ends of

loaves, and a sticky jam jar or two; Emeline's range was spotted and

rusty, she never fired it now; a three-burner gas plate sufficed for the

family's needs. In the bedroom a dozen garments were flung over the foot

of the unmade bed, Julia's toys and clothing littered this and the

sitting-room, the silk woof had been worn away on the heavily

upholstered furniture, and the strands of the cotton warp separated to

show the white lining beneath. On the mantel was a litter of medicine

bottles and theatre programs, powder boxes, gloves and slippers,

packages of gum and of cigarettes, and packs of cards, as well as more

ornamental matters: china statuettes and glass cologne bottles, a

palm-leaf fan with roses painted on it, a pincushion of redwood bark,

and a plush rolling-pin with brass screws in it, hung by satin ribbons.

Over all lay a thick coat of dust.

Emeline took Julia in her lap, and sat down in one of the patent

rockers. She remained for a long time staring out of the front window.

George's words burned angrily in her memory--she felt sick of life.

A spring twilight was closing down upon O'Farrell Street. In the row of

houses opposite Emeline could see slits of gaslight behind lowered

shades, and could look straight into the second floor of the

establishment that flourished behind a large sign bearing the words,

"O'Connor, Modes." This row of bay-windowed houses had been occupied as

homes by very good families when the Pages first came to O'Farrell

Street, but six years had seen great changes in the block. A grocery and

bar now occupied the corner, facing the saloon above which the Pages

lived, and the respectable middle-class families had moved away, one by

one, giving place to all sorts of business enterprises. Milliners and

dressmakers took the first floors, and rented the upper rooms; one

window said "Mme. Claire, Palmist," and another "Violin Lessons"; one

basement was occupied by a dealer in plaster statuary, and another by a

little restaurant. Most interesting of all to the stageloving Emeline

was the second floor, obliquely opposite her own, which bore an immense

sign, "Gottoli, Wigs and Theatrical Supplies. Costumes of all sorts

Designed and on Hand." Between Gottoli's windows were two painted panels

representing respectively a very angular, moustached young man in a

dress suit, and a girl in a Spanish dancer's costume, with a tambourine.

Gottoli did not do a very flourishing business, but Emeline watched his

doorway by the hour, and if ever her dreams came back now, it was at

these times.

To-night Julia went to sleep in her arms; she was an unexacting little

girl, accustomed to being ignored much of the time, and humoured,

over-indulged, and laughed at at long intervals. Emeline sat on and on,

crying now and then, and gradually reducing herself to a more softened

mood, when she longed to be dear to George again, to please and content

him. She had just made up her mind that this was no neighbourhood for

ideal home life, when George, smelling strongly of whiskey, but

affectionate and repentant, came in.

"What doing?" asked George, stumbling in the dark room.

"Just watching the cable cars go up and down," Emeline said, rousing.

She set the dazed Julia on her feet, and groped for matches on the

mantel. A second later the stifling odour of block matches drifted

through the room, and Emeline lighted a gas jet.

"Had your supper?" said she, as George sat down and took the child into

his arms.

"Nope," he answered, grinning ashamedly. "Thought maybe you and I'd go

to dinner somewheres, Em."

Emeline was instantly her better self. While she flew into her best

clothes she told George that she knew she was a rotten manager, but she

was so darn sick of this darn flat--She had just been sitting there

wondering if they hadn't better move into the country, say into Oakland.

Her sister May lived there, they might get a house near May, with a

garden for Julia, and a spare room where George could put up a friend.

George was clumsily enthusiastic. Gosh, if she would do that--if she

could stand its being a little quiet--

"I'd get to know the neighbours, and we'd have real good times," said

Emeline optimistically, "and it would be grand for Julie!"

Julia had by this time gone off to sleep in the centre of the large bed.

Her mother removed the child's shoes and some of her clothing, without

rousing her, loosened her garters, and unbuttoned whatever buttons she

could reach.

"She'll be all right," she said confidently. "She never wakes."

George lowered the gas, and they tiptoed out. But Julie did waken half

an hour later, as it happened, and screamed for company for ten hideous

minutes. Then Miss Flossie Miniver, a young woman who had recently

rented the top floor, and of whom Emeline and the other ladies of the

house disapproved, came downstairs and softly entered the Page flat, and

gathered the sobbing little girl to her warm, soft breast. Miss Miniver

soothed her with a new stick of gum and a pincushion that looked like a

fat little pink satin leg, with a smart boot at one end and a ruffle of

lace at the other, and left Julia peacefully settled down to sleep. But

Julia did not remember anything of this in the morning, and the

pincushion had rolled under the bed, so Emeline never knew of it. She

and George had a good dinner, and later went to the Orpheum, and were

happier than they had been for a long time.

The next Sunday they went to Oakland to see Emeline's sister, and

possibly to begin househunting. It was a cold, dark day, with a raw wind

blowing. Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that

carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated

train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed

corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and

papers against fences and steps.

Emeline had rather lost sight of her sister for a year or two, and had

last seen her in another and better house than the one which they

presently identified by street and number. The sisters had married at

about the same time, but Ed Torney was a shiftless and unfortunate man,

never steadily at work, and always mildly surprised at the discomfort of

life. May had four children, and was expecting a fifth. Two of the older

children, stupid-looking little blondes, with colds in their noses, and

dirt showing under the fair hair, were playing in the dooryard of the

shabby cottage now. The gate hung loose, the ground was worn bare by

children's feet and dug into holes where children had burrowed, and

littered with cans and ropes and boxes.

Emeline was genuinely shocked by the evidences of actual want inside.

May was a thin, bent, sickly looking woman now, her graying hair hanging

in a loose coil over her cotton wrapper. Floors everywhere were bare, a

few chairs were here and there, a few beds running over with thin

bedding, a table in the kitchen was covered with scattered dishes, some

dirty and some clean. Ashes drifted out of the kitchen stove, and in the

sink was a great tin dish-pan full of cool, greasy water. The oldest

child, a five-year-old girl, had followed these dazzling visitors in,

and now mounted a box and attacked this dish-pan with pathetic energy.

The two younger children sat on the floor, apathetically staring. May

made only a few smiling apologies. They "could see how she was," she

said, limping to a chair into which she dropped with a sigh of relief.

They had had a "fierce" time since Ed--Ed was the husband and

father--had lost his job a year ago. He had not been able to get

anything permanent since. Ed had been there just a minute ago, she

said--and indeed the odour of tobacco was still strong on the close

air--but he had been having a good deal of stomach trouble of late, and

the children made him nervous, and he had gone out for a walk. Poor May,

smiling gallantly over the difficulties of her life, drew her firstborn

to her knees, brushed back the child's silky, pale hair with bony,

trembling fingers, and prophesied that things would be easier when

mamma's girlies got to work: Evelyn was going to be a dressmaker, and

Marguerite an actress.

"She can say a piece out of the Third Reader real cute--the children

next door taught her," said May, but Marguerite would not be exploited;

she dug her blonde head into her mother's shoulder in a panic of

shyness; and shortly afterward the Pages went away. Uncle George gave

each child a dime, Julia kissed her little cousins good-bye, and Emeline

felt a sick spasm of pity and shame as May bade the children thank them,

and thanked them herself. Emeline drew her sister to the door, and

pressed two silver dollars, all she happened to have with her, into her

hand.

"Aw, don't, Em, you oughtn't," May said, ashamed and turning crimson,

but instantly she took the money. "We've had an awful hard time--or I

wouldn't!" said she, tears coming to her eyes.

"Oh, that's all right!" Emeline said uncomfortably, as she ran down the

steps. Her heart burned with sympathy for poor May, who had been so

pretty and so clever! Emeline could not understand the change! May had

graduated from High School with honours; she had held a good position as

a bookkeeper in a grocery before her marriage, but, like Emeline, for

the real business of life she had had no preparation at all. Her own

oldest child could have managed the family finances and catered to

sensitive stomachs with as much system and intelligence as May.

On the boat Emeline spoke of her little money gift to her sister, and

George roused himself from a deep study to approve and to reimburse her.

They did not speak again of moving to the country, and went straight

from the boat to a French table d'hote dinner, where Julia, enchanted at

finding herself warm and near food after the long cold adventures of the

day, stuffed herself on sardines and sour bread, soup and salad, and

shrimps and fried chicken, and drank tumblers of claret and sugar and

ice water.

There were still poker parties occasionally in the Page flat; Emeline

was quite familiar with poker phraseology now, and if George seemed less

pleased than he had been when she rattled away about hands, the men who

came were highly diverted by it. Two or three other wives generally

joined the party now; there would be seven or eight players about the

round table.

They all drank as they played, the room would get very warm, and reek of

tobacco and of whiskey and beer. Sometimes Julia woke up with a

terrified shout, and then, if Emeline were playing, she would get

George, or one of the other men or women, to go in and quiet the little

girl. These games would not break up until two or three o'clock. Emeline

would be playing excitedly, her face flushed, her eyes shining, every

fibre of her being alert, when suddenly the life would seem to fade out

of the whole game. An overwhelming ennui would seize her, a cold,

clear-eyed fatigue--the cards would seem meaningless, a chill would

shake her, a need of yawning. The whole company would be suddenly

likewise affected, the game would break up with a few brief words, and

Emeline, going in with her guests to help them with hats and wraps,

would find herself utterly silent, too cold and weary for even the most

casual civilities. When the others had gone, she and George would turn

the lights out on the wreckage of the dining-room, and stagger silently

to bed.

Fatigue would follow Emeline well into the next day after one of these

card parties. If George was going out of town, she would send Julia off

to play with other children in the house, and lie in bed until noon,

getting up now and then to hold a conversation with some tradesman

through a crack in the door. At one she might sally forth in her

favourite combination of wrapper and coat to buy cream and rolls, and

Julia would be regaled on sausages, hot cakes, bakery cookies, and

coffee, or come in to find no lunch at all, and that her mother had gone

out for the afternoon.

Emeline had grown more and more infatuated with the theatre and all that

pertained to it. She went to matinees twice a week, and she and her

group of intimate friends also "went Dutch" to evening performances

whenever it was possible. Their conversation was spattered with

theatrical terms, and when, as occasionally happened, a real actress or

even a chorus girl from the Tivoli joined their group, Emeline could

hardly contain her eagerness and her admiration. She loved, when rare

chance offered, to go behind the scenes; she frankly envied the

egotistic, ambitious young theatrical beginners, so eager to talk of

themselves and their talents, to discuss every detail from grease paint

to management. To poor hungry Emeline it was like a revelation of

another, brighter world.

She would loiter out from the brief enchantment of "Two True Hearts"

into the foggy dampness of Market Street, at twilight, eagerly grasping

the suggestion of ice-cream sodas, because it meant a few minutes more

with her friends. Perhaps, sipping the frothy confection, Emeline would

see some of the young actresses going by, just from the theatre,

buttoned into long coats, their faces still rosy from cold cream; they

must rush off for a light dinner, and be back at the theatre at seven.

At the sight of them a pang always shot through Emeline, an exquisite

agony of jealousy seized her. Oh, to be so busy, so full of affairs, to

move constantly from one place to another--now dragging a spangled gown,

now gay as a peasant, now gaudily dressed as a page!

Emeline would finish her soda in silence, lift the over-dressed Julia

from her chair, and start soberly for home. Julia's short little legs

ached from the quick walk, yet she hated as much as her mother the

plunge from brightly lighted O'Farrell Street into their own hall, so

large and damp and dark, so odorous of stale beer and rubber floor

covering. A dim point of gas in a red shade covered with symmetrical

glass blisters usually burned over the stairway, but the Pages'

apartment was dark, except for a dull reflected light from the street.

Perhaps Julia and her mother would find George there, with his coat and

shoes off, and his big body flung down across the bed, asleep. George

would wake up slowly, with much yawning and grumbling, Emeline would add

her gloves and belt to the unspeakable confusion of the bureau, and

Julia would flatten her tired little back against the curve of an

armchair and follow with heavy, brilliant eyes the argument that always

followed.

"Well, we could get some chops--chops and potatoes--and a can of corn,"

Emeline would grudgingly admit, as she tore off her tight corsets with a

great gasp of relief, and slipped into her kimono, "or you could get

some spaghetti and some mangoes at the delicatessen--"

"Oh, God, cut out the delicatessen stuff!" George invariably said; "me

for the chops, huh, Julie?"

"Or--we could all go somewhere," Emeline might submit tentatively.

"_Nit_," George would answer. "Come on, Ju, we'll go buy a steak!"

But he was not very well pleased with his dinner, even when he had his

own way. When he and Julia returned with their purchases Emeline

invariably met them at the top of the stairs.

"We need butter, George, I forgot to tell you--you'll have to go back!"

she would say. Julia, tired almost beyond endurance, still preferred to

go with her father.

There was not enough gas heat under Emeline's frying pan to cook a steak

well; George growled as he cut it. Emeline jumped up for forgotten table

furnishings; grease splashed on the rumpled cloth. After the one course

the head of the house would look about hungrily.

"No cheese in the house, I suppose?"

"No--I don't believe there is."

"What's the chances on a salad?"

"Oh, no, George--that takes lettuce, you know. My goodness!" And Emeline

would put her elbows on the table and yawn, the rouge showing on her

high cheek bones, her eyes glittering, her dark hair still pressed down

where her hat had lain. "My goodness!" she would exclaim impatiently,

"haven't you had enough, George? You had steak, and potatoes, and

corn--why don't you eat your corn?"

"What's the chances on a cup of tea?" George might ask, seizing a half

slice of bread, and doubling an ounce of butter into it, with his great

thumb on the blade of his knife.

"You can have all the tea you want, but you'll have to use condensed

milk!"

At this George would say "Damn!" and take himself and his evening paper

to the armchair in the front window. When Emeline would go in, after a

cursory disposition of the dishes, she would find Julia curled in his

arms, and George sourly staring over the little silky head.

"It's up to you, and it's your job, and it makes me damn sick to come

home to such a dirty pen as this!" George sometimes burst out. "Look at

that--and look at that--look at that mantel!"

"Well--well--well!" Emeline would answer sharply, putting the mantel

straight, or commencing to do so with a sort of lazy scorn. "I can't do

everything!"

"Other men go home to decent dinners," George would pursue sullenly;

"their wives aren't so darn lazy and selfish--"

Such a start as this always led to a bitter quarrel, after which

Emeline, trembling with anger, would clear a corner of the cluttered

drawing-room table and take out a shabby pack of cards for solitaire,

and George would put Julia to bed. All her life Julia Page remembered

these scenes and these bedtimes.

Her father sometimes tore the tumbled bed apart, and made it up again,

smoothing the limp sheets with clumsy fingers, and talking to Julia,

while he worked, of little girls who had brothers and sisters, and who

lived in the country, and hung their stockings up on Christmas Eve.

Emeline pretended not to notice either father or daughter at these

times, although she could have whisked Julia into bed in half the time

it took George to do it, and was really very kind to the child when

George was not there.

When George asked the little girl to find her hairbrush, and blundered

over the buttons of her nightgown, Emeline hummed a sprightly air. She

never bore resentment long.

"What say we go out later and get something to eat, George?" she would

ask, when George tiptoed out of the bedroom and shut the folding door

behind him. But several hours of discomfort were not to be so lightly

dismissed by George.

"Maybe," he would briefly answer. And invariably he presently muttered

something about asking "Cass" for the time, and so went down to the

saloon of "J. Cassidy," just underneath his own residence.

Emeline, alone, would brood resentfully over her cards. That was the way

of it: men could run off to saloons, while she, pretty and young, and

with the love of life still strong in her veins, might as well be dead

and buried! Bored and lonely, she would creep into bed beside Julia,

after turning the front-room light down to a bead, and flinging over the

"bed lounge," upon which George spent the night, the musty sheets and

blankets and the big soggy pillows.

But George, meanwhile, would have found warmth, brightness,

companionship, and good food. The drink that was his passport to all

these good things was the least of them in his eyes. George did not care

particularly for drink, but he usually came home the worse for it on

these occasions, and Emeline had a real foundation for her furious

harangues in the morning. She would scold while she carried him in hot

coffee or chopped ice, scold while she crimped her hair and covered her

face with a liquid bleach, scold as she jerked Julia's little bonnet on

the child's lovely mane, and depart, with a final burst of scolding and

a bang of the door.

One day Emeline came in to find George at home, ill. She had said

good-bye to him only the day before, for what was supposedly a week, and

was really concerned to find him back so soon, shivering and mumbling,

and apparently unable to get into bed. Emeline sent Julia flying to a

neighbour, made George as comfortable as she could in the big bed, and

listened, with a conviction as firm as his own, to what he believed to

be parting instructions and messages.

"I'm going, Em," said George heavily. "I'm worse now than I was when I

started for home. I wanted to see you again, baby girl, and Julia, too.

I--I can't breathe----"

Julia presently came flying in with a doctor and with a neighbour, Mrs.

Cotter, who had telephoned to him. The doctor said that George had a

sharp touch of influenza, and Emeline settled down to nurse him.

George was a bad patient. He had a great many needs, and he mentioned

one after another in the weighty, serious tone of a person imparting

valuable information.

"Ice--ice," said George, moving hot eyes to meet his wife's glance as

she came in. "And take that extra blanket off, Emeline, and--no hurry,

but I'll try the soup again whenever you say--I seem to feel weak. I

must have more air, dear. Help me sit up, Em, and you can shake these

pillows up again. I think I'm a good deal sicker man than Allan has any

idea----"

Emeline got very tired of it, especially as George was much better on

the third day, and could sit up. He developed a stiff neck, which made

him very irritable, and even Julia "got on his nerves" and was banished

for the day to the company of the cheerful Jewish family who lived on an

upper floor. He sat in an armchair, wrapped in blankets, his rigid gaze

roving a pitifully restricted perspective of street outside the window,

an elaborate cough occasionally racking him.

Emeline had gotten a fairly tempting dinner under way. She could cook

some things well, and at five o'clock she came in from the kitchen with

an appetizing tray.

"Gosh, is it dinner time?" asked George.

"After five," Emeline said, flitting about the bed-room. Julia had come

home now, sweet and tired, and was silently eating slice after slice of

bread and jelly. Emeline opened out the bed lounge, spread sheets and

blankets smoothly, and flung a clean little nightgown for Julia across

the foot. Darkness had fallen outside; she lighted the gas and drew the

shades.

"This is comfortable!" said George. "I wouldn't mind being sick now and

then at this rate! Come over here and undress near Pop, Julie. I'll tell

you what, Em--you call down the air shaft to Cass, and tell him to send

Henny up to make us a nice little coal fire here. I'll give Henny a

quarter."

"She's gone into the bathroom to fix her hair and wash her face," Julia

observed, as Emeline did not answer. A second later the child jumped up

to answer a sharp knock on the door.

To George's disgust it was Emeline's friend, Mrs. Marvin Povey, who came

in. Mrs. Povey was a tightly corseted, coarse-voiced, highly coloured

little blonde, breathless now from running upstairs. Her sister, Myrtle

Montague, was an ingenue in the little stock company at the Central

Theatre, and Mrs. Povey kept house for her and Mr. Povey, who spent all

his waking hours at the racetrack. The Poveys' flat was only a block

away from the Pages'.

George was furious to have this woman, whom he particularly detested,

come in upon him thus informally, and find him at so great a

disadvantage. His neck was better, but he could not move it very easily

still; he was trapped here in blankets like a baby; he was acutely

conscious of his three days' beard, of Julia's bed made up in the middle

of the drawing-room, and of Julia's self, partly disrobed, and running

about in the general disorder.

"Well, how does the other feller look?" said Mrs. Povey, laughing

good-naturedly. "You look like you'd broke out of San Quentin, George,

with that face! Hello, darlin'," she added, waylaying Julia. "When are

you going to come and be Aunt Mame's girl, huh? Going to come home with

me to-night?"

"Em!" bellowed George, with only a sickly smile for the guest. "_Em_!"

"My God, what is it now?" said Emeline sweetly, popping in her head.

"Oh, hello, Mame!" she added, coming in. "Where's the rest of the

girls?"

"They've all blew up to the house with Myrt," said Mrs. Povey, staring

blankly at Emeline. "But say, ain't you going, dear?"

"Wait till I get my dress on, and we'll talk it over while I hook up,"

Emeline said, disappearing again. She did not glance at George.

"Myrt's in a new show, and a few of us girls are going to see that she

gets a hand," Mrs. Povey said. "We're going to have supper at my house.

Mary will have some of the boys there."

"I guess Emeline will have to wait till the next time," George said

coldly. "She wouldn't get much pleasure out of it, leaving me here as

sick as I am!"

"Oh, I don't know!" Mrs. Povey half sang, half laughed. "Emeline likes a

good time, like all the rest of us, George, and it don't do to keep a

pretty girl shut up all the time!"

"Shut up? She's never here," George growled.

"Well, we'll see!" Mrs. Povey hummed contentedly. A moment later Emeline

came in, wrenching the hooks of her best gown together. She had her hat

on, and looked excited and resolute.

"I forgot I'd promised to go out with the girls, George," she began.

"You don't care, do you? You've had your supper, and all Julia's got to

do is get into bed."

George looked balefully from one to the other. Mrs. Povey chanced a

quick little wink of approval and encouragement at Emeline, and he saw

it.

"A lot you forgot!" he said harshly to his wife. "You've been getting

ready for the last hour. Don't either of you think that you're fooling

me--I see through it! I could lay here and die, and a lot you'd care!

You forgot--ha!"

The blood rushed instantly to Emeline's face, she turned upon him her

ugliest look, and the hand with which she was buttoning her glove

trembled.

"Now, I'll tell you something, Mr. George Page!" said she, in an intense

and passionate tone, "there _are_ things I'd rather do than set around

this house and hear you tell how sick you are! You think I'm a white

chip in this family, but let me tell you something--there's plenty of

lovely friends I got who think I'm a fool to keep it up! I had an offer

to go on the stage, not a month ago, from a manager who didn't even know

I was married; didn't I, Mame? And if it wasn't for Julie there----"

"You've not got anything on me, Em," George said, breathing hard, his

face blood red with anger. "Do you think that if it wasn't for this kid,

I'd----"

"Oh, folks--folks!" Mrs. Povey said, really concerned.

"Well, I don't care!" Emeline said, panting. She crossed the floor,

still panting, kissed Julia, and swept from the room. Mrs. Povey,

murmuring some confused farewell, followed her.

Julia climbed out of her big chair. Like all children, she was

frightened by loud voices and domestic scenes; she was glad now that the

quarrel was over, and anxious, in a small girl's fashion, to blot the

recent unpleasantness from her father's mind.

She sat on his knee and talked to him, she sang, she patted his sore

neck with sleek, dirty little fingers. And finally she won him. George

laughed, and entered into her mood. He thought her a very smart little

girl, as indeed she was. She had a precocious knowledge of the affairs

of her mother's friends, sordid affairs enough, and more sordid than

ever when retailed by a child's fresh mouth. Julia talked of money

trouble, of divorce, of dressmaker's bills, of diseases; she repeated

insolent things that had been said to her in the street, and her

insolent replies; her rich, delicious laugh broke out over the memory of

the "drunk" that had been thrown out of Cassidy's.

George laughed at it all; it sounded very funny to him, coming from this

very small person, with her round, serious eyes, and her mop of gold. He

asked her what she wanted him to bring her next time he came home, and

Julia said black boots with white tops and tassels, and made him laugh

again.

Thus early did Julia act as a mediator between her parents, but of this

particular occasion she had no recollection, nor of much that followed

it. Had she been a few years older she might really have affected a

lasting reconciliation between them, for all that was best in George

made him love his daughter, and Emeline was intensely proud of the

child. As it was, Julia was too young. She might unconsciously be the

means of reuniting them now and then, but she could not at all grasp the

situation, and when she was not quite seven a decree of divorce, on the

ground of desertion, set both Emeline and George free, after eight years

of married life.

Emeline was too frightened at the enormity of the thing to be either

glad or sorry. She had never meant to go so far. She had threatened

George with divorce just as George had threatened her, in the heat of

anger, practically since her wedding day. But the emotion that finally

drove Emeline to a lawyer was not anger, it was just dull rebellion

against the gray, monotonous level of her days. She was alone when

George was away on trips; she was not less alone when he was in town. He

had formed the habit of joining "the boys" in the evening; he was surly

and noncommittal with his wife, but Julia, hanging about the lower hall

door or playing with children in the street, always heard a burst of

laughter as he joined his friends; everybody in the world--except

Emeline--liked George!

Poor Emeline--she could easily have held him! A little tenderness toward

him, a little interest in her home and her child, and George would have

been won again. Had he but once come home to a contented wife and a

clean house, George's wavering affection would have been regained. But

Emeline was a loud-mouthed, assertive woman now, noisily set upon her

own way, and filled with a sense of her own wrongs. She had discussed

George too often with her friends to feel any possible interest in him

except as a means of procuring sympathy. George bored her now; as a

matter of fact, Emeline had almost decided that she would prefer alimony

to George.

Goaded on by Mrs. Povey, and a young Mrs. Sunius, affectionately known

as Maybelle, Emeline went to see a lawyer. The lawyer surprised her by

his considerate brevity. Getting a divorce was a very simple affair,

much better done than not. There were ways to make a man pay his alimony

regularly, and the little girl would stay with her mother, of course; at

her age no other solution was possible. Emeline felt that she must know

how much expense she would be put to, and was gratified to find that it

would cost her not more than fifty dollars. The lawyer asked her how

soon she could get hold of her husband.

"Why, he'll let me know as soon as he's in town," Emeline said vaguely;

"he'll come home."

"Come home, eh?" said the lawyer, with a shrewd look. "He knows your

intentions, of course?"

"He ought to!" said Emeline with spirit, and she began again: "I don't

think there's a person in the world could say that I'm not a good wife,

Mr. Knowles! I never so much as looked at another man--I swear to God I

never did! And there's no other man in the case. If I can have my

dolling little girl, and just live quiet, with a few friends near me,

that's all I ask! If Mr. Page had his way, I'd never put foot out of

doors; but mind you, _he'd_ be off with the boys every night. And that

means drink, you know--"

"Well, well," the young lawyer said soothingly, "I guess you've been

treated pretty mean, all right."

Emeline went home to find--somewhat to her embarrassment--that George

had come in, and was in his happiest mood, and playing with Julia. Julia

had somehow lost her babyish beauty now; she was thin and lanky, four

teeth were missing, and even her glorious mop of hair seemed what her

mother called "slinky."

"I landed the Fox order right over Colton's head!" said George.

Emeline said: "I wish to the Lord you'd quit opening that window,

leaving the wind blow through here like a cave!"

"Well, the place smelled like a Jap's room!" George retorted, instantly

aggressive.

"We're going to the Park!" Julia chanted.

"How d'ye mean you're going to the Park?" Emeline asked, as she slammed

down the offending window.

"Well, I thought maybe I'd take her there; kinder fun walking round and

seeing things, what?" George submitted.

Emeline shrugged. "I don't care what you do!"

She sat down before a dresser with a triple mirror, which had lately

been added to the bedroom furniture, and began to ruffle the coarse

puffs of her black hair with slim, ringed fingers.

"You've got something better to do, of course!" George said.

"Don't go to a matinee, Mother!" said Julia, coming to lean coaxingly

against her mother's arm. Emeline looked down at the pale, intelligent

little face, and gave the child a sudden kiss.

"Mama isn't going to a matinee, doll baby. But papa ain't as crazy for

her to go to the Park as you are!" she said, with an oblique and

challenging glance at George.

"Oh, come on!" George urged impatiently. "Only don't wear that rotten

hat," he added. "It don't look like a respectable woman!"

Emeline's expression did not change, but fury seethed within her.

"Don't wait for me," she said levelly. "I'm not going."

"Well, put the kid's hat on then," George suggested, settling his own

with some care at the mantel mirror.

"Get your hand-embroidered dress out of your drawer, Julia," said her

mother, "and the hat Aunt Maybelle gave you!"

"I'm going to Cass's to telephone, and I need some cigarettes," George

announced from the door. "I'll be back in five minutes for Julie."

"Don't forget to get a drink while you're in Cass's," Emeline reminded

him, as she flung an embroidered dress over Julia's limp little draggled

petticoats. George's answer was a violent slamming of the hall door.

Julia's little face was radiant as her mother tied on a soiled white

straw bonnet covered with roses, and put a cologne-soaked handkerchief

into the pocket of her blue velvet coat. The little girl did not have

many pleasures; there were very few children in the neighbourhood, and

Julia was not very strong; she easily caught colds in dark O'Farrell

Street, or in the draughty hall. All winter long she had been hanging

over the coal fire in the front room, or leaning against the window

watching the busy street below--but today was spring! Sunlight glorified

even the dreary aspect from the windows above "J. Cassidy's" saloon, and

the glorious singing freshness of the breeze, the heavenly warmth of the

blue air, had reached Julia's little heart.

When she was quite dressed, and was standing at the window patiently

watching for her father, Emeline came and stood beside her.

"I'll tell you what!" said Emeline suddenly. "I'll go, too! It's too

grand to be indoors today; we'll just go out to the Park and take in the

whole show! And then perhaps papa'll take us somewhere to dinner!"

She began swiftly to dress, pinning on a hat that George liked, and

working on long gray kid gloves as a complement to a gray gown. Then she

came to stand behind Julia again, and both watched the street.

"I guess he's waiting for his change?" suggested Julia, and Emeline

laughed.

"We'll walk over and take the Geary Street car," said she. "We'll go

right to the fountain, and get dummy seats. And we could have dinner at

the Poodle Dog--"

"Here he comes!" Julia cried. And indeed George was to be seen for a

moment, between two friends, standing on the corner.

A long wait ensued. Then steps came up the stairs. Emeline, followed by

Julia, went to the door. It was not George, but a note from George,

delivered by Henny, of Cassidy's saloon.

"Dear Em," Emeline read, "a couple of the fellows want me to go to

Emeryville, have dinner at Tony's, and sit in a little game afterward.

Tell Julie I will take her to the Park to-morrow--and buy her anything

she wants. George."

"Thanks, Henny," Emeline said, without visible emotion. But Julia's lip

quivered, and she burst into bitter crying. Six-years-old knows no

tomorrows, and Julia tasted the bitterness of despair. She cried

quietly, her little body screwed into a big armchair, her face hidden in

the crook of a thin little arm. Emeline stood it as long as she could,

then she slapped and shook Julia to stop her, and Julia strangled and

shrieked hysterically.

Peace was presently restored, and Julia was asked if she would like to

go see her Auntie Mame, and assented with a hiccough. So her mottled

little face was wiped with a soggy gray towel, and her bonnet

straightened, and they set out.

Mrs. Povey was so sympathetic that Emeline stayed with her for dinner, a

casual meal which Myrtle Montague and a sister actress came in to share.

Julia sat with them at table, and stuffed solemnly on fresh bread and

cheese, crab salad and smoked beef, hot tomato sauce and delicious

coffee. The coffee came to table in a battered tin pot, and the cream

was poured into the cups from the little dairy bottle, with its metal

top, but Julia saw these things as little as any one else--as little as

she saw the disorderly welter of theatrical effects in the Poveys'

neglected rooms, the paint on the women's faces, the ugly violence and

coarseness of their talk.

But she did see that they were an impulsive, warm-hearted, generous set.

Nobody ever spoke crossly to her, she was given the freedom of their

rooms, she listened to their chatter, she was often caught up for

embraces heavy with cologne; they loved to dress her up in preposterous

costumes, and shouted with laughter at the sight of her in Dolly Varden

bonnets, Scotch kilts, or spectacles and wigs. "Baby doll," "Lovey," and

"Honey Babe" were Julia's names here, and she was a child hungry for

love and eager to earn it. To-night she ate her supper in that silence

so grateful to grown people, and afterward found some stage jewellery

and played with it until her head was too heavy to hold up any longer.

Then she went to sleep upon an odorous couch piled deep with all sorts

of odd garments, her feet thrust into a tangle of lifeless satin

pillows, her head upon the fur lining of some old cape, a banjo prodding

her uncomfortably whenever she stirred.

Julia--all pins and needles--was presently jerked up into a glare of

lights, and tied into the rose-crowned bonnet, and buttoned into the

velvet coat again. She had not been covered as she slept, and sneezed

and shivered in the cold night air. Emeline walked along briskly, and

Julia stumbled beside her. The child was in such an agony of fatigue and

chill that every separate step toward bed was dreaded by this time. She

fell against her mother, as Emeline tore off shoes and stockings,

stretched blundering, blind little arms for her nightgown sleeves, and

sank deliciously against her pillows, already more than half asleep.

But Emeline sat wide eyed, silent, waiting for George.

George did not come home at all that night. On the next

afternoon--Sunday afternoon--Julia was playing in the street with two

other small girls. Their game was simple. The three huddled into the

deep doorway that led to Julia's home, clinging tight to each other,

laughing and shouting. Then at a given signal they rushed screaming

forth, charged across the street as if pursued by a thousand furies, and

took shelter in a similar doorway, next to the saloon across the street.

This performance had been repeated, back and forth, perhaps a dozen

times, when Julia found her father waylaying her.

"Where y' going?" asked Julia, noticing that he carried a hand bag.

George sat down on the dirty cement steps that connected his dwelling

with the sidewalk, and drew Julia between his knees.

"I've got to go away, baby," said he soberly.

"And ain't choo going to take me to the Park--_never_?" asked Julia, with

a trembling lip.

George freed a lock of her hair that had gotten caught in her collar,

with clumsy, gentle fingers.

"Mama's mad at me, and I'm going away for a while, Babe," said he,

clearing his throat. "But you be a good girl, and I'll come take you to

the Park some day."

Something in the gravity of his tone impressed Julia.

"But I don't want you to go away," she said tearfully. George got up

hastily.

"Come on, walk with Pop to the car," he commanded, and Julia trotted

contentedly beside him to Market Street. There she gave him a child's

soft, impersonal kiss, staring up at the buildings opposite as she did

so. George jumped on a cable car, wedged his bag under his knees as he

took a seat on the dummy, and looked back at the little figure that was

moving toward the dingy opening of O'Farrell Street, and at the spring

sunshine, bright on the child's hair.

CHAPTER II

In summer the rear parlour that was Mrs. Page's bedroom was a rather dim

and dreary place; such light as it had fell through one long, high

window that gave only upon a narrow air shaft; it was only in mid-July

that the actual sunlight--a bright and fleeting triangle--touched the

worn red carpet and the curly-maple bed. In winter the window gave

almost no light at all. Julia dressed by gaslight ten months out of the

year, and had to sit up in her warm blankets and stare at the clock on a

certain January morning in her fifteenth year, to make sure whether it

said twenty minutes of eleven or five minutes of eight o'clock. It was

five minutes of eight--no mistake about it--but eight o'clock was early

for the Pages, mother and daughter. Julia sighed, and cautiously

stretched forth an arm, a bare, shapely little arm, with bangles on the

round wrist and rings on the smooth fingers, and picked a book from the

floor. Cautiously settling herself on the pillows she plunged into her

novel, now and then pushing back a loose strand of hair, or bringing her

pretty fingernails close to her eyes for an admiring and critical

scrutiny.

An hour passed--another hour. The clock in the front room struck a

silvery ten. Then Julia slammed her book noisily together, and gave a

sharp push to the recumbent form beside her.

"Ah--no--darling!" moaned Mrs. Page, tortured out of dreams.

"Don't--Julie--"

"Aw, wake up, Mama!" the daughter urged. Whereupon the older woman

rolled on her back, yawned luxuriously, and said, quite composedly:

"Hello, darling! What time is it?"

Emeline had aged in seven years; she looked hopelessly removed from

youth and beauty now, but later in the day, when her hair would be taken

out of its crimping kids, her sallow cheeks touched with rouge, and her

veined neck covered by a high collar, a coral chain, and an

ostrich-feather ruff, some traces of her former good looks might be

visible. She still affected tight corsets, high heels, enormous hats.

But Emeline's interest in her own appearance was secondary now to her

fierce pride and faith in Julia's beauty. Drifting along the line of

least resistance, asking only to be comfortable and to have a good time,

Emeline had come to a bitter attitude of resentment toward George,

toward the fate that had "forced" her to leave him. Now she began lazily

to fasten upon Julia as the means of gratifying those hopes and

ambitions that were vain for herself. Julia was beautiful, Julia would

be a great success, and some day would repay her mother for the

sacrifices she had made for her child.

Emeline dressed, went about, flirted, and gossiped still; she liked

cocktails and cards and restaurant dinners; she was an authority on all

things theatrical; her favourite pose was that of the martyred mother.

"All I have left," Emeline would say, kissing her daughter effectively,

before strangers. "And only God knows what it has cost me to keep my

girlie with me!"

Julia would grin good-naturedly at this. She had no hallucinations about

her mother. She knew her own value, knew she was pretty, and was glad

with the simple and pathetic complacence of fourteen. Julia at eight had

gone to dancing school, in the briefest skirts ever seen on a small

girl, and the dirtiest white silk stockings. She had sung a shrill

little song, and danced a little dance at a public benefit for the

widows of three heroic firemen, when she was only nine. Her lovely mop

had been crimped out of all natural wave; her youthful digestion menaced

by candy and chewing gum; her naturally rather sober and pensive

disposition completely altered, or at least eclipsed. Julia could

chatter of the stage, could give a pert answer to whoever accosted her,

could tell a dressmaker exactly how she wanted a gown made, at twelve.

While her mother slept in the morning, before the girl learned to sleep

late, too, the child would get up and slip out. Her playground was

O'Farrell Street, dry and hot in summer, wrapped in soft fog four

mornings a week the year round, reeking of stale beer, and echoing to

the rattle of cable cars. The little Julia flitted about everywhere:

watching janitors as they hosed down the sidewalks outside the saloons,

or rinsed cuspidors; watching grocers set out their big signs for the

day; watching little restaurants open, and first comers sit down to

great cups of coffee and plates of hot cakes. Perhaps the sight of food

would remind the little girl of her own empty stomach; she would

straggle home just as the first sunshine was piercing the fog, and

loiter upstairs, and peep into the bedroom to see what the chances of a

meal might be.

Emeline usually rolled over to smile at her daughter when she heard the

door open, and Julia would be sent to the delicatessen store for the

component parts of a substantial meal. Julia loved the cramped, clean,

odorous shop that smelled of wet wood and mixed mustard pickles and

smoked fish. A little cream bottle would be filled from an immense can

at her request, the shopkeeper's wife wiping it with a damp rag and a

bony hand. And the pat of butter, and the rolls, and the sliced ham, and

the cheese--Herr Bauer scratched their prices with a stubby pencil on an

oily bit of paper, checked their number by the number of bundles, gave

Julia the buttery change, and Julia hurried home for a delicious

loitering breakfast with her mother. Emeline, still in her limp,

lace-trimmed nightgown, with a spotted kimono hanging loosely over it,

and her hair a wildly tousled mass at the top of her head, presided at a

clear end of the kitchen table. She and Julia occupied only two rooms of

the original apartment now; a young lawyer, with his wife and child, had

the big front room, and the dining-room was occupied by two mysterious

young men who came and went for years without ever betraying anything of

their own lives to their neighbours. Julia only knew that they were

young, quiet, hard working, and of irreproachable habits.

But she knew the people in the front room quite well. Mrs. Raymond

Toomey was a neat, bright, hopeful little woman, passionately devoted to

her husband and her spoiled, high-voiced little son. Raymond Toomey was

a big, blustering fool of a man, handsome in a coarse sort of way,

noisy, shallow, and opinionated. Whenever there were races, the Toomeys

went to the races, taking the precocious "Lloydy," in his velvet

Fauntleroy suit and tasselled shoes, and taking "Baby," a shivering

little terrier with wet, terrified eyes. Sometimes Mrs. Toomey came out

to the kitchen in the morning, to curl her ostrich feathers over the gas

stove, or join Mrs. Page in a cup of coffee.

"God, girlie, that goes to the spot," she would yawn, stirring her cup,

both elbows on the table. "We had a fierce day yesterday, and Ray took a

little too much last night--you know how men are! He had a stable tip

yesterday, and went the limit--like a fool! I play hunches--there's no

such thing as a tip!"

And sometimes she would put a little printed list of entries before

Julia and say:

"Pick me a winner, darling. Go on--just pick any one!"

Julia soon reached the age when she could get her own breakfast, and

then, mingled with a growing appreciation of the girl's beauty, her

mother felt that gratitude always paid by an indolent person to one of

energy. She knew that her child was finer than she was, prettier, more

clever, more refined. She herself had never had any reserves; she had

always screamed or shouted or cried or run away when things crossed her,

but she saw Julia daily displaying self-control and composure such as

she had never known. There were subtleties in Julia: her sweet firm

young mouth closed over the swift-coming words she would not say, her

round, round blue eyes were wiser already than her mother's eyes.

The girl had grown very handsome. Her joyous, radiant colouring was

contradicted by her serious expression, her proud, unsmiling mouth. Her

eyes were dark, her colouring softly dark; she had the velvety, tawny

skin that usually accompanies dark hair. Yet her hair was a pure and

exquisite gold. She wore it fluffed over her ears, cut in a bang across

her forehead, and "clubbed" on her neck, in a rather absurd and

artificial fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe

expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue

eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair

did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant

child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in

open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and

bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and laced them tight.

Julia's mind, at this time, was a curious little whirlpool. She had the

natural arrogance of her years; she felt that she had nothing to learn.

She had an affectionate contempt for her mother, and gave advice more

often than she accepted it from Emeline. Julia naturally loved order and

cleanliness, but she never came in contact with them. Emeline sometimes

did not air or make her bed for weeks at a time. She washed only such

dishes as were absolutely necessary for the next meal. She never sent

out a bundle to the laundry, but washed handkerchiefs and some underwear

herself, at erratic intervals, drying them on windows, or the backs of

various chairs. Emeline always had a pair or more of silk stockings

soaking in a little bowl of cold suds in the bedroom, and occasionally

carried a waist or a lace petticoat to the little French laundress on

Powell Street, and drove a sharp bargain with her. Julia accepted the

situation very cheerfully; she and her mother both enjoyed their lazy,

aimless existence, and to Julia, at least, the future was full of hope.

She could do any one of a dozen things that would lead to fame and

fortune.

The particular day that opened for her with two hours of quiet reading

progressed like any other day. The mother and daughter arose, got their

breakfast in the kitchen, and sat long over it, sharing the papers, the

hot coffee, the cream, and dividing evenly the little French loaf.

Julia's nightgown was as limp as her mother's, her kimono as dirty, and

her feet were thrust in fur slippers, originally white, now gray. But

her fresh young colour, and the rich loops and waves of her golden hair,

her firm young breasts under her thin wraps, and the brave blue of her

eyes made her a very different picture from her mother, who sat

opposite, a vision of disorder, feasting her eyes upon the girl.

There was a murder story, of which mother and daughter read every word,

and a society wedding to discuss.

"The Chases went," said Julia, dipping her bread in her coffee, her eyes

on the paper. "Isn't that the limit!"

"Why, Marian Chase was a bridesmaid, Julie!"

"Yes, I know. But I didn't think the Byron Chases would go to Maude

Pennell's wedding! But of course she's marrying an Addison--that helps.

'Mrs. Byron Chase, lavender brocade and pearls,'" read Julia. "Well,

Maude Pennell is getting in, all right!"

"What'd Mrs. Joe Coutts wear?" Emeline asked. Among the unknown members

of the city's smartest set she had her favourites.

"'Mrs. Joseph Foulke Coutts,'" Julia read obligingly. '"Red velvet robe

trimmed with fox.'"

"For heaven's sake, Julie--with that red face!"

"And Miss Victoria Coutts in pink silk--she's had that dress for a year

now," Julia said. "Well, Lord!" She yawned luxuriously. "I wouldn't

marry Roy Addison if he was made of money--the bum!" She pushed the

paper carelessly aside. "What you going to do to-day, Ma?" she asked

lazily.

"Oh, go out," Emeline answered vaguely, still reading a newspaper

paragraph. "Gladys has had to pay over a quarter of a million for that

feller's debts!" said she, awed.

"Well, that's what you get for marrying a duke," Julia answered

scornfully. "Let's pile these, Ma, and get dressed."

They went into the bedroom, where the gas was lighted again, the bureau

pushed out from the wall, that the mirror might catch the best light,

and where, in unspeakable confusion, mother and daughter began to dress.

Julia put on her smart little serge skirt, pushing it down over her hips

with both hands. Then she fixed her hair carefully, adjusted her hat,

tied on a spotted white veil, and finally slipped into a

much-embroidered silk shirtwaist, which mother and daughter decided was

dirty, but would "do." Rings, bangles, and chains followed, a pair of

long limp gloves, a final powdering, and a ruff of pink feathers. Julia

was not fifteen and looked fully seventeen, to her great delight. She

gave herself a sober yet approving glance in the mirror; the corners of

her firm yet babyish mouth twitched with pleasure.

She locked the doors, set an empty milk bottle out on the unspeakably

dreary back stairway, and flung the soggy bedding over the foot of the

bed. Then mother and daughter sauntered out into the noontime sunshine.

It was their happiest time, as free and as irresponsible as children

they went forth to meet the day's adventures. Something was sure to

happen, the "crowd" would have some plan; they rarely came home again

before midnight. But this sunshiny start into the day Was most pleasant

of all, its freshness, its potentialities, appealed to them both. It was

a February day, warm and bright, yet with a delicious tingle in the air.

"Leave us go up to Min's, Julie; some of the girls are sure to be there.

There's no mat. to-day."

"Well--" Julia was smiling aimlessly at the sunlight. Now she patted

back a yawn. "Walk?"

"Oh, sure. It's lovely out."

It was tacitly understood that Julia was to be an actress some day, when

she was older, and the boarding-house of Mrs. Minnie Tarbury, to which

the Pages were idly sauntering, was inhabited almost entirely by

theatrical folk. Emeline and Julia were quite at home in the shabby

overcrowded house in Eddy Street, and to-day walked in at the basement

door, under a flight of wooden stairs that led to the parlour floor, and

surprised the household at lunch in the dark, bay-windowed front room.

Mrs. Tarbury, a large, uncorseted woman, presided. Her boarders, girls

for the most part, were scattered down the long table. Luncheon was

properly over, but the girls were still gossiping over their tea. Flies

buzzed in the sunny window, and the rumpled tablecloth was covered with

crumbs. Mrs. Tarbury kissed Mrs. Page, and Julia settled down between

two affectionate chorus girls.

"You know you're getting to be the handsomest thing that ever lived,

Ju!" said one of these. Julia smiled without raising her eyes from the

knives and forks with which she was absently playing.

"She's got the blues to-day," said her mother. "Not a word out of her!"

"Is that right, Ju?" somebody asked solicitously.

"Just about as right as Mama ever gets it," the girl said, still with

her indifferent smile. Because her mother was shallow and violent, she

had learned to like a pose of silence, of absent-mindedness, and

because of the small yet sufficient income afforded by the rented rooms

and from alimony, Julia was removed from the necessity that drove these

other girls to the hard and constant work of the stage, and could afford

her favourite air of fastidious waiting. She was going to be an actress,

yes, but not until some plum worthy of her beauty and youth was offered.

Meanwhile she listened to the others, followed the history of the

favourites of the stage eagerly, and never saw less than four shows a

week. Julia, at Juliet's age, had her own ideas as to the interpretation

of the Balcony Scene, and could tell why she thought the art of Miss

Rehan less finished than that of Madame Modjeska. But personally she

lacked ambition, in this direction at least.

However, she joined in the girls' talk with great zest; a manager was to

be put in his place, and several theories were advanced as to his

treatment.

"I swear to God if Max don't give me twenty lines in the next, I'll go

on to New York," said a Miss Connie Girard dispassionately. "There's a

party I know there rents a house that Frohman owns, and he'd give me a

letter. What I want is a Broadway success."

"That time we played--you know, seven weeks running, in Portland," said

a stout, aging actress, "the time my little dance made such a hit, you

know--"

"Mind jer, Max never come near us this morning," interrupted a Miss Rose

Ransome firmly. "Because he knew what he done, and he wasn't looking for

trouble! He wrote a notice--"

"One of the Portland papers, in c'menting on the show--" the dancer

resumed.

"Say, Julie, want to walk down to Kearney with me?" Miss Girard said,

jumping up. "I want to get my corsets, and we might drop in and see if

we can work Foster for some seats for to-night."

"I've got a date to-night," said Julia, with a glance at her mother.

"What's that?" Emeline said sharply.

"Why, Mama, I told you I was going to the Orpheum with the Rosenthals--"

"She's going with the whole bunch," Mrs. Page commented, with a shrug.

"I can't stand them, but she can!"

"I think Mark Rosenthal's a darling," some girl said, "I want to tell

you right now there's not anybody can play the piano as good as he can."

"That's right," Julia said, very low.

"Well, excuse me from the bunch!" Mrs. Page said lazily.

"But we've got a real pretty little blush, just the same!" Mrs. Tarbury

said, smiling at Julia. The girls shouted, and Julia grew still more

red. "Never mind, baby love!" said the older woman soothingly. "It's

just Aunt Min's nonsense! Say, but listen, Julia!" Her tone grew

suddenly intense. "I meant to ask you something--listen. Say, no

fooling, Artheris wants to know if you would take a job."

"Twenty a week, and twenty towns a month," Julia said, still ruffled.

"No, I would not!"

"No, this isn't anything like that, dearie," explained Mrs. Tarbury.

"There's going to be a big amachure show for charity at the Grand next

month, and they want a few professionals in it, to buck up the others.

All the swells are going to be in it--it's going to be something

elegant! Of course they'd pay something, and it'd be a lot of fun for

you! Artheris wants you to do it, and it wouldn't hurt you none to have

him on your side, Julia. I promised I'd talk to you."

"One performance?" Julia asked. "What play?"

"I'd do it in a minute," said the stout actress from Portland, whose

dance had been so gratifying a success, "but I'm signed up."

"One night, dear," Mrs. Tarbury said. "I don't think they've decided on

the play."

"I don't know," Julia hesitated. "What d'ye think, Mama?"

"I think he's got his gall along," Mrs. Page admitted. "One night!--and

to learn the whole thing for that. I'll tell you what to tell him--you

tell him this: you say that you can't do it for one cent less'n a

hundred dollars!"

"Lay down, Towse!" said Connie Girard, and Mrs. Tarbury expressed the

same incredulity as she said benevolently: "What a pipe dream, Em--she's

lucky if she gets ten!"

"Ten!" squeaked Julia's mother, but Julia silenced her by saying

carelessly:

"I'll tell you what, Aunt Min. If Con and I get through in time we'll go

in and see Artheris to-day. I'd do it for twenty-five--"

"You would not!" said her mother.

"Well, you might get twenty-five," Mrs. Tarbury said, mollified, "if

it's a long part."

"If it don't take a lot of dressing," Julia said thoughtfully, as she

and Miss Girard powdered their noses at the dark mirror of the

sideboard.

"Don't you be fool enough to do it for a cent under fifty," Emeline

said.

Julia smiled at her vaguely, and added to her farewells a daughterly,

"Your hat's all right, Mama, but your veil's sort of caught up over your

ear. Fix it before you go out. We'll be back here at five--"

"Or we'll meet you at Monte's,'" said Connie.

The two girls walked briskly down Eddy Street, conscious of their own

charms, and conscious of the world about them. Connie was nearly

nineteen, a simple, happy little flirt, who had been in and out of love

constantly for three or four years. Julia knew her very well, and

admired her heartily. Connie had twice had a speaking part in the past

year, and the younger girl felt her to be well on her way toward fame.

Miss Girard's family of plain, respectable folk lived in Stockton, and

were somewhat distressed by her choice of a vocation, but Connie was

really a rather well-behaved girl,--and a safe adviser for Julia.

"Say, listen, Con," said Julia, presently, "you know Mark Rosenthal?"

"Sure," said Connie. "Look here, Ju!" She paused at a window. "Don't you

think these Chinese hand bags are swell!"

"Grand. But listen, Con," said Julia, shamefacedly honest as a boy.

"He's got a case on me----"

"On you?" echoed Connie. "Why, he's twenty!"

"I know it," Julia agreed.

"But, my Lord, Ju, your Mother won't stand for that!"

"Mama don't know it."

"Well, I don't think you ought to do that, Ju," Connie began gravely.

But Julia, with sudden angry tears in her eyes, stopped her.

"I've _not_ done anything!" she said crossly. And suddenly Connie saw the

truth: that Julia, in spite of paint and powder, rings and "clubbed"

hair, was only a little girl, after all, still unsexed, still young

enough to resent being teased about boys.

"What's he do?" she asked presently.

"Well, he--he--I have supper with them sometimes"--Julia's words poured

out eagerly--"and he'll kiss me, you know--"

"_Kiss_ you! The nerve!"

"Oh, before them all, I mean--like he always has done. His mother just

laughs. And then, last week, when he asked me to go to Morosco's with

them, why, it was just us two--the others had gone somewhere else."

"Well, of all gall!" said Connie, absorbed.

"And I've been up there with him thousands of times," said Julia. "Maybe

Hannah'd be there, or Sophy, but sometimes we'd be alone--while he was

playing the piano, you know."

"Well, now you look-a-here, Julie," said Connie impressively, "you cut

out that being alone business, and the kissing, too. And now how about

to-night? Are you sure his whole family is going to-night?"

"Well, that's just it, I'm not," Julia confessed, flattered by Connie's

interest.

"Then you don't go one step, my dear; just you fool him a bunch! You see

you're like a little boy, Ju: kisses don't mean nothing to you, _yet_. But

you'll get a crush some day yourself, and then you'll feel like a fool

if you've got mixed up with the wrong one--see?"

"Sure," said Julia, hoarse and embarrassed. Yet she liked the sensation

of being scolded by Connie, too, and tried shyly, as the conversation

seemed inclined to veer toward Connie's own affairs, to bring it back to

her own.

The little matter of the corsets being settled, they sauntered through

the always diverting streets toward the office of Leopold Artheris,

manager of the Grand Opera House, and a very good friend of both girls.

They found him idle, in a bright, untidy office, lined with the pictures

of stage favourites, and with three windows open to the sun and air.

"You're placed, I think, Miss Girard?" said he, giving her a fat little

puffy hand. He was a stout, short man of fifty, with a bald spot showing

under a mop of graying curls, and a bushy moustache also streaked with

gray.

"If you call it placed," said Connie, grinning. "We open Monday in

Sacramento."

"Aha! But why Sacramento?"

"Oh, we've got to open somewhere, I suppose! Try it out on the dog, you

know!" Connie said, with a sort of bored airiness.

"And you, my dear?" said Artheris, turning toward Julia.

"She's come to see you about that amachure job," said Connie, reaching

over to grab a theatrical magazine from the desk, and running her eye

carelessly over its pages. Artheris's blandly smiling face underwent an

instant change. He elevated his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and nodded

with sudden interest.

"Oh--to be sure--to be sure! The performance of 'The Amazons' for the

Hospital--yes, well! And what do you think of it, Miss Page?" he said.

Julia stretched out her little feet before her, shrugged, and brought an

indifferent eye to bear upon the manager.

"What's there in it?" she asked.

"Well, now, _that_ you'd have to settle with them," smiled Mr. Artheris.

"Oh, rot!" said Connie cheerfully. "_You_ manage that for her; what does

_she_ know? Go on!"

"But, my dear young lady, _I_ have nothing to do with it!" the man

protested. "They come to me and wish to hire my theatre, lights, ushers,

orchestra, and so, and they ask me if I know of a young actress who will

take a part--to give them all confidence, you see"--he made encouraging

gestures with his fat little hands--"to--to carry the performance, as

it were!"

"What part?" asked Connie shrewdly.

"The part of--of--a splendid part, that of the Sergeant," said Artheris

cheerfully.

"Yes, I know that part," Connie said grimly.

"The idea is to have Miss Julie here understudy all the parts," said the

manager quickly. "These amateurs are very apt to disappoint, do you see?

They feel that there would be a sense of security in having a

professional right there to fill in a gap."

"Why, that would mean she'd have to learn practically the whole play,"

said Connie. "They ought to be willing to pay a good price for that. Of

course Miss Page is only seventeen," she continued, a calculating eye on

Julia, whose appearance did not belie the statement.

"No objection at all--they are all very young! Come now, what do you

say, Miss Page?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Julia discontentedly. "I'm not so crazy about

acting," she went on childishly. "I'm not so sure I want all these

swells to stand around and impose on me--" She hesitated, uncertain and

vague. "And I don't believe Mama'd be so anxious," she submitted lamely.

Just then the door of Mr. Artheris's office was opened, and a man put in

his head. He was a young man, tall, thin, faultlessly dressed, and

possessed of an infectious smile.

"Excuse me, Mr. Artheris," beamed the intruder, "but could I have a look

at the stage? Far be it from me to interrupt or any little thing like

that," he continued easily, "but my Mother'd have me dragged out and

shot if I came home without seeing it!"

"Come in, come in, Mr. Hazzard," said Artheris cordially; "you're just

the man we want to see! Miss Girard--Miss Page--Mr. Hazzard. Mr. Hazzard

is managing this very affair--manager, isn't that it?"

"God knows what I am!" said Carter Hazzard, mopping his forehead, and

appreciative of Miss Page's beauty and the maturer charms of Miss

Girard. "I'm bell-hop for the whole crowd. My sister plays Thomasine,

her steady is Tweenwayes, and my Mother's a director in the hospital.

Fix it up to suit yourselves; you'll see that I'm every one's goat."

Both the girls laughed, and Artheris said:

"I am glad you came in, for Miss Page is the young lady of whom I spoke

to you. Unfortunately, it seems that she has just promised to sign a

contract with the Alcazar people."

"Oh, shucks! Can't you put it off until after the fifteenth?" asked Mr.

Hazzard in alarm.

"Too much money in it," Connie said, shaking her head.

"Well--well, we expected to--to pay, of course," Carter said,

embarrassed at this crudeness. And Julia, blushing furiously, muttered,

"Oh--it wasn't the _pay_!"

"In a word, Miss Page's price is twenty-five dollars a night," said

Artheris. "Could your people pay it?"

"Why--why, I suppose we could," Hazzard said uncomfortably. "It's--it's

for a charity, you know," he ended weakly.

"Well, Miss Page's usual price is fifty; she's already reduced it half!"

Connie said briskly.

Julia was now bitterly ashamed of her manager and her friend; her face

was burning.

"I'll do it, of course," she promised. "And we'll arrange the terms

afterward!"

"Good work!" said Hazzard gayly. In a few moments, when they all went

out to look at the stage, he dropped behind the others and began to walk

beside her.

"You're sure you're old enough to be on the stage, Miss Page; no Gerry

Society scandal at the last minute?" he asked banteringly. "You look

about twelve!"

Julia flashed him an oblique look.

"The idea! I'm nearly seventeen!" she said, with an uncertain little

laugh. His ardent eyes embarrassed her.

"Honest?" said Carter Hazzard, in a low, caressing tone. He laid his

fingers on her arm. "What's your hurry?" he asked.

"We ought to keep with the others," Julia stammered, scarlet cheeked but

half laughing. At the same instant his inclination to cut across her

path brought her to a full stop. She backed against a heavily tasselled

and upholstered old armchair that chanced to be standing in the wings,

and sitting down on one of its high arms, looked straight up into his

eyes. The others had gone on; they were alone in the draughty wings.

"Why ought we?" said Hazzard, still in a low voice full of significance,

his eyes on her shoulder, where he straightened a ruffle that was caught

under a chain of beads. "If you like me and I like you, why shouldn't we

have a little talk?"

However young she might appear, the inanities of a flirtation were a

familiar field to Julia. She gave him a demure and unsmiling glance from

between curled lashes, and said:

"What would you like to talk about?"

By this time their faces were close together; a sort of heady lightness

in the atmosphere set them both to laughing foolishly; their voices

trembled on uncertain notes. An exhilarating sense of her own sex and

charm thrilled Julia; she knew that he found her sweet and young and

wonderful.

"I'd like to talk about _you_!" said Carter Hazzard. Julia found his

audacity delightful; she began to feel that she could not keep up with

the dazzling rush of his repartee. "You know, the minute I saw you--" he

added.

"Now, _don't_ tell me I'm pretty!" Julia begged, with another flashing

look.

"No--no!" the man exclaimed, discarding mere beauty with violence.

"Pretty! Lord! what does prettiness matter? Of course you're pretty, but

do you know what I said to myself the minute I saw you? I said, 'I'll

bet that little girl has _brains_!' You smile," said Mr. Hazzard, with

passionate earnestness, "but I'll swear to God I did!"

"Oh, you just want me to believe that!" scoffed Julia, dimpling.

What they said, however, mattered as little as what might be said by the

two occupants of a boat that was drifting swiftly toward rapids.

"Why do you think an unkind thing like that?" Carter asked

reproachfully.

"Was that unkind?" Julia countered innocently. At which Mr. Hazzard

observed irrelevantly, in a low voice:

"Do you know you're absolutely fascinating? Do you? You're just the kind

of little girl I want to know--to be friends with--to have for a pal!"

Julia was quite wise enough to know that whatever qualifications she

possessed for this pleasing position could hardly have made themselves

evident to Mr. Hazzard during their very brief acquaintance, and she was

not a shade more sincere than he as she answered coquettishly:

"Yes, that's what they all say! And then they--" She stopped.

"And then they--what?" breathed Carter, playing with the loose ribbons

of her feather boa.

"Then they fall in love with me!" pouted the girl, raising round eyes.

Carter was intoxicated at this confession, and laughed out loud.

"But you're too young to play at falling in love!" he warned her. "How

old are you--seventeen? And you haven't told me your name yet?"

"You know my name is Miss Page," smiled Julia.

"And do you think I'm going to call you that?" Carter reproached her.

"It might be Jane," she suggested.

"Yes, but it isn't, you little devil!" Suddenly the man caught both her

wrists, and Julia got on her feet, and instinctively flung back her

head. "You're going to kiss me for that!" he said, half laughing, half

vexed.

"Oh, no, I'm not!" A sudden twist of her body failed to free her, and

the plume on her hat brushed his cheek.

"Oh, yes, you are!" He caught both wrists in one of his strong hands,

and put his arm about her shoulders like a vise, turning her face toward

him at the same time. Julia, furious with the nervous fear that this

scuffling would be overheard, and that Carter would make her ridiculous,

glared at him, and they remained staring fixedly at each other for a few

moments.

"You _dare_!" she whispered then, held so tightly that Carter could hear

her heart beat, "and I'll scream loud enough to bring every one in the

place!"

"All right--you little cat!" he laughed, freeing her suddenly. Julia

tossed her head and walked off without speaking, but presently an

oblique swift glance at him showed his expression to be all penitent and

beseeching; their eyes met, and they both laughed. Still laughing, they

came upon Artheris and Connie, and all walked out together on the

deserted stage.

The great empty arch was but dimly lighted, draughty, odorous, and

gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved

enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the

orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing

over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery some one was

experimenting with the calcium machine; a fan of light occasionally

swept the house, or a man's profile was silhouetted against a sputter of

blue flame.

Artheris and young Hazzard paced the stage, consulted, and disagreed.

Connie practised a fancy step in a wide circle, her skirt caught up, her

face quite free of self-consciousness. Julia sat on a box, soberly

looking from face to face.

Something had happened to her, she did not yet know what. She was

frightened, yet strangely bold; she experienced delicious chills, yet

her cheeks were on fire. Love of life flooded her whole being in waves;

she was wrapped, lulled, saturated, in a new and dreamy peace.

Julia felt a sudden warm rush of affection for Connie--dear old Con--the

best friend a girl ever had! She looked about the theatre; how she loved

the old "Grand!" Above all possible conditions in life it was wonderful

to be Julia Page, sitting here, the very hub of the world, a being to

love and be loved.

There, at that hour, she came to that second birth all women know; she

was born into that world of drifting sweet odours, blending and

iridescent colours, evasive and enchanting sounds, that is the kingdom

of the heart. Julia did not know why, from this hour on, she was no

longer a little girl, she was no longer dumb and blind and unseeing. But

a new and delightful consciousness woke within her, a new sense of her

own importance, her own charm.

When she and Connie strolled out again, it was, for Julia at least, into

a changed world. The immortal hour of romance touched even sordid

Mission Street with gold. Julia walked demurely, but conscious of every

admiring glance she won from the passers-by, conscious of a score of

swallows taking flight from a curb, conscious of the pathetic beauty of

the little draggled mother wheeling home her sleepy baby, the setting

sunlight glittering in the eyes of both.

"He's nothing but a big spoiled kid, if you want to know what I think,"

said Connie, ending a long dissertation to which Julia had only half

listened.

"He--who?" asked Julia, suddenly recalled from dreams, and feeling her

heart turn liquid within her. A weakness seized her knees, a delicious

chill ran up her spine.

"Hazzard--the smarty!" Connie elucidated carelessly.

"Oh, sure!" Julia said heavily. She made no further comment.

She and Connie wandered in and out of a few shops, asking prices, and

fingering laces and collars. They went into the dim, echoing old library

on Post Street, to powder their noses at the mirror downstairs; they

went into the music store at Sutter and Kearney, and listened for a few

moments to a phonograph concert; they bought violets--ten cents for a

great bunch--at the curb market about Lotta's fountain.

The sweetness of the dying spring day flooded the city, and its very

essence pierced Julia's heart with a vague pain that was a pleasure,

too. Presently she and Connie walked to California Street, and climbed a

steep block or two to the Maison Montiverte.

Julia and her mother, and a large proportion of their acquaintances,

dined chez Montiverte perhaps a hundred times a year. There was a

regular twenty-five-cent dinner that was extremely good, there was a

fifty-cent dinner fit for a king, and there were specialties de la

maison, as, for example, a combination salad at twenty cents that was a

meal in itself. Irrespective of the other order, the guest of the Maison

Montiverte was regaled with boiled shrimps or crabs' legs while he

waited for his dinner, was eagerly served with all the delicious French

bread and butter that he could eat, and had a little cup of superb black

coffee without charge to finish his meal. Brilliant piano music swept

the rooms whenever any guest cared to send the waiter with a five-cent

piece to the old mechanical piano, and sprightly conversation, carried

on from table to table, gave the place that tone that Monsieur

Montiverte considered to be its most valuable asset. Monsieur himself

was a dried-up little rat of a man, grizzled, and as brown as a walnut.

Madame was large and superb and young, smooth faced, brown haired, regal

in manner. It was said that Madame had had a predecessor, a lady now

living in France, whose claim upon Jules Montiverte was still valid.

However that might be, it did not seem to worry Jules, nor his calm and

lovely companion, nor their two daughters, black-eyed baby girls, whose

heavy straight hair was crimped at the ends into bands of brownish-black

fuzz, and who wore white stockings and tasselled boots, and flounced,

elaborately embroidered white dresses on Sundays. Whatever their bar

sinister, the Montivertes flourished and grew rich, and a suspicion of

something irregular, some high-handed disposition of the benefit of

clergy, helped rather than hurt their business.

Julia and Connie were early to-night, and took their regular places at a

long table that was as yet surrounded only by empty chairs. Madame, who

was feeding bread and milk to a black-eyed three-year-old at a little

table in a corner, nodded a welcome, and a young Frenchwoman, putting

her head in through a swinging door at the back, nodded, too, and said,

showing a double row of white teeth:

"Wait--een?"

"Yes, we'll wait for the others!" Connie called back. She and Julia

nibbled French bread, and played with their knives and forks while they

waited.

The dining-room had that aspect of having been made for domestic and

adapted to general use that is so typically un-American, yet so dear to

the American heart. An American manager would have torn down partitions,

papered in brown cartridge, curtained in pongee, and laid a hardwood

floor. Monsieur Montiverte left the two drawing-rooms as they were: a

shabby red carpet was under foot, stiff Nottingham curtains filtered the

bright sunlight, and an old-fashioned paper in dull arabesques of green

and brown and gold made a background for framed dark engravings,

"Franklin at the Court of France," and "The Stag at Bay," and other

pictures of their type. The tablecloths were coarse, the china and glass

heavy, and the menus were written in blue indelible pencil, in a curly

French hand. From the windows at the back one could look out upon an

iron-railed balcony, a garden beyond, and the old, brick, balconied

houses of the Chinese quarter. At the left the California Street cable

car climbed the hill, and the bell tower of old St. Mary's rose sombre

and dignified against the soft sunset sky. At the right were the Park,

with a home-going tide pouring through it at this hour, and Kearney

Street with its jangling car bells, and below, the square roofs of the

warehouse district, and the spire of the ferry building, and the bay

framed in its rim of hills. Montiverte owned the house in which he

conducted his business; it was one of the oldest in the city, built by

the French pioneers who were the first to erect permanent homes in the

new land. This had been the fashionable part of town in 1860, but its

stately old homes were put to strange uses in these days.

Boarding-houses of the lowest class, shops, laundries, saloons, and such

restaurants as Jules Montiverte's overran the district; the Chinese

quarter pressed hard upon one side, and what was always called the "bad"

part of town upon the other. Yet only two blocks away, straight up the

hill, were some of San Francisco's most beautiful homes, the brownstone

mansion, then the only one in California, that some homesick Easterner

built at fabulous cost, the great house that had been recently given for

an institute of art, and the homes of two or three of the railroad

kings.

Patrons of Montiverte began to saunter in by twos and threes. Some of

these the girls knew, and saluted familiarly; others were strangers, and

ignored, and made to feel as uncomfortable as possible. Julia's beauty

was always the object of notice, and she loved to appear entirely

unconscious of it, to sparkle and chatter as if no eyes were upon her.

Emeline came in, with one or two older women, and Julia looked up from a

great bowl of soup to nod to her.

"Sign up?" asked Emeline languidly. And two or three strangers,

obviously impressed by the term, waited for the answer.

"Oh, I guess I'll do it to please Artheris!" Julia said. The girl was

fairly aglow to-night, palpitating and thrilling with youth and the joy

of life. Everything distracted her--everything amused her--yet now and

then she found a quiet moment in which to take out her little memories

of the afternoon, and to review them with a curiously palpitating heart.

"If you like me and I like you ... I want to talk about you ... do you

know you're absolutely fascinating? ... you're going to kiss me for

that! ..." She could still hear his voice, feel his arm about her.

Somebody producing free seats for the Alcazar Theatre, Julia allowed

herself to drift along with the crowd. They were late for the

performance, but nobody cared; they had all seen it before, and after

commenting on it in a way that somewhat annoyed their neighbours,

straggled out, in the beginning of the last act, giggling and chewing

gum. Julia, raising bewildered, sweet, childish eyes to the stars above

noisy O'Farrell Street, was brought suddenly to earth by a touch on her

arm.

It was a dark, tall young man who stepped out of a shadowy doorway to

address her, a man of twenty, perhaps, with all the ripe and sensuous

beauty of the young Jew. His skin was a clear olive, his magnificent

black eyes were set off with evenly curling lashes, and his firm mouth,

under its faint moustache, made a touch of scarlet colour among the rich

brunette tones. He was dressed with a scrupulous niceness, and carried a

long light overcoat on his arm.

"Julia!" he said sombrely, coming forward, his eyes only for her.

"Why, hello, Mark!" Julia answered. And with a little concern creeping

into her manner she went on, "Why, what is it?"

Young Rosenthal glanced at her friends, and, formally offering her his

arm, said seriously: "You will walk with me?"

"We were going down to Haas's for ice-cream sodas," Julia submitted

hesitatingly.

"Well, I will take you there," Mark said. And as the others, nodding

good-naturedly at this, drifted on ahead, Julia found herself walking

down O'Farrell Street on the arm of a tall and handsome man.

It was the first time that she had done just this thing--or if not the

first time, it had never seemed to have any particular significance

before. Now, however, Julia felt in her heart a little flutter of

satisfaction. Somehow Mark did not seem just a commonplace member of the

"Rosenthal gang" to-night, nor did she seem "the Page kid." Mark was a

man, and--thrilling thought!--was angry at Julia, and Julia, hanging on

his arm, with a hundred street lights flashing on her little powdered

nose and saucy hat, was at last a "young lady!"

"What's the matter, Mark?" she asked, by way of opening the

conversation.

"Oh, nothing whatever!" Mark answered, in a rich, full voice, and with

elaborate irony. "You promised to go to the Orpheum with me, and I

waited--and I waited--and you did not come. But that is nothing, of

course!"

Julia's anger smote her dumb for a moment. Then she jerked her arm from

his, and burst out:

"I'll _tell_ you why I didn't meet you to-night, Mark Rosenthal, and if

you don't like it, you know what you can do! Last week you asked me

would I go to Morosco's with you, and I said yes, and then when it came

right down to it--your mother wasn't going, and Sophy and Hannah weren't

going, and Otto wasn't going--and I tell you right now that Mama don't

like me to go to the theatre--"

"Well, well, well!" Mark interrupted soothingly, half laughing, half

aghast at this burst of rebuke from the usually gentle Julia. "Don't be

so cross about it! So--" He put her arm in his again. "I like to have

you to myself, Julia," he said, his boyish, handsome face suddenly

flushing, his voice very low. "Do you know why?"

"No," said Julia after a pause, the word strangling her.

"You don't, eh?" Mark said, with a smiling side glance.

"Nope," said Julia, dimpling as she returned the look, and shutting her

pretty lips firmly over the little word.

"Do you know you are ador-r-rable?" Mark said, in a sort of eager rush.

"Will you go to Maskey's with me, instead of joining the others at

Haas's?" he asked, more quietly.

"Well," Julia said. She was her own mistress. Her mother had gone home

during the play with Mrs. Toomey, who complained of a headache. So,

grinning like conspirators, they stayed on the south side of the street

until it joined Market, and then went by the fountain and the big

newspaper buildings, and slipped into the confectioner's. Julia sent an

approving side glance at herself in the mirror, as she drew a satisfied

breath of the essence-laden air. She loved lights, perfumes, voices--and

all were here.

An indifferent young woman wiped their table with a damp rag, as she

took their order, both, with the daring of their years, deciding upon

the murderous combination of banana ice-cream and soda with chopped nuts

and fruit. Julia had no sooner settled back contentedly to wait for it,

than her eye encountered the beaming faces of her late companions, who,

finding Haas's crowded, had naturally drifted on to Maskey's.

Much giggling and blushing and teasing ensued. Julia was radiant as a

rose; every time she caught sight of her own pretty reflection in the

surrounding mirrors, a fresh thrill of self-confidence warmed her. She

and Mark followed the banana confection with a dish apiece of raspberry

ice-cream, and afterward walked home--it was not far--to the house in

which they both lived.

"And so we don't quarrel any more?" Mark asked, in the dim hallway

outside her door.

"Not if you won't play mean tricks on me!" Julia pouted, raising her

face so that the dim light of the gas jet that burned year in and year

out, in the blistered red-glass shade, fell upon the soft curves of her

face.

It was a deliberate piece of coquetry, and Julia, although neither he

nor any other man had ever done it before, was not at all surprised to

have Mark suddenly close his strong arms about her, and kiss her, with a

sort of repressed violence, on the mouth. She struggled from his hold,

as a matter of course, laughed a little laugh of triumph and excitement,

and shut herself into her own door.

Emeline was lying in bed, looking over some fashion and theatrical

magazines. Upon her daughter's entrance she gave a comfortable yawn.

"Did Mark find you, Julie? He was sitting on the stairs when I got home,

mad because you didn't go out with them."

"Yep, he found me!" Julia answered, still panting.

"It strikes me he's a little mushy on you, Julie," Emeline said, lazily,

turning a page. "And if you were a little older, or he had more of a

job, I'd give him a piece of my mind. You ain't going to marry _his_ sort,

I should hope. But, Lord, you're both only kids!"

"I guess I can mind my own business, Mama," Julia said.

"Well, I guess you can," Emeline conceded amiably. "Look, Ju, at the

size of these sleeves--ain't that something fierce? Get the light out as

soon as you can, lovey," she added, flinging away her magazine, and

rolling herself tight in the covers, with bright eyes fixed on the girl.

Ten minutes later Emeline was asleep. But Julia lay long awake,

springtime in her blood, her eyes smiling mysteriously into the dark.

CHAPTER III

By just what mental processes Emeline Page had come to feel herself a

dignified martyr in a world full of oppressed women, it would be

difficult to say: Emeline herself would have been the last person from

whom a reasonable explanation might have been expected. But it was a

fact that she never missed an opportunity to belittle the male sex; she

had never had much charm for men, she had none now, and consequently she

associated chiefly with women: with widows and grass widows of her own

type, and with the young actresses and would-be actresses of the curious

social level upon which she lived. Emeline's lack of charm was the most

valuable moral asset she had. Had she attracted men she would not long

have remained virtuous, for she was violently opposed to any restriction

upon her own desires, no matter how well established a restriction or

how generally accepted it might be. For a little while after George's

going, Emeline had indeed frequently used the term "if I marry again,"

but of late years she had rather softened to his memory, and enjoyed

abusing other men while she revelled in a fond recollection of George's

goodness.

"God knows I was only a foolish girl," Emeline would say, resting cold

wet feet against the open oven door while Julia pressed a frill. "But

your papa never was anything but a perfect ge'man, never! I'll never

forget one night when he took me to Grant's Cafe for dinner! I was all

dressed up to kill, and George looked elegant--"

A long reminiscence followed.

"I hope to God you get as good a man as your papa," said Emeline more

than once, romantically.

Julia, thumping an iron, would answer with cool common sense:

"Well, if I do, I want to tell you right now, Mama, I'll treat him a

good deal better than you did!"

"Oh, you'll be a wonder," Emeline would concede good-naturedly.

At very long intervals Emeline dressed herself and her daughter as

elaborately as possible, and went out into the Mission to see her

parents. With the singular readiness to change the known discomfort for

the unknown, characteristic of their class, the various young members of

the family had all gone away now, and lonely old Mrs. Cox, a shrivelled

little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her

oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her

bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing

meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old

hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a

fresh loaf of "milk bread."

"D'ye see George at all now, Emeline?"

"Not to speak to, Mom. But"--and Emeline would lay down the little

mirror in which she was studying her face--"but the Rosenthal children

say that there's a man who's _always_ hanging about the lower doorway, and

that once he gave Hannah----"

And so on and on. Mrs. Cox was readily convinced that George, repentant,

was unable to keep away from the neighbourhood of his one and only love.

Julia, dreaming over her thick cup of strong tea, granted only a polite,

faintly weary smile to her mother's romances. She knew how glad Emeline

would be to really believe even one tenth of these flattering

suspicions.

A few weeks after Julia's long day of events with Artheris, with Carter

Hazzard, and young Rosenthal, she chanced to awaken one Saturday morning

to a pleasant, undefined sensation that life was sweet. She thought of

Mr. Hazzard, whom she had seen twice since their first meeting, but not

alone again. And she reflected with satisfaction that she knew her part

of "The Amazons" perfectly, and so was ready for the first rehearsal

to-day. This led to a little dream of the leading lady failing to appear

on the great night, and of Julia herself in Lady Noel's part; of Julia

subsequently adored and envied by the entire cast; of Carter Hazzard----

Julia had made an engagement with Mark for to-day, but the rehearsal

plan must interfere. She wondered how she could send him word, and

finally decided to see him herself for a moment early in the afternoon.

Mark, originally employed as office boy, pure and simple, had now made

himself a general handy man, reference and filing clerk, in the big

piano house of Pomeroy and Parke. He had all the good traits of his

race, and some of the traits that, without being wholly admirable, help

a man toward success. No slur at himself or his religion was keen enough

to pierce Mark's smiling armour of philosophy, no hours were too hard

for him, no work too menial for him to do cheerfully, nor too important

for him to undertake confidently. A wisdom far older than his years was

his. Poverty had been his teacher, exile and deprivation. When other

children were in school, repeating mechanically that many a little made

a mickle, that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains, and

that a man has no handicaps but those of his own making, Mark _knew_ these

things, he knew that the great forces of life were no stronger than his

own two hands, and that any work of any sort must bring him to his

goal--the goal of wealth and power and position.

He knew that his father was not so clever as he was, and why. He saw

that his mother was worn out with housework and child-bearing. He did

not idealize their home, where father, mother, and seven children were

crowded into four rooms, and where of an evening the smell of cabbage

soup and herrings, of soap-suds and hot irons on woollen, of inky school

books and perspiring humanity, mingled with the hot, oily breath of the

lamp.

Yet Mark saw beyond this, too. The food was good, if coarse, the bills

were paid, the bank account grew. Some day the girls would be married,

the boys in good positions; some day the mother should have a little

country house and a garden, and the father come home early to smoke his

pipe and prune his rose bushes. Not a very brilliant future--no. But how

brilliant to them, who could remember Russia!

As for him, Mark, there was no limit to his personal dream at all. Some

day, while yet as young as Mr. Parke, he would be as rich as Mr.

Pomeroy, he would have five splendid children, like the Pomeroy

children, he would have a wife as beautiful as young Mrs. Parke. To his

beautiful Jackson Street palace the city's best people should come, and

sometimes--for a favoured few--he would play his rippling etudes and

nocturnes, his mazurkas and polonaises.

Julia Page, an unnoticed little neighbour for many years, had, just at

present, somewhat ruffled the surface of his dream. Julia was not the

ideal wife of his mind or heart; nor was she apt to grow to fill that

ideal. Mrs. Mark Rosenthal must be a Jewess, a wise, ripened, poised,

and low-voiced woman, a lover of music, babies, gardens, cooking, and

managing.

Yet there had been a certain evening, not long before that spring

evening upon which Julia's own awakening came, when Mark had been

astonished to find a sudden charm in the little girl. She was only a

little girl, of course, he said to himself later; just a kid, but she

was a mighty cunning kid!

Julia often had dinner with the Rosenthals; she loved every separate

member of the family and she knew they all loved her. She used to run

upstairs and pop her pretty head into the Rosenthal kitchen perhaps

twice a week, sure of a welcome and a good meal. On the occasion so

significant to Mark she had been there when he got in from work, helping

his sisters Sophy and Hannah with that careless disposition of iron

knives, great china sugar bowl, oddly assorted plates, and thick cups

that was known as "setting the table."

Mark had noticed then that Julia's figure was getting very pretty, and

he watched her coming and going with a real pleasure. She sat next him

at table, and, conscious as he was of her nearness and of himself, he

found her unconsciousness very charming. Julia had burned her arm

serving the fried hominy, and she held it up for Mark to see, the bare,

sweet young arm close to his face.

And since then, poor Mark seemed to be bewitched. He could not think of

anything but Julia. It made him angry and self-contemptuous, but he was

no better off for that. He did not want to fall in love with Julia Page;

he would not admit that what he felt for Julia was love; he raged with

disappointment at the mere thought of bondage so soon, and especially

this bondage. But the sweetness of her stole upon his senses

nevertheless, tangling about him like a drifting bit of vaporous mist;

he had no sooner detached one section of it than another blew across his

eyes, set pulses to beating in his temples, and shook his whole body

with a delicious weakness.

And then came the night when she had not kept her appointment, and he

had followed her to the Alcazar Theatre, and later kissed her in the

dark hallway. Then Mark knew. From the instant her fresh lips touched

his, and he felt the soft yielding as he drew her to him, Mark knew that

he was of the world's lovers. He wanted her with all the deep passion of

first love--first love in an ardent and romantic and forceful nature.

His dreams did not change; Julia changed to fit them. She was everything

for which he had ever longed, she was perfection absolute. She became

his music, his business, his life. Every little girl, every old woman

that he passed in the street, made him think of Julia, and when he

passed a young man and woman full of concern for, and of shy pride in,

their lumpy baby in its embroidered coat, a wave of divine envy swept

Mark from head to foot.

To-day he whistled over his work, thinking of Julia. They were to meet

at three o'clock, "just to bum," as the girl said, laughing. Mark

thought that, as the season was well forward, they might take a car to

the park or the beach, but the plan had been left indefinite.

He ate his lunch, of butterless bread and sausage, and an entire

five-cent pie, in a piano wareroom, taking great bites, with dreamy

studying of the walls and long delays between. Then he wandered down

through the empty offices--it was Saturday afternoon and Pomeroy and

Parke closed promptly at twelve--had a brief chat with the Japanese

janitor, and washed his hands and combed his hair very conscientiously

in the president's own lavatory.

At half-past one he went into one of the glass showrooms, a prettily

furnished apartment whose most notable article of furniture was a grand

piano in exquisitely matched Circassian walnut. Absorbed and radiant,

Mark put back the cover, twirled the stool, and carefully opened a green

book marked "Chopin." Then he sat down, and, with the sigh of a happy

child falling upon a feast, he struck an opening chord.

The big flexible fingers still needed training, but they showed the

result of hours and hours of patient practice, too. Through his seven

years in the music house, Mark had been faithful to his gift. He made no

secret of it, his associates knew that he came back after dinner to the

very rooms that they themselves left so eagerly at the end of the day.

Mark had indeed once asked old Mr. Pomeroy to hear him play, an occasion

to which the boy still looked back with hot shame. For when his obliging

old employer had settled himself to listen after hours on an appointed

afternoon, and Mark had opened the piano, the performer suddenly found

his spine icy, his hands wet and clumsy. He felt as if he had never

touched a piano before; the attempt was a failure from the first note,

as Mark well knew. When he had finished he whisked open another book.

"That was rotten," he stammered. "I thought I could do it--I can't. But

just let me play you this--"

But the great man was in a hurry, it appeared.

"No--no, my boy, not to-day--some other time! Perhaps a little bit too

ambitious a choice, eh? We must all be ambitious, but we must know our

limitations, too. Some other time!"

Then Mr. Pomeroy was gone and Mark left to bitterest reflection.

But he recovered very sensibly from his boyish chagrin, and very

sensibly went at his practicing again. On this particular Saturday

afternoon he attacked a certain phrase in the bass, and for almost an

hour the big fingers of his left hand rippled over it steadily. Mark,

twisted about halfway on the bench, watched the performance steadily,

his right hand hanging loose.

"Damn!" he said presently, with a weary sigh, as a sharp and familiar

little pain sprang into his left wrist.

"Mark!" breathed a reproachful voice behind him. He whirled about, to

see Julia Page.

She had come noiselessly in at the glass doorway behind him, and was

standing there, laughing, a picture of fresh and demure beauty, despite

the varied colours in hat and waist and gown and gloves.

"I had to see you!" said Julia, in a rush. "And nobody answered your

telephone--there's a rehearsal of that play at the theatre to-day, so I

can't meet you--and the janitor let me in----"

Mark found her incoherence delicious; her being here, in his own

familiar stamping-ground, one of the thrilling and exciting episodes of

his life. He could have shouted--have danced for pure joy as he jumped

up to welcome her. Julia declared that she had to "fly," but Mark

insisted--and she found his insistence curiously pleasant--upon showing

her about, leading her from office to office, beaming at her whenever

their eyes met. And he _must_ play her the little Schumann, he said, but

no--for that Julia positively would _not_ wait; she jerked him by one hand

toward the door. Mark had his second kiss before they emerged laughing

and radiant into the gaiety of Kearney Street on a Saturday afternoon.

And Julia was not late for her rehearsal, or, if late, she was at least

earlier by a full quarter hour than the rest of the caste. She took an

orchestra seat in the empty auditorium at the doorkeeper's suggestion,

and yawned, and stared at the coatless back of a man who was tuning the

orchestra piano.

Presently two distinguished looking girls, beautifully dressed, came in,

and sat down near her in a rather uncertain way, and began to laugh and

talk in low tones. Neither cast a glance at Julia, who promptly decided

that they were hateful snobs, and began to regard them with burning

resentment. They had been there only a few moments when two young men

sauntered down the aisle, unmistakably gentlemen, and genuine enough to

express their enjoyment of this glimpse of a theatre between

performances. Two of them carried little paper copies of "The Amazons,"

so Julia knew them for fellow-performers.

Then a third young woman came in and walked down the aisle as the others

had done. This was an extremely pretty girl of perhaps eighteen, with

dark hair and dark bright eyes, and a very fresh bright colour. Her gown

was plain but beautifully fitting, and her wide hat was crowned with a

single long ostrich plume. She peered at the young men.

"Hello, Bobby--hello, Gray!" she said gayly, and then, catching sight of

the two other girls across the aisle, she added: "Oh, hello, Helen--how

do you do, Miss Carson? Come over here and meet Mr. Sumner and Mr.

Babcock!"

Babel ensued. Three or four waiting young people said, "Oh, Barbara!" in

tones of great delight, and the fourth no less eagerly substituted, "Oh,

Miss Toland!"

"How long have you poor, long-suffering catfish been waiting here?"

demanded Miss Barbara Toland, with a sort of easy sweetness that Julia

found instantly enviable. "Why, we're all out in the foyer--Mother's

here, chaperoning away like mad, and nearly all the others! And"--she

whisked a little gold watch into sight--"my dears, it's twenty minutes

to four!"

Every one exclaimed, as they rushed out. Julia, unaccountably nervous,

wished she were well out of this affair, and wondered what she ought to

do.

Presently some twenty-five or thirty well-dressed folk came streaming

back down the main aisle in a wild confusion of laughter and talk.

Somehow the principals were filtered out of this crowd, and somehow they

got on the stage, and got a few lights turned on, and assembled for the

advice of an agitated manager. Dowagers and sympathetic friends settled

in orchestra seats to watch; the rehearsal began.

Julia had strolled up to the stage after the others; now she sat on a

shabby wooden chair that had lost its back, leaned her back against a

piece of scenery, and surveyed the scene with as haughty and indifferent

an air as she could assume.

"And the Sergeant--who takes that?" demanded the manager, a young fellow

of their own class, familiarly addressed as "Matty."

The caste, which had been churning senselessly about him, chorussed an

explanation.

"A professional takes that, Mat, don't you remember?"

"Well, where is she?" Matty asked irritably.

Julia here sauntered superbly forward, serenely conscious of youth,

beauty, and charm. Every one stared frankly at her, as she said

languidly:

"Perhaps it's I you're looking for? Mr. Artheris--"

"Yes, that's right!" said Matty, relieved. He wiped his forehead.

"Miss--Page, isn't it?" He paused, a little at a loss, eying the other

ladies of the caste dubiously. The girl called Barbara Toland now came

forward with her ready graciousness, and the two girls looked fairly

into each other's eyes.

"Miss Page," said Barbara, and then impatiently to the manager, "Do go

ahead and get started, Matty; we've got to get home some time to-night!"

Julia's introduction was thus waived, and business began at once. The

wavering voices of the principals drifted uncertainly into the theatre.

"Louder!" said the chaperons and friends. The men were facetious,

interpolating their lines with jokes, good-humoured under criticism; the

girls fluttered nervously over cues, could not repeat the simplest line

without a half-giggling "Let's see--yes, I come in here," and were only

fairly started before they must interrupt themselves with an earnest,

"Mat, am I standing still when I say that, or do I walk toward her?"

Julia was the exception. She had been instructed a fortnight before that

she must know her lines and business to-day, and she did know them.

Almost scornfully she took her cues and walked through her part. "Matty"

clapped his hands and overpraised her, and Julia felt with a great rush

of triumph that she had "shown those girls!" She had an exhilarating

afternoon, for the men buzzed about her on every possible occasion, and

she knew that the other girls, for all their lofty indifference, were

keenly conscious of it.

She went out through the theatre with the others, at an early six. The

young people straggled along the aisle in great confusion, laughing and

chattering. Mrs. Toland, a plump, merry, handsomely dressed woman, was

anxious to carry off her tall daughter in time for some early boat.

"_Do_ hurry, Barbara! Sally and Ted may be on that five-fifty, and if Dad

went home earlier they'll have to make the trip alone!"

At the doorway they found that the street was almost dark, and foggy.

Much discussion of cars and carriages marked the breaking-up. Enid

Hazzard, a rather noisy girl, who played Noel Belturbet, elected to go

home with the Babcocks. This freed from all responsibility her brother

Carter, who had suddenly appeared to act as escort. Julia, slipping up

the darkening street, after a few moments spent in watching this crowd

of curious young people, found him at her side.

"No coat, Miss Page?" said the easy tones.

"I didn't know it would be so foggy!" said Julia, her heart beginning to

thump.

"And where are you going?"

"Home to get a coat."

"I see. Where is it? I'll take you."

"Oh, it's just a few blocks," Julia said. She knew nothing of the

reputation of San Francisco's neighbourhoods, but Carter gave her a

surprised look. When Julia, quite unembarrassed, stopped at the door

beside the saloon, he was the more confused of the two, although the

accident of seeing him again had set the blood to racing in Julia's

veins and made speech difficult. She had been longing for just this; she

was trembling with eagerness and nervousness.

"Father and Mother live here?" asked Carter.

"Just Mama--she rents rooms."

"Oh, I see!" He had stepped into the deep doorway, and catching her by

the shoulders he said now, inconsequently: "Do you know you're the

prettiest girl that ever _was_?"

"Am I?" said Julia, in a whisper.

"You know you are--you--you little flirt!" Hazzard said, his eyes three

inches from hers. For a tense second neither stirred, then the man

straightened up suddenly: "Well!" he said loudly. "That'll be about all

of _that_. Good-night, my dear!"

He turned abruptly away, and Julia, smiling her little inscrutable

smile, went slowly upstairs. The bedroom was dark, unaired, and in

disorder. Julia looked about it dreamily, picked her library book from

the floor and read a few pages of "Aunt Johnnie," sitting meanwhile on

the edge of the unmade bed, and chewing a piece of gum that had been

pressed, a neat bead, upon the back of a chair. After a while she got

up, powdered her nose, and rubbed her finger-nails with a buffer--a

buffer lifeless and hard, and deeply stained with dirt and red grease.

Emeline had left a note, "Gone up to Min's--come up there for supper,"

but Julia felt that there was no hurry; meals at Mrs. Tarbury's were

usually late.

During the ensuing fortnight there were two or three more rehearsals of

"The Amazons" at the Grand Opera House, which only confirmed Julia's

first impression of her fellow-players. The men she liked, and flirted

with; for the girls she had a supreme contempt. She found herself

younger, prettier, and a better actress than the youngest, prettiest,

and cleverest among them. While these pampered daughters of wealth went

awkwardly through their parts, and chatted in subdued tones among

themselves, Julia rattled her speeches off easily, laughed and talked

with all the young men in turn, posed and pirouetted as one born to the

footlights. If Julia fancied that any girl was betraying a preference

for any particular man, against that man she directed the full battery

of her charms. Carter Hazzard came to every rehearsal, and was quite

openly her slave. He did not offer to walk home with her again, but

Julia knew that he was conscious of her presence whenever she was near

him, and spun a mad little dream about a future in which she queened it

over all these girls as his wife.

It was all delightful and exciting. Life had never been dark to Julia;

now she found the days all too short for her various occupations and

pleasures. Mark was assuming more and more the attitude of a lover, and

Julia was too much of a coquette to discourage him utterly. She really

liked him, and loved the stolen hours in Pomeroy and Parke's big piano

house, when Mark, flinging his hair out of his eyes, played like an

angel, and Julia nibbled caramels and sat curled up on the davenport,

watching him. And through the casual attentions of other men, the

occasional flattering half-hours with Carter Hazzard, the evenings of

gossip at Mrs. Tarbury's, and round the long table at Montiverte's,

Julia liked to sometimes think of Mark; his admiration was a little

warm, reassuring background for all the other thoughts of the day.

At the end of the fourth or fifth rehearsal Julia noticed that pretty

Barbara Toland was trying to manage a moment's speech with her alone.

She amused herself with an attempt to avoid Miss Toland just from pure

mischief, but eventually the two came face to face, in a garishly

lighted bit of passage, Barbara, for all her advantage in years and in

position, seeming the younger of the two.

"Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara nervously, "I wanted to--but were you

going somewhere?"

"Don't matter if I was!" said Julia, airily gracious, but watching

shrewdly.

"Well, I--I hope you won't think this is funny, but, well, I'll tell

you," stammered Barbara, very red. "I know you don't know us all very

well, you know--it's different with us--we've all been brought up

together--but I didn't know whether you knew--perhaps you did--that

Carter Hazzard is married?"

Julia felt stunned, and a little sick. She got only the meaning of the

words, their value would come later. But with a desperate effort she

pulled herself together, and smiled with dry lips.

"Yes, I knew that," she said, pleasantly, not meeting Barbara's eye.

"Oh, well, then it's all _right_," Barbara said hastily, relieved. "But

he--he has a teasing sort of way, you know. His wife is in San Diego

now, with her own people."

"Yes, he told me that," Julia said, only longing to escape before a

maddening impulse to cry overpowered her. Barbara saw the truth, and

laid a friendly hand on Julia's arm.

"I just wanted you to know," she said in her kindliest tone.

Suddenly Julia burst out crying, childishly blubbering with her wrists

in her eyes. Barbara, very much distressed, shielded her as well as she

could from the eyes of possible passers-by, and patted her shoulder with

a gloved hand.

"I don't know why--perfectly _crazy_--" gulped Julia, desperately fighting

the sobs that shook her. "And I've had a dreadful headache all day," she

broke out, pitifully, beginning to mop her eyes with a folded

handkerchief, her face still turned away from Barbara.

"Oh, poor thing!" said Barbara. "And the rehearsal must have made it

worse!"

"It's splitting," Julia said sombrely. She gave Barbara one grave,

almost resentful, look, straightened her hat and fluffed up her hair,

and went away. Barbara looked after her, and thought that Carter was a

beast, and that there was something very pitiful about common little

ignorant Miss Page, and that she wouldn't tell the girls about this, and

give them one more cause to laugh at the little actress. For Barbara

Toland was a conscientious girl, and very seriously impressed with the

gravity of her own responsibility toward other people.

Meanwhile Julia walked toward the Mechanics' Library in a very fury of

rage and resentment. She hated the entire caste of "The Amazons," and

she hated Barbara Toland and Carter Hazzard more than the rest! He could

play with her and flirt with her and deceive her, and while she, Julia,

fancied herself envied and admired of the other girls, this delicately

perfumed and exquisitely superior Barbara could be deciding in all

sisterly kindness that she must inform Miss Page of her admirer's real

position. Angry tears came to Julia's eyes, but she went into the

Mechanics' Library and washed the evidences of them away, and made

herself nice to meet Mark.

But a subtle change in the girl dated from that day; casual and foolish

as the affair with Carter had been, it left its scar. Julia's heart

winced away from the thought of him as she herself might have shrunk

from fire. She never forgave him.

It was good to find Mark still enslaved, everything soothing and

reassuring. When Julia left him, at her own door at six o'clock, she was

her radiant, confident self again, and they kissed each other at parting

like true lovers. To his eager demand for a promise Julia still returned

a staid, "Mama'd be crazy, Mark. I ain't sixteen yet!" but on this

enchanted afternoon she had consented to linger, on Kearney Street,

before the trays of rings in jewellers' windows, and it was in the

wildest spirits that Mark bounded on upstairs to his own apartment.

Julia had expected to find her mother at home. Instead the room was

empty, but the gas was flaring high, and all about was more than the

customary disorder; there were evidences that Emeline had left home in

something of a hurry. The girl searched until she found the explanatory

note, and read it with knitted brow.

"I'm going to Santa Rosa on important business, deary," Emeline had

scribbled, "and you'd better go to Min's for a few days. I'll write and

leave you know if there is anything in it, otherwise there's no use

getting Min and the girls started talking. There's ten dollars in the

hairpin box. With love, Mama."

"Well, I'd give a good deal to know what struck Em," said Mrs. Tarbury,

for the hundredth time. It was late in the evening of the same day, and

the lady and Julia were in the room shared by Miss Connie Girard and

Miss Rose Ransome. Both the young actresses had previously appeared in a

skit at a local vaudeville house, but had come home to prepare for a

supper to be given by friends in their own profession, after the

theatres had closed. Each girl had a bureau of her own, hopelessly

cluttered and crowded, and over each bureau an unshielded gas jet

flared.

"Well, I'm _going_ to know!" Julia added, in a heavy, significant tone.

She had come to feel herself very much abused by her mother's treatment,

and was inclined to entertain ugly suspicions.

"Oh, come now!" Rose Ransome said, scowling at herself in a hand mirror

as she carefully rouged her lips. "Don't you get any silly notions in

your head!"

"No," Mrs. Tarbury added heavily, as she rocked comfortably to and fro,

"no, that ain't Em. Em is a cut-up, all right, and she's a great one for

a josh with the boys, but she's as straight as a string! You'll find

that she's got some good reason for this!"

"Well, she'd better have!" Julia said sulkily. "I'm going out to see my

grandmother to-morrow and see if she knows anything!"

But she really gave less thought to her mother than to the stinging

memory of Barbara Toland's generosity and Carter Hazzard's deception.

She settled down contentedly enough, sharing the room with Connie and

Rose, and sharing their secrets, and her visit to old Mrs. Cox was

indefinitely postponed. The girls drifted about together, in and out of

theatres, in and out of restaurants and hotels, reading cheap theatrical

magazines, talking of nothing but their profession. The days were long

and dull, the evenings feverish; Julia liked it all. She had no very

high ideal of home life; she did not mind the disorder of their room,

the jumbled bureau drawers, the chairs and tables strewn with garments,

the fly-specked photographs nailed against the walls. It was a

comfortable, irresponsible, diverting existence, at its worst.

Emeline did not write her daughter for nearly two weeks, but Julia was

not left in doubt of her mother's moral and physical safety for that

time. Only two or three days after Emeline's disappearance Julia was

called upon by a flashily dressed, coarse-featured man of perhaps forty

who introduced himself--in a hoarse voice heavy with liquor--as Dick

Palmer.

"I used to know your Pop when you's only a kid," said the caller, "and I

know where your Mamma is now--she's gone down to Santa Rosa, see?"

"What'd she go there for?" Julia demanded clearly.

Mr. Palmer cast an agitated glance about Mrs. Tarbury's dreadful

drawing-room, and lowered his voice confidentially:

"Well, d'ye see--here's how it is! Your Papa's down there in Santa Rosa.

I run acrost him in a boarding-house a few days ago, and d'ye see--he's

sick. That's right," added the speaker heavily, "he's sick."

"Dying?" said Julia dramatically.

"No, he ain't dying. It's like this," pursued the narrator, still with

his air of secrecy, "there's a party there that runs the

boarding-house--her name's Lottie Clute, she's had it for years, and

she's got on to the fact that George is insured for nine thousand

dollars, d'ye see? Well, she's got him to promise to make the policy

over to her."

"Ha!" said Julia, interested at last.

"Well, d'ye see?" said Mr. Palmer triumphantly. "So I come up to town

last week, and I thought I'd drop in on your Mamma! No good letting this

other little lady have it _all_ her own way, you know!"

"That's right, too, she's no more than a thief!" Julia commented simply.

"I don't know what Mama can do, but I guess you can leave it to Mama!"

Mr. Palmer, agreeing eagerly to this, took his leave, after paying a

hoarse tribute to the beauty of his old friend's daughter, and Julia

dismissed the matter from her mind.

She told Connie that she meant, as soon as this amateur affair was over,

to try the stage in real earnest, and Connie, whose own last venture had

ended somewhat flatly, was nevertheless very sanguine about Julia's

success. She took Julia to see various managers, who were invariably

interested and urbane, and Julia, deciding bitterly that she would have

no more to do with her fellow-performers in the caste of "The Amazon,"

had Connie accompany her to rehearsals, and went through her part with a

sort of sullen hauteur.

She and Connie were down in the dressing-rooms one day after a rehearsal

chatting with the woman star of a travelling stock company, who chanced

to be there, when Barbara Toland suddenly came in upon them.

"Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara in relief, "I _am_ so glad to find you! I

don't know whether you heard Mr. Pope announce that we're to have our

dress rehearsal on Saturday, at the yacht club in Sausalito? There is

quite a large stage."

Julia shook her head.

"I don't know that I can come Saturday," she objected, only anxious to

be disobliging.

"Oh, you _must_," said Barbara brightly. "_Do_ try! You take the

one-forty-five from the Sausalito ferry, and somebody'll meet you! And

if we should be kept later than we expect, somebody'll bring you home!"

"I have a friend who would come for me," said Julia stiffly, thinking of

Mark.

For just a second mirth threatened Barbara's dignity, but she said

staidly:

"That's fine! And remember, we _depend_ on you!"

CHAPTER IV

The family of Dr. Robert Toland, discovered at breakfast in the Tolands'

big house in Sausalito on an exquisite May morning, presented to the

casual onlooker as charming a picture of home life as might be found in

the length and breadth of California. The sunny dining-room, with its

windows wide open to sunshine and fresh sea air, the snowy curtains

blowing softly to and fro, the wide sideboard where the children's

outgrown mugs stood in a battered and glittering row, the one or two

stiff, flat, old oil portraits that looked down from the walls, the jars

of yellow acacia bloom, and bowls of mingled wild flowers; these made a

setting wonderfully well suited to the long table and the happy family

about it.

There were seven children, five girls and two boys; there was the

gracious, genial mother at the head and the wiry, gray-haired and

gray-bearded surgeon at the foot; there was, as usual, Jim Studdiford,

and to-day, besides, there was Aunt Sanna, an unmarried younger sister

of the doctor, and a little black-eyed, delicate ten-year-old guest of

the eleven-year-old Janie, Keith Borroughs, who was sitting near to

Janie, and evidently adoring that spirited chatterbox. And there was

Addie, a cheerful black-clad person in a crackling white apron, coming

and going with muffins and bacon, and Toy, who was a young cousin of

Hee, the cook, and who padded softly in Addie's wake, making himself

generally useful.

Barbara, very pretty, very casual as to what she ate, sat next to her

father; she was the oldest of the seven Tolands, and slipping very

reluctantly out of her eighteenth year. Ned, a big, handsome fellow of

sixteen, came next in point of age, and then a tall, lanky, awkward

blond boy, Richie, with a plain thin face and the sweetest smile of them

all. Richie never moved without the aid of a crutch, and perhaps never

would. After Richie, and nearing fourteen, was a sweet, fat, giggling

lump of a girl called Sally, with a beautiful skin and beautiful untidy

hair, and a petticoat always dragging, a collar buttoned awry, and a

belt that never by any chance united her pretty shirt waist to her crisp

linen skirt. Only a year younger than Sally was Theodora, whose staid,

precocious beauty Barbara already found disquieting--"Ted" was already

giving signs of rivalling her oldest sister--then came Jane, bold,

handsome, boyish at eleven, and lastly eight-year-old Constance, a

delicate, pretty, tearful little girl who was spoiled by every member of

the family.

The children's mother was a plump, handsome little woman with bright,

flashing eyes, dimples, and lovely little hands covered with rings.

There was no gray in her prettily puffed hair, and, if she was stouter

than any of her daughters, none could show a more trimly controlled

figure. Mrs. Toland had been impressed in the days of her happy girlhood

with the romantic philosophies of the seventies. To her, as an impulsive

young woman brimful of the zest of living, all babies had been "just too

dear and sweet," all marriages were "simply _lovely_" regardless of

circumstances, and all men were "just the dearest great big manly

fellows that ever _were_!" As Miss Sally Ford, Mrs. Toland had flashed

about on many visits to her girl friends admiring, exclaiming, rejoicing

in their joys, and now, as a mother of growing girls and boys, there

still hung between her and real life the curtain of her unquenchable

optimism. She loved babies, and they had come very fast, and been cared

for by splendid maids, and displayed in effective juxtaposition to their

gay little mother for the benefit of admiring friends, when opportunity

offered. And if, in the early days of her married life, there had ever

been troublous waters to cross, Sally Toland had breasted them

gallantly, her fixed, confident smile never wavering.

At first Doctor Toland had felt something vaguely amiss in this

persistent attitude of radiant and romantic surety. "Are you sure the

boy understands?" "D'ye think Bab isn't old enough to know that you're

just making that up?" he would ask uneasily, when a question of

disciplining Ned or consoling Barbara arose. But Mrs. Toland always was

sure of her course, and would dimple at him warningly: "Of course it's

all right, Daddykins, and we're all going to be happy, and not even

think of our naughty old troubles any more!"

So the doctor gave her her way, and settled back to enjoy his children

and his wife, his yacht and his roses; growing richer and more famous,

more genial and perhaps a little more mildly cynical as time went on.

And the children grew up, their mother, never dreaming that Barbara at

eighteen was more than the sweet, light-hearted, manageable child she

had been at ten; that Ned was beginning to taste of a life of whose

existence she was only vaguely aware; that Sally was plotting an escape

to the ranks of trained nurses; that Ted needed a firm hand and close

watching if she were not to break all their hearts. No, to Mrs. Toland

they were still her "rosebud garden," "just the merriest, romping crowd

of youngsters that ever a little scrap of a woman had to keep in order!"

"Now, you're going to wipe that horrid frown off your forehead, Daddy,"

she would say blithely, if Doctor Toland confessed to a misgiving in the

contemplation of any one of his seven, "and stop worrying about Richie!

His bad old hip is going to get well, and he'll be walking just like any

one else in no time!" And in the same tone she said to Barbara: "I know

my darling girl is going to that luncheon, and going to forget that her

hat isn't quite the thing for the occasion," and said to little

Constance, "We're going to forget that it's raining, and not think about

dismal things any more!" No account of flood or fire or outrage was

great enough to win from her more than a rueful smile, a sigh, and a

brisk: "Well, I suppose such things _must_ be, or they wouldn't be

permitted. Don't let's think about it!"

Women who knew Mrs. Toland spoke of her as "wonderful." And indeed she

was wonderful in many ways, a splendid manager, a delightful hostess,

and essentially motherly and domestic in type. She was always happy and

always busy, gathering violets, chaperoning Sally or Barbara at the

dentist's, selecting plaids for the "girlies'" winter suits. Her married

life--all her life, in fact--had been singularly free from clouds, and

she expected the future to be even brighter, when "splendid, honourable

men" should claim her girls, one by one, and all the remembered romance

of her youth begin again. That the men would be forthcoming she did not

doubt; had not Fate already delivered Jim Studdiford into her hands for

Barbara?

James Studdiford, who had just now finished his course at medical

college, was affectionately known to the young Tolands as "Jim," and

stood to them in a relationship peculiarly pleasing to Mrs. Toland. He

was like a brother, and yet, actually, he bore not the faintest real

kinship to--well, to Barbara, for instance. Years before, twenty years

before, to be exact, Doctor Toland, then unmarried, and unacquainted, as

it happened, with the lovely Miss Sally Ford, had been engaged to a

beautiful young widow, a Mrs. Studdiford, who had been left with a large

fortune and a tiny boy some two years before. This was in Honolulu,

where people did a great deal of riding in those days, and it presently

befell that the doctor, two weeks before the day that had been set for

the wedding, found himself kneeling beside his lovely fiancee on a rocky

headland, as she lay broken and gasping where her horse had flung her,

and straining to catch the last few agonized words she would ever say:

"You'll--keep Jim--with you, Robert?"

How Doctor Toland brought the small boy to San Francisco, how he met the

dashing and indifferent Sally, and how she came at last to console him

for his loss, was another story, one that Mrs. Toland never tired of

telling. Little Jim had his place in their hearts from their wedding

day. Barbara was eleven years old when, with passionate grief, she

learned that he was not her half brother, and many casual friends did

not know it to this day. Jim, to the doctor's delight, chose to follow

the profession of his foster father, and had stumbled, with not too much

application, through medical college. Now he was to go to New York for

hospital work, and then to Berlin for a year's real grind, and until the

Eastern hospital should open classes, was back in his old enormous

third-floor bedroom upstairs, enjoying a brief season of idleness and

petting, the handsome, unaffected, sunshiny big brother of Mrs. Toland's

fondest dreams.

"And he can hardly keep his eyes off Babbie," the mother confided to her

sister-in-law.

Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance.

"For heaven's sake don't get that notion in your head, Sally! Babbie may

be ready to make a little fool of herself, but if ever I saw a man who

_isn't_ in love, it's Jim!" said Miss Toland, who was a thin, gray-haired,

well-dressed woman of forty, with a curious magnetism quite her own.

Miss Toland had lived in France for the ten years before thirty, and had

a Frenchwoman's reposeful yet alert manner, and a Frenchwoman's art in

dressing. After many idle years, she had suddenly become deeply

interested in settlement work, had built a little settlement house, "The

Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House," in one of the factory districts

south of San Francisco, and was in a continual state of agitation and

upset because worthy settlement workers were at that time almost an

unknown quantity in California. Just at present she was availing herself

of her brother's hospitality because she had no assistant at all at the

"Alexander," and was afraid to stay in its very unsavoury environment

alone. She loved Barbara dearly, but she was usually perverse with her

sister-in-law.

"You may say what you like about notions in my head," Mrs. Toland

answered with a wise little nod. "But the dear girl is _radiant_ every

time she looks at him, and both Dad and I think we notice a new

_protective_ quality in Jim--"

"Did Robert say so?" Miss Toland asked dryly. To this Mrs. Toland

answered with a merry laugh and a little squeeze of her sister-in-law's

arm.

"Oh, you old Sanna!" she chided. "You won't believe that there's a

blessed time when Nature just takes the young things by the hand and

pushes them right into happiness, whether or no!"

This little talk had taken place just before breakfast, and now Mrs.

Toland was reassuring herself of her own position with many a glance at

Barbara and at Jim. Barbara seemed serious almost to ungraciousness--that

might be a sign. Jim was teasing Sally, who laughed deeply and richly,

like a child, and spilled her orange juice on her fresh gown. Perhaps he

was trying to pique Barbara by assuming an indifferent manner--that

might be it----

"Jim!" It was Barbara speaking. Jim did not hear. "Jim," said Barbara

again, patient and cold.

"I beg your pardon!" Jim said with swift contrition. His glance flashed

to Barbara for a second, flashed back to Sally. "Now, you throw

that--you throw that," said he to the latter young woman, in reference

to a glass of water with which she was carelessly toying, "and you'll be

sorrier than you ever were in your life!"

"Sally, what are you thinking of!" her mother said.

"Look out--look out!" Sally said, swinging the glass up and down.

Suddenly she set it back on the table firmly. "You deserve that straight

in your face, Jim, but Mother'd be mad!"

"Well, I should think Mother would!" Mrs. Toland said, in smiling

reproof. "But we interrupted Bab, I think. Bab had something dreadfully

important to say," she added playfully, "to judge from that great big

frown!"

"It wasn't dreadfully important at all," Barbara said, in cold

annoyance.

"Oh, wasn't it? And what was it, dear?"

"It was simply--it was nothing at all," Barbara protested, reddening. "I

was just thinking that we have to have that rehearsal at the clubhouse

this afternoon, and I was wondering if Jim would walk down there with me

now, and see about getting the room ready----"

"Dad's got an eleven-o'clock operation, and I'm going to assist," said

Jim.

"Did you forget that, dear?" Mrs. Toland asked.

"It's of no consequence," said Barbara, her voice suddenly thick with

tears. Her hand trembled as she reached for a muffin.

"Keith, do you want to go down with us to the rehearsal this afternoon?"

said Sally amiably to the little guest.

"Oh, I don't think the whole pack of us ought to go!" Ted protested in

alarm. "You aren't going to let Janey and Con go, are you, Mother?"

"Oh, why not?" Mrs. Toland asked soothingly. Barbara here returned to

the discussion with a tragic: "Mother, they _can't_! It would look

perfectly awful!"

"Well, you don't own the yacht club, you know, Babbie," Ted supplied

sweetly.

"Well," said Barbara, rising, and speaking quickly in a low voice, "of

course the whole family, including Addie and Hee, can troop down there

if they want to, but I think it's too bad that I can't do a thing in

this family without being tagged by a bunch of _kids_!"

The door closed behind her; they could hear her running upstairs.

"Now she'll cry; she's getting to be an awful cry baby," said Janey,

wide eyed, pleasurably excited.

"Doesn't seem very well, does she, Mummie? Not a bit like herself," said

the head of the house, raising mild eyebrows.

"Now, never mind; she's just a little bit tired and excited over this

'Amazon' thing," Mrs. Toland assured him cheerfully, "and she'll have a

little talk with Mother by and by, and be her sweet self again by lunch

time!"

The little episode was promptly blotted out by the rising tide of

laughter and conversation that was usual at breakfast. Miss Toland

presently drifted into the study for some letter writing. Jim took a

deep porch rocker, and carried off the morning papers. Richie, sitting

at his father's left, squared about for one of the eager rambling talks

of which he and his father never tired. The doctor's blue eyes twinkled

over his theories of religion, science, history, poetry, and philosophy.

Richie's lean, colourless face was bright with interest. Ted

volunteered, as she often volunteered of late, to go for the mail, and

sauntered off under a red parasol, and Mrs. Toland slipped from the

table just in time to waylay her oldest son in the hall.

"Not going to catch the 9:40, Ned?" she asked.

"Sure pop I am!" He was sorry to be caught, and she saw it under his

bluff, pleasant manner.

"You couldn't take the 10:20 with Dad and Jim?"

"I've got to meet Reynolds at half-past ten, Mother," the boy said

patiently.

"Reynolds!" she frowned. "Don't like my fine big boy to have friends

like that--" His eyes warned her. "Friends that aren't as fine and dear

and good as he is!" she finished, her hands on his shoulders.

"Reynolds is all right," said Ned, bored, and looking coldly beyond her.

"And you'll be home for dinner, Ned?"

"Sure! Unless the Orpheum should be awfully long. In that case we may

get a bite somewhere."

"Try to be home for dinner," persisted the mother. And, as if to warrant

the claim on his consideration, she added: "I paid the Cutter bill

myself, dear, and Dad will pay Jordan next month. I didn't say anything

about Cutter, but he begged me to make you _feel_ how wrong it is to let

these things run. You have a splendid allowance, Ned," she was almost

apologetic, "and there's no necessity of running over it, dear!"

"Sure. I'm not going to do that again," Ned said gruffly, uncomfortably.

"That's right, dear! And you will--you'll try to be home for dinner?"

"Sure I'll try!" and Ned was gone, down through the roses and through

the green gate.

Mrs. Toland watched him out of sight. Then she trotted off to Hee's

domain. Sally straggled out into the garden, with Janey and Constance

and the small boy following after. There was great distress because the

little girls were all for tennis, and Keith Borroughs frankly admitted

that he hated tennis.

The Tolands' rambling mansion was built upon so sharp a hill that the

garden beds were bulkheaded like terraces, and the paths were steep.

Roses--delicious great white roses and the apricot-coloured San Rafael

rose--climbed everywhere, and hung in fragrant festoons from the low,

scrub-oak trees that were scattered through the garden. Every vista

ended with the blue bay, and the green gate at the garden's foot opened

directly upon a roadway that hung like a shelf above the water.

Sally and the children gathered nasturtiums and cornflowers and ferns

for the house. The place had been woodland only a few years ago, the

earth was rich with rotting leaves, and all sorts of lovely forest

growths fringed the paths. Groups of young oaks and an occasional bay or

madrone tree broke up any suggestion of formal arrangement, and there

were still wild columbine and mission bells in the shady places.

Presently, to the immense satisfaction of her little sisters, Sally

dismissed them for tennis, and carried the music-mad small boy off to

the old nursery, where he could bang away at an old piano to his heart's

content, while she pasted pictures in her camera book, in a sunny

window. Now and then she cast a look full of motherly indulgence at the

little figure at the piano: the pale, earnest little face; the tumbled

black hair, the bony, big, unchildlike hands.

The morning slipped by, and afternoon came, to find Barbara welcoming

the arriving players at the yacht club, and looking her very prettiest

in a gown of striped scarlet and white, and a white hat. Hello,

Matty--Hello, Enid--Hello, Bobby--and did any one see Miss Page? Ah, how

do you do, Miss Page, awfully good of you to make it.

The girls dressed in a square room upstairs, lined with hooks and

mirrors. Julia was not self-conscious, because, while different from the

crisp snowy whiteness of the other girls' linen, it did not occur to her

that her well-worn pink silk underwear, her ornate corset cover, and her

shabby ruffled green silk skirt were anything but adequate.

Carter Hazzard was not in evidence to-day, to Julia's relief. The

rehearsal dragged on and on, everybody thrown out because Miss Dorothy

Chase, the girl who was to play Wilhelmina, failed to appear. Julia took

the part, when it was finally decided to go on without Dorothy, but by

that time it was late, and the weary manager assured them that there

must be another rehearsal that evening. Hilariously the young people

accepted this decree, and Julia was carried home with the Tolands to

dinner.

Good-hearted Mrs. Toland could be nothing less than kind to any young

girl, and Julia's place at table was next to the kindly old doctor, who

only saw an extremely pretty girl, and joked with her, and looked out

for her comfort in true fatherly fashion. Julia carried herself with

great dignity, said very little, being in truth quite overawed and

nervously anxious not to betray herself, and after the first frightened

half-hour she enjoyed the adventure thoroughly.

The evening rehearsal went much better, a final rehearsal was set for

Sunday, and Julia was driven to the ten o'clock boat in the station

omnibus, which smelled of leather and wet straw. She sat yawning in the

empty ferry building, smiling over her recollection of dinner at the

Tolands': the laughter, the quarrels, the joyous confusion of voices.

Suddenly struck by the deserted silence of the waiting-room, Julia

jumped up and went to the ticket office.

"Isn't there a train at 10:03?"

The station agent yawned, eyed her with pleasant indifference.

"No train now until 12:20, lady," said he.

For a moment Julia was staggered. Then she thought of the telephone.

A few minutes later she climbed out of the station omnibus again, this

time to be warmly welcomed into the Tolands' lamp-lighted drawing-room.

Barbara and her mother were still at the yacht club, but the old doctor

himself was eagerly apologetic. Doctor Studdiford, Ned, and Richie added

their cheerful questions and regrets to the hospitable hubbub, and

Sally, who had been at the piano, singing Scotch ballads to her father,

took possession of Julia with heartening and obvious pleasure.

Sally took her upstairs, lighted a small but exquisitely appointed guest

room, found a stiffly embroidered nightgown, a wrapper of dark-blue

Japanese crepe, and a pair of straw slippers. Julia, inwardly trembling

with excitement, was outwardly calm as she got ready for bed; she hung

her clothes in a closet delightfully redolent of pine, and brushed and

braided her splendid hair. Sally whisked about on various errands, and

presently Mrs. Toland bustled in, brimful of horrified apologies and

regrets, and Barbara dawdled after, rolling her belt and starched stock,

generally unhooking and unbuttoning.

Perhaps the haughty Barbara found the round-eyed, golden-haired girl in

a blue wrapper a little more companionable than the dreadful Miss Page,

or perhaps she was a little too lonely to-night to be fastidious in her

choice of a confidante. At all events, she elected to wander in and out

of Julia's room while she undressed, and presently sat on Julia's bed,

and braided her dark hair. And if the whole adventure had excited Julia,

she was doubly excited now, frantic to win Barbara's friendship,

nervously afraid to try.

"You're an actress, Miss Page?" asked Barbara, scowling at her

hairbrush.

"Will be, I guess! I've had dozens of chances to sign up already, but

Mama don't want me to be in any rush."

The other girl eyed her almost enviously.

"I wish I could do something--sometimes," she sighed. And she added,

giving Julia a shamefaced grin, "I've got the blues to-night."

It was from this second that Julia dated her love for Barbara Toland. A

delicious sensation enveloped her--to be in Barbara's confidence--to

know that she was sometimes unhappy, too; to be lying in this fragrant,

snowy bed, in this enchanting room--

"Well," said Barbara presently, jumping up, "you'll want _some_ sleep. If

you hear us rushing about, at the screech of dawn to-morrow, it's

because some of us may go out with Dad in the Crow, if there's a breeze.

Do you like yachting? Would you care to go?"

"I've never been," said Julia.

"Oh, well, then, you ought to!" Barbara said with round eyes. "I'll tell

you--I'll peep in here to-morrow, and if you're awake I'll give you a

call!" she arranged, after a minute's frowning thought.

"I sleep awfully sound!" smiled Julia.

But she was awake when Barbara, true to her plan, peeped in at five

o'clock the next morning, and presently, in a bluejacket's blouse and

brief blue skirt, with a white canvas hat on her head, and a boy's old

gray jersey buttoned loosely about her, followed muffled shapes through

the cold house and into the wet, chilly garden. Richie was going, Sally

had the gallant but shivering Jane and the dark-eyed Keith by the hand,

and Barbara hung on her father's arm.

The waters of the bay were gray and cold; a sharp breeze swept their

steely surfaces into fans of ruffled water. The little Crow rocked at

her anchor, her ropes and brasswork beaded with dew. Julia, sitting in

desperate terror upon a slanting upholstered ledge, felt her teeth

chatter, and wondered why she had come.

Barbara, Sally, Richie, and their father all fell to work, and

presently, a miracle to Julia, the little boat was running toward

Richardson's Bay under a good breeze. Presently glorious sunlight

enveloped them, flashed from a thousand windows on San Francisco hills,

and struck to dazzling whiteness the breasts of the gulls that circled

Sausalito's piers. Everything sparkled and shone: the running blue water

that slapped the Crow's side, the roofs of houses on the hillside, the

green trees that nearly concealed them.

Growing every instant warmer and more content, Julia sat back and let

her whole body and soul soak in the comfort and beauty of the hour. Her

eyes roved sea and sky and encircling hills; she saw the last wisp of

mist rise and vanish from the stern silhouette of Tamalpais, and saw an

early ferryboat cut a wake of exquisite spreading lacework across the

bay. And whenever her glance crossed Sally's, or the doctor's, or

Richie's glance, she smiled like a happy child, and the Tolands smiled

back.

They all rushed into the house, ravenous and happy, for a nine o'clock

breakfast, Julia so lovely, in her borrowed clothing and with her

bright, loosened hair, that the young men of the family began, without

exception, to "show off" for her benefit, as Theodora scornfully

expressed it. And there was bacon and rolls and jam for every one, blue

bowls of cereal, glass pitchers of yellow cream, smoking hot coffee

always ready to run in an amber stream from the spout of the big silver

urn.

"And you must eat at least four waffles," said Ned, "or my father will

never let you come again! He has to drum up trade, you know--"

It was all delightful, not the less so because it was all tinged, for

Julia, with a little current of something exquisitely painful; not envy,

not regret, not resentment, a little of all three. This happy,

care-free, sun-flooded life was not for her, how far, far, far from her,

indeed! She was here only by accident, tolerated gayly for hospitality's

sake, her coming and going only an insignificant episode in their lives.

Wistfully she watched Mrs. Toland tying little Constance's sash and

straightening her flower-crowned hat for church; wistfully eyed the

cheerful, white-clad Chinese cook, grinning as he went to gather

lettuces; wistfully she stared across the brilliant garden from her deep

porch chair. Barbara, in conference with a capped and aproned maid at

the end of a sunny corridor, Sally chatting with Richie, as she

straightened the scattered books on the library table, Ted dashing off a

popular waltz with her head turned carelessly aside to watch the

attentive Keith; all these to Julia were glimpses of a life so free, so

full, so invigorating as to fill her with hopeless longing and

admiration.

All her affectation and arrogance dropped from her before their simple,

joyous naturalness. Julia had no feeling of wishing to impress them, to

assert her own equality. Instead she genuinely wanted them to like her;

she carried herself like the little girl she looked in her sailor

blouse, like the little girl she was.

At twelve o'clock a final rehearsal of "The Amazons" was held at the

yacht club, and to-day Julia entered into her part with zest, her

enthusiasm really carrying the performance, as the appreciative "Matty"

assured her. She had the misfortune to step on a ruffle of her borrowed

white petticoat, at the very close of the last act, and slipped into the

dressing-room to pin it up as soon as the curtain descended.

The dressing-room was deserted. Julia found a paper of pins, and,

putting her foot up on a chair, began to repair the damage as well as

she could. The day was warm, and only wooden shutters screened the big

window that gave on one of the club's wide porches. Julia, humming

contentedly to herself, presently became aware that there were chairs

just outside the window, and girls in the chairs--Barbara Toland and

Ted, and Miss Grinell and Miss Hazzard, and one or two Julia did not

know.

"Yes, Mother's a darling," Barbara was saying. "You know she didn't get

this up, Margaret; she had _nothing_ to do with it, and yet she's

practically carrying the whole responsibility now! She'll be as nervous

as we are to-morrow night!"

Julia pinned on serenely. It was in no code of hers to move out of

hearing.

"The only thing she really bucked at was when she found Miss Page at our

house last night," Ted said. "Mother's no snob--but I wish you could

have seen her face!"

"Was she perfectly awful, Ted?" somebody asked.

"Who, Miss Page? No-o, she wasn't perfectly awful--yes, she was pretty

bad," Theodora admitted. "Wasn't she, Babbie?"

"Oh, well"--Barbara hesitated--"she's--of course she's terribly common.

Just the second-rate actress type, don't you know?"

"Did she call your Mother 'ma'am'?" giggled Enid Hazzard. "Do you

remember when she said 'Yes, ma'am?' And did she say 'eyether,' and

'between you and I' again?" Something was added to this, but Julia did

not catch it. The girls laughed again.

"Listen," said Ted, "this is the richest yet! Last night Sally said to

her, 'Breakfast's at nine, Miss Page; how do you like your bath?' and

she looked at Sally sort of surprised and said, '_I_ don't want a

bath!'"

"Oh, I don't think that's fair, Teddy," Barbara protested; "she's never

had any advantages; it's a class difference, that's all. She's simply

not a lady; she never will be. You'd be the same in her place."

"Oh, I would not! I wouldn't mark my eyebrows and I wouldn't wear such

dirty clothes, and I wouldn't try to look twenty-five--" Ted began.

Again there was a quick commentary that Julia missed, and another laugh.

Then Barbara said:

"Poor kid! And she looked so sweet in some of Sally's things."

Julia, still bent over her ruffle, did not move a muscle from the

instant she first heard her name until now, when the girls dismissed the

subject with a laugh. She felt as if the house were falling about her,

as if every word were a smashing blow at her very soul. She felt sick

and dizzy, cold and suddenly weak.

She walked across the room to the door, and stood there with her hand on

the knob, and said in a whisper: "Now, what shall I do? What shall I

do?"

At first she thought she would hide, then that she would run away. Then

she knew what she must do: she opened the dressing-room door, and walked

unchallenged through the big auditorium. Groups of chattering people

were scattered about it; somebody was banging the piano; nobody paid the

least attention to Julia as she went down the stairs, and started to

walk to the Toland house.

She was not thinking now. She only wanted to get away.

Nobody stopped her. The house was deserted. A maid put her head in

Julia's door, and finding Julia dressing immediately apologized.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Page! I thought--"

"That's all right," said Julia quietly. She was very pale. "Will you

tell Mrs. Toland that I had to take the two o'clock boat?"

"Yes'm. You won't be here for dinner?"

"No," said Julia, straining to make a belt meet.

"Could I bring you a cup of tea or a sandwich?"

"Oh, no, thank you!"

The maid was gone. Julia went down through the house quietly, a few

moments later. Her breath came quick and short until she was fairly on

the boat, with Sausalito slipping farther and farther into the

background. Even then her mind was awhirl, and fatigue and perhaps

hunger, too, made it impossible to think seriously. Far easier to lean

back lazily in the sun, and watch the water slip by, and make no attempt

to control the confused, chaotic thoughts that wheeled dreamily through

her brain. Now and then memory brought her to a sudden upright position,

brought the hot colour to her face.

"I don't care!" Julia would say then, half aloud. "They're nothing to me

and I'm nothing to them; and good riddance!"

May--but it was like a midsummer afternoon in San Francisco. A hot wind

blew across the ferry place; papers and chaff swept before it. Julia's

skirt was whisked about her knees, her hat was twisted viciously about

on her head. She caught a reflection of herself in a car window,

dishevelled, her hat at an ugly angle, her nose reddened by the wind.

Mrs. Tarbury's house, when she got to it, presented its usual Sunday

afternoon appearance. The window curtains were up at all angles in the

dining-room, hot sunshine streamed through the fly-specked panes, the

draught from the open door drove a wild whirl of newspapers over the

room. Cigarette smoke hung heavy upon the air.

Julia peeped into the dark kitchen; the midday meal was over, and a

Japanese boy was hopelessly and patiently attacking scattered heaps of

dishes and glassware. The girl was hungry, but the cooling wreck of a

leg of mutton and the cold vegetables swimming in water did not appeal

to her, and she went slowly upstairs, helping herself in passing to no

more substantial luncheon than two soda crackers and a large green

pickle.

Mrs. Tarbury, dressed in a loose kimono, with her bare feet thrust into

well-worn Juliet slippers, was lying across her bed, in the pleasant

leisure of Sunday afternoon, a Dramatic Supplement held in one fat

ringed hand, her head supported by her pillows in soiled muslin cases,

and several satin and velvet cushions from a couch. In the room also

were Connie Girard and Rose Ransome, who had a bowl of soapsuds and

several scissors and orange-wood sticks on the table between them, and

were manicuring each other very fastidiously. A third actress, a young

Englishwoman with a worn, hard face, rouged cheeks, and glittering eyes,

was calling, with her little son, upon Mrs. Tarbury.

"Hello, darling!" said the lady of the house herself, as Julia came in.

The girls gave her an affectionate welcome, and Julia was introduced to

the stranger.

"Mrs. Cloke is my real name," said the Englishwoman briskly. "But you'd

know me better as Alice Le Grange, I daresay. You'll have heard of my

little sketches--the Mirror gave Mr. Cloke and I a whole page when first

we came to this country, and we had elegant bookings--elegant. I'd my

little flat in New York all furnished, and," she said to Mrs. Tarbury,

"I was used to _everything_--the managers at home all knew me, and all,

you know--" She laughed with some bitterness. "It does seem funny to be

out here doing this," she added. "But there was the kiddy to

consider--and, as I told you, there was trouble!"

"Parties who used their influence to get 'em out!" said Miss Girard

darkly, in explanation, with a glance at Julia. "Favouritism--"

"And jealousy," added Alice Le Grange.

Julia was sympathetic, but not deeply impressed. She had heard this

story in many forms before. She attracted the attention of little Eric

Cloke, and showed him the pictures of the Katzenjammer Kids and Foxy

Grandpa in the newspaper. Later she accompanied Rose and Connie to their

room, put on loose clothing, and lay on her bed watching them dress.

The girls were to dine together, with two admirers, and urged Julia to

ask a third man, and come, too. Julia refused steadily; she was very

quiet and the others thought her tired.

She lay on her side, one hand falling idle over the edge of the bed, her

serious, magnificent eyes moving idly from Connie's face to Rose's, and

roving over the room. Hot sunlight poured through the dirty windows and

the torn curtains of Nottingham lace, and flamed on the ugly wallpaper

and the flawed mirrors. A thousand useless knickknacks made the room

hideous; every possible surface was strewn with garments large and

small, each bureau was a confusion of pins and brushes, paste and powder

boxes, silk stockings and dirty white gloves, cologne bottles and

powdered circles of discoloured chamois, hair kids and curls of false

hair, handkerchiefs and hat pins, cheap imitations of jewellery, cheap

bits of lace, sidecombs, veils and belts and collars, and a hundred

other things, all wound up in an indistinguishable mass. From these

somewhat sodden heaps Connie and Rose cheerfully selected what they

needed, leaning over constantly to inspect their faces closely in the

mirrors.

Julia watched them with a sudden, new, and almost terrifying distaste

growing in her heart. How dirty and shiftless and common--yes,

common--these girls were! Julia felt sick with the force of the

revelation. She saw Connie lace her shabby pink-brocade corset together

with a black shoestring; she saw Rose close with white thread a great

hole in the heel of a black silk stocking. Their crimped hair nauseated

her, their rouge and powder and cologne. She could hardly listen in

patience to their careless and sometimes coarse chatter.

And when they were gone she still lay there, thinking--thinking--

thinking! The sunlight crept lower and lower over the room's disorder;

its last bright triangle was gone, twilight came, and the soft early

darkness.

Mrs. Tarbury presently called Julia, in mellifluous accents, and the

girl pulled herself stiffly from the bed, and went blinking down to an

improvised supper. They two were alone in the big house, and fell into

intimate conversation over their sardines and coffee and jam, discussing

the characters of every person in the house with much attention to

trivial detail. At nine o'clock some friends came in to see Mrs.

Tarbury, and Julia went upstairs again.

She lighted the bedroom, and began idly to fold and straighten the

clothes that were strewn about everywhere. But she very speedily gave up

the task: there were no closets to hang things in, and many things were

too torn or dirty to be hung up, anyway! Julia went down one flight of

stairs to the nearest bathroom, in search of hot water, but both faucets

ran cold, and she went upstairs again. She hunted through Connie's

bureau and Rose's for a fresh nightgown, but not finding one, had to put

on the limp and torn garment one of the girls had loaned her a week or

two before.

Now she sat down on the edge of her bed, vaguely discouraged. Tears came

to her eyes, she did not quite know why. She opened a novel, and

composed herself to read, but could not become interested, and finally

pushed up the window the two inches that the girls approved, turned out

the lights, and jumped into bed. She would want her beauty sleep for

"The Amazons" to-morrow night. Julia had been fully determined, when she

got home, to abandon the amateur company, to fail them at the very hour

of their performance, but a casual word from Connie had caused her to

change her mind.

"Don't you be a fool and get in Dutch with Artheris!" Connie had said,

and upon sober reflection Julia had found the advice good.

But she got no beauty sleep that night. She lay hour after hour wakeful

and wretched, the jumbled memories of the last twenty-four hours

slipping through her mind in ceaseless review: the green, swift-rushing

water, with gulls flying over it; the coffee pot reflecting a dozen

joyous young faces; the garden bright with roses--

And then, with sickening regularity, the clubhouse and the girls'

voices--

How she hated them all, Julia said to herself, raising herself on one

elbow to punch her sodden pillow, and sending a hot, restless glance

toward the streak of bright light that forced its way in from a street

lamp. How selfish, how smug, how arrogant they were, with their daily

baths, and their chests full of fresh linen, and their assured speech!

What had Sally and Theodora Toland ever done to warrant their

insufferable conceit? Why should they have lovely parents and an ideal

home, frocks and maids and delightful meals, while she, Julia, was born

to the dirt and sordidness of O'Farrell Street?

Barbara--but no, she couldn't hate Barbara! The memory of that moment of

confidence last night still thrilled Julia to her heart's core. Barbara

had been kind to her in the matter of Carter Hazzard, had defended her

to-day, in her careless, indifferent fashion. Julia's heart ached with

fierce envy of Barbara, ached with fierce longing and admiration. She

tortured herself with a picture of the charm of Barbara's life: her

waking in the sunshine, her breakfast eaten between the old doctor and

the young, her hours at her pretty writing-desk, on the porch, at the

piano. Always dignified, always sweet and dainty, always adored.

Well, she, Julia, should be an actress, a great actress. But even as she

flung herself on her back and stared sternly up at the ceiling,

resolving it, her heart failed her. It was a long road. Julia was

fifteen; she must count upon ten or fifteen years at least of slavery in

stock companies, of weeks spent in rushing from one cheap hotel to

another, of associating with just such women as Connie and Rose. No one

that she knew, in the profession, had bureaus full of ruffled fresh

linen, had a sunshiny breakfast table with flowers on it--

Julia twisted about on her arm and began to cry. She cried for a long

time.

True, she could marry Mark, and Mark would be rich some day. But would

Barbara Toland Studdiford--for Julia had married them as a matter of

course--ever stoop to notice Julia Rosenthal? No, she wouldn't marry

Mark.

Then there was her mother's home, over the saloon. Julia finally went to

sleep planning, in cold-blooded childish fashion, that if her father

died, and left her mother a really substantial sum of money, she would

persuade Emeline to take a clean, bright little flat somewhere, and

leave this neighbourhood forever.

"And we could keep a few boarders," thought Julia drowsily, "and I will

learn to cook, and have nice little ginghams, like Janey's--"

The amateur performance of "The Amazons" duly took place on the

following night, with a large and fashionable audience packing the old

Grand Opera House, and society reporters flitting from box to box

between the acts. Julia found the experience curiously flat. She had no

opportunity to deliver to Barbara a withering little speech she had

prepared, and received no attention from any one. The performers were

excited and nervous, each frankly bent upon scoring a personal and

exclusive success, and immediately after the last act they swarmed out

to greet friends in the house, and Babel ensued.

Walking soberly home with Mark at half-past eleven, with her cheque in

her purse, Julia decided bitterly that she washed her hands of them all;

she was done with San Francisco's smart set, she would never give

another thought to a single one of them.

CHAPTER V

Days of very serious thinking followed this experience. The face of the

world was changed. Much that had been unnoticed, or taken for granted,

became insufferable to Julia now. She winced at Connie's stories, she

looked with a coldly critical eye at Mrs. Tarbury's gray hair showing

through a yellow "front"; the sights and sounds of the boarding-house

sickened her. She was accustomed to helping Mrs. Tarbury with the

housework, not in any sense as payment for her board--for never was

hospitality more generously extended--but merely because she was there,

and idle, and energetic; but she found this a real hardship now. The

hot, close bedrooms, odorous of perfume and cigarette smoke, the grayish

sheets and thin blankets were odious to her; she longed to set fire to

the whole, and start afresh, with clean new furnishings.

Presently Connie asked her if she would care to talk to a manager about

going on an "eleven weeks' circuit," as assistant to a sleight-of-hand

performer.

"Twenty a week," said Connie, "and a whole week in Sacramento and

another in Los Angeles. All you have to do is wear a little suit like a

page, and hand him things. Rose says he looks like an old devil--I

haven't seen him, but you can sit on him easy enough. And the Nevilles

are making the same trip, and she's a real nice woman. Not much, Ju, but

it's a start, and I think we could land it for you."

"Yes, I know," Julia said vaguely.

"Well, wake up!" said Connie briskly. "Do you want it?"

"I'd rather wait until Mama gets here," the younger girl decided

uncomfortably. And that afternoon, in vague hope of news of her mother,

she took a Mission Street car and went out to call on her grandmother.

As usual, old Mrs. Cox's cheap little house reeked of soapsuds and

carbolic acid. Julia, admitted after she had twisted the little gong set

in the panels of the street door, kissed her grandmother in a stifling

dark hall. Mrs. Cox was glad of company, she limped ahead into her

little kitchen, chattering eagerly of her rheumatism and of family

matters. She told Julia that May's children, Evelyn and Marguerite, were

with her, Marguerite holding a position as dipper in a nearby candy

factory, and Evelyn checking in an immense steam laundry.

"How many children _has_ Aunt May now?" Julia asked, sighing.

"She's got too many!" Mrs. Cox said sharply. "A feller like Ed, who

never keeps a position two weeks running, has got no business to raise

such a family! For a while May had two of the boys in a home--"

"Oh, really!" said Julia, distressed.

"Lloyd and Elmer--yes, but they're home again now," the old woman

pursued. "May felt dreadful when they went, but I guess she wasn't so

awfully glad to get them back. Boys make a lot of work."

"Elmer and Lloyd, and then there was Muriel, and another baby?" Julia

asked.

"Muriel and Geraldine, and then the baby, Regina."

"Has Aunt May seven children?" Julia asked, awed.

Mrs. Cox delayed the brewing of a pot of tea while she counted them with

a bony knotted hand. Then she nodded. Julia digested the fact in

frowning silence.

"Grandma," said she presently, "did you ever have enough money?"

Mrs. Cox, now drinking her tea from a saucer, smiled toothlessly.

"Oh, sure," said she, with a cackle of laughter, "Why, there's nobody

knows it, but I'm rich!" But immediately the sorry joke lost flavour.

The old woman sighed, and into her wrinkled face and filmed eyes there

came her usual look of patient and unintelligent endurance. "I've never

yet had a dollar that didn't have to do two dollars' work," said she,

suddenly, in a mighty voice, staring across the kitchen, and lifting one

hand as if she were taking an oath. "I've never laid down at night when

I wasn't so tired my back was splitting. I've never had no thanks and no

ease--the sixty years of my life! There's some people meant to be rich,

Julia, and some that'll be poor the longest day of their lives, and

that's all there is to it!"

"I know--but it don't seem fair," Julia mused. She presently went on an

errand for her grandmother, and came back with sausages and fresh pulpy

bread and large spongy crullers from the grocery. By this time the windy

summer twilight was closing in, and the homegoing labourers and factory

hands were filing home through the dirty streets. Julia found her two

cousins in the lamp-lighted kitchen, Evelyn rather heavy and coarse

looking, Marguerite reedy and thin, both wearing an unwholesome pallor.

They made a little event of her coming, and the three girls chatted

gayly enough throughout the meal, which was eaten at the kitchen table

and washed down with strong tea.

Julia's grandfather, a gnarled old man in a labourer's rough clothes,

who reeked of whiskey, mumbled his meal in silence, and afterward went

into the room known as the parlour, snarling as he went that some one

must come in and light his lamp. Julia went in with Evelyn to the rather

pitiful room: a red rug was on the floor, and there were two chairs and

a cheap little table, besides the big chair in which the old man settled

himself.

"Ain't he going out, Grandma?" said Evelyn, returning to the kitchen,

and exchanging a rueful look with Marguerite.

"Well, I thought he was!" Mrs. Cox made a pilgrimage to the parlour

door, and returned confident. "He'll go out!" she said reassuringly.

"Comp'ny coming?" Julia asked smilingly. The other girls giggled and

looked at each other.

"Well, why couldn't Grandpa sit in the kitchen?" the girl asked.

"There's a better light out here!"

"Catch him doing anything decent," Evelyn said, and Marguerite added:

"And, Ju, he'll sit there sometimes just to be mean, and he'll take his

shoes off, and put his socks up----"

"And nights he knows we want the parlour he'll stay in on purpose,"

Evelyn supplemented eagerly.

"I wouldn't _stand_ for it," Julia asserted.

"Pa's awfully cranky," Mrs. Cox said resignedly. "He's always been that

way! You cook him corn beef--that's the night he wanted pork chops;

sometimes he'll snap your head off if you speak, and others he'll ask

you why you sit around like a mute and don't talk. Sometimes, if you ask

him for money, he'll put his hand in his pocket real willing, and other

times for weeks he won't give you a cent!"

"I wouldn't put up with it," said Julia again. "What does he _do_ with his

money?"

"Oh, he treats the boys, and sometimes, when he's drunk, they'll borrow

it off him," said his wife. "Pa's always open-handed with the boys!"

Evelyn, who had washed her coarse, handsome face at the kitchen sink,

began now to arrange her hair with a small comb that had been wedged

into the sinkboard. Marguerite, having completed similar operations,

offered to walk with Julia to the Mission Street car.

"The worst of Grandpa is this," said Marguerite, on the way, and Julia

glancing sideways under a street lamp surprised an earnest and most

winning expression on her cousin's plain, pale face, "he don't give

Grandma any money, d'you see?--and that means that Ev and I have to give

her pretty much what we get, and so we can't help Mamma, and that makes

me awfully blue."

"But--but Uncle Ed's working, Rita?"

"Pop works when he can, Ju. Work isn't ever very steady in his line, you

know. But he don't drink any more, Mamma says, only--there's five

children younger'n we are, you know--"

"Sure," said Julia, heavy oppressed. But Marguerite was cheered at this

point by encountering two pimply and embarrassed youths, and Julia,

climbing a moment later into a Mission Street car, looked back to see

her cousin walking off between the two masculine forms, and heard their

loud laughter ring upon the night.

About ten days later, unannounced, Emeline came home, and with her came

a stout, red-faced, grayhaired man, in whom Julia was aghast to find her

father. They reached Mrs. Tarbury's at about four o'clock in the

afternoon, and Julia, coming in from a call on a theatrical manager,

found them in the dining-room. George had been very ill, and moved

ponderously and slowly. He looked far older than Julia's memory of him.

There were sagging red pockets under his eyes, and his heavy jowls were

darkened with a day's growth of gray stubble. He and Emeline had had a

complete reconciliation, and entertained Mrs. Tarbury with the history

of their remarriage and an outline of their plans.

George took a heavy, sportive interest in his pretty girl, but Julia

could not realize their relationship sufficiently to permit of any

liberties. She smiled an uneasy, perfunctory smile when George kissed

her, and moved away from the arm he would have kept about her.

"Don't liked to be kissed?" asked George.

"Oh, I don't mind," said Julia, in a lifeless voice, and with averted

eyes. "Did you go to the flat, Mama?" she asked, clearing her throat.

"I did," Emeline answered, biting a loose thread from a finger of her

dirty white gloves. "I got Toomey's rent, and told them that we might

want the room on the first."

"Going to give up the flat?" Julia asked, in surprise.

"Well"--Emeline glanced at her husband--"it's this way, Ju," said she:

"Papa can't stand the city, sick as he is now--"

George coughed loosely in confirmation of this, and shook his head.

"And Papa's got a half interest in a little fruit ranch down in Santa

Clara Valley," Emeline pursued. "So I'm going to take him down there for

a little while, and nurse him back to real good health."

"My God, Em, you'll die!" Mrs. Tarbury said frankly. "Why'n't you go

somewhere where there's something doing?"

"My sporting days are over, Min," George said with mournful

satisfaction. "No more midnight suppers in mine!"

"Nor mine, either. I guess I'm old enough to settle down," Emeline added

cheerfully. She and Mrs. Tarbury exchanged a look, and Julia knew

exactly what concessions her mother had made before the reconciliation;

knew just how sincere this unworldly wifely devotion was.

"Doc says I am to have fresh air, and light, nourishing foods, and quiet

nights," George explained, gravely important.

"And what about Julie?" asked Mrs. Tarbury.

"Well, we thought we'd leave Julie here, Min," Emeline began

comfortably, "until we see if it works. Then in, say, a month--"

"Mama, you can't!" Julia interrupted, cheeks hot with shame. "Aunt Min's

got to rent that room--"

"You see how it is, Em," the lady of the house explained regretfully:

"Connie's gone off on the road now, and Rose Ransome's gone to Virginia

City, and there's a party and wife that'll give me twenty a month for

the room. And as it happens I'm full up now, Em--"

"Well, of course we'll pay--" George was beginning, somewhat haughtily,

but Emeline, who had grown rather red, interrupted:

"It don't make the slightest difference," she said, with spirit. "I

guess I'm the last woman in the world to want my child to stay where she

isn't welcome!"

"It ain't that at all, Em," Mrs. Tarbury threw in pacifically, but

Emeline was well launched now.

"If it hadn't been that George was all but passing away with kidney

trouble," Emeline said, her voice rising, "I never would of let such an

arrangement go on for five minutes! But there was days when we never

knew from hour to hour that George wasn't dying, and what with having

him moved and that woman holding up his clothes, and telling the doctor

lies about me, I guess I had troubles enough without worrying about

Julie. But I want to tell you right now, Min," said Emeline, with kindly

superiority, "that this isn't the kind of a house I'm crazy about having

my daughter in, anyway. It ain't you, so much--"

"Ha! that's good!" Mrs. Tarbury interpolated, with a sardonic laugh.

"But you know very well that such girls as Rosie and Con--" Emeline

rushed on.

"Oh, my God, Em!" Mrs. Tarbury began in a low voice rich with feeling,

but Julia took a hand.

"Don't be such a fool, Aunt Min!" she said, going over to sit on an arm

of Mrs. Tarbury's chair, and putting a caressing arm about her

shoulders. "And cut it out, Mama! Aunt Min's been kinder to me than any

one else, and you know it--and I've felt pretty darn mean living here

day after day! And now I say if Aunt Min has a chance to rent her

room--"

"God knows you're welcome to that room as long as you'll stay, Julie,"

Mrs. Tarbury said tremulously; "it's only--"

"If every one was as good to me as you are, Aunt Min!" Julia said,

beginning to cry. Mrs. Tarbury burst into sobs, and they clung together.

"I never meant that you wasn't awfully good to her, Min," Emeline said

stiffly. Then her eyes watered, and she, too, began to cry, and groped

for her handkerchief. "I'm just worn out with worrying and taking care

of George, I guess," sobbed Emeline, laying her head on the arm she

flung across a nearby table.

"Don't cry, Mama!" Julia gulped, leaving Mrs. Tarbury's lap to come and

pat her mother's shoulder. Emeline convulsively seized her, and their

wet cheeks touched.

"If any one ever says that I don't appreciate what you've done for me

and mine," choked Emeline, "it's a lie!"

"Well, it didn't _sound_ like you, Em," Mrs. Tarbury said, drying eyes

between sniffs.

Emeline immediately went over and kissed her, and all three laughed

shakily over a complete reconciliation, which was pleasingly interrupted

by George's gallant offer to take the whole crowd to dinner, if they

didn't mind his eating only tea and toast.

Still, it was decided that Julia should not stay at Mrs. Tarbury's, but

should spend the next week or two with her grandmother in the Mission.

Julia's quiet acceptance of this arrangement was both unexpected and

pleasing to her parents.

But as a matter of fact the girl was rather dazed, at this time, too

deeply sunk in a miserable contemplation of her own affairs to be

conscious of the immediate discomfort of the moment. She had dreamed

many a happy dream, as the years went by, of her father: had thought he

would claim her some day, be proud of her. She had fancied a little home

circle of which she would be the centre and star, spoiled alike by

father and mother. Dearer than any dream of a lover had been to Julia

this hope for days to come, when she should be a successful young

actress, with an adoring Daddy to be proud of her. Now the dream was

clouded; her father was an old man, self-absorbed; her mother--but Julia

had always known her mother to be both selfish and mercenary. More than

this, her little visit in Sausalito had altered her whole viewpoint.

Ignorant of life as she was, and bewildered by the revelations of that

visit, she was still intelligent enough to feel an acute discontent with

her old world, an agonizing longing for that better and cleaner and

higher existence. How to grasp at anything different from life as it was

lived in her mother's home--in her grandmother's, in Mrs.

Tarbury's--Julia had not the most remote idea. Until a few months ago

she had not known that she wanted anything different.

She brooded over the problem night and day; sometimes her hours of

gloomy introspection were interrupted by bursts of rebellious fury. She

would _not_ bear it, she would _not_ be despised and obscure and ignorant,

when, so close to her, there were girls of her own age to whom Fate had

been utterly kind; it was not her fault, and it was not _right_--it was

not right to despise her for what she could not help! But usually her

attitude was of passive if confused endurance.

Julia pored over the society columns of the Sunday papers, in these

days, and when she came across the name of Barbara Toland or Enid

Hazzard, it was as if a blow had been struck at her heart. Barbara's

face, smiling out at her from a copy of the News Letter, made Julia

wretched for a whole day, and the mere sight of the magazine that

contained it was obnoxious to her for days to come. Walking with Mark,

she saw in some Kearney Street window an enlarged photograph of a little

yacht cutting against a stiff breeze, and felt a rush of unwelcome

memories suddenly assail her.

Mark was very much the devoted lover just now, but the contemplation of

marriage with Mark never for a moment entered Julia's head. She had

really liked him much better when he was only Hannah's big brother, who

ignored all small girls in kindly, big-boy fashion. His adoring devotion

embarrassed her, and his demand for a definite answer to his suggestion

of marriage worried and perhaps a little frightened her.

One summer Sunday Mark asked her to go to the Park with him, and the two

made the trip on a Geary Street dummy front, and wandered through wide,

sunny stretches of lawn and white roadway to the amphitheatre, where

several thousand persons of all ages and conditions were already

listening to the band. Benches were set in rows under a grove of young

maple and locust trees, and Julia and Mark, sauntering well up to the

front, found seats, and settled themselves to listen.

Julia, enjoying the sunshine and the good hour, looked lazily at the

curiously variegated types about them: young men who lay almost

horizontally in their seats, their eyes shut, newspapers blowing about

their feet; toddling babies in Sunday white; young fathers and mothers

with tiny coats laid across their laps; groups of middle-aged Teutons

critically alert, and, everywhere, lovers and lovers and lovers. Mark

was pleasantly aware that his companion's beauty made her conspicuous,

even though Julia was plainly, almost soberly, dressed to-day, and

showed none of her usual sparkle and flash. She wore a trim little gown

of blue serge, with a tiny white ruffle about its high collar for its

only relief, her gloves were black, her small hat black, and she wore no

rings, no chains, and no bangles, a startling innovation for Julia. The

change in her appearance, and some more subtle change in face and voice

and manner, affected Mark like a strong wine.

"Do you know you're different from what you uster be, Julie?" he said,

laying his arm about her shoulders, on the back of the bench, and

squaring about so that his handsome black eyes could devour her.

"Getting older, maybe," Julia smiled indifferently. "I'll be sixteen in

no time, now!"

"My mother was only fifteen when she was married," Mark said, in a deep

and shaken voice, yet with pride and laughter in his eyes. Julia flushed

and looked at the toe of her shoe.

"Well, what about it--eh?" Mark pursued in an eager undertone. Julia was

silent. "What about it?" he said again.

"Why--why, I don't know," Julia stammered, uncomfortably, with a nervous

and furtive glance about her; anywhere but at his face.

"Suppose I _do_ know?" he urged, tightening a little the arm that layabout

her. "Suppose I know for us both?"

Julia straightened herself suddenly, evading the encircling arm.

"Don't, Mark!" she pleaded, giving him a glimpse of wet blue eyes.

"I'm not teasing you, darling," he said tenderly. "I'm not going to

tease you! But you do love me, Julia?"

A silence, but she tightened the hold of the little glove that rested on

his free hand.

"Don't you, Julie?" he begged.

"Why--you know I do, Mark!" the girl said, and both began to laugh.

"But then what's the matter?" Mark asked, serious again.

"Well--" Julia looked all about her, and finally brought her troubled

eyes to rest on his.

"Well, what, you darling?"

"Well, it's just this, Mark. I don't know whether I can get it over to

you." The girl interrupted herself for a little puzzled laugh. "I don't

know that I can get it over to myself," she said. "But it's this: I feel

as if I didn't know _myself_ yet, d'ye see? I don't know what I want,

myself, and of course I don't know what I want my husband to be

like--d'ye see, Mark? I--I feel as if I didn't know _anything_--I don't

know what's good and what's just common. I haven't read books, I haven't

had any one to tell me things, and show me things!" She turned to him

eyes that he was amazed to see were brimming again. "My mother never

told me about things," she burst out incoherently, "about how to talk,

and taking baths--and not using cologne!"

Mark could not quite follow this argument, but he was quick with

soothing generalities.

"Aw, pshaw, Julie, as if you aren't about as good as they make 'em, just

as you are! Why, I'm crazy about you--I'm crazy about the way you look

and about the way you act; you're good enough for _me_! Julie," his voice

sank again, "Julie, won't you let me pick out a little flat somewheres?

Pomeroy said I could have any one of the old squares for nothing; we

could get some rugs and chairs from the People's Easy Payment Company.

Just you and me, Julie; what do you think?"

"I-I'd like to have a cute little house," said Julia, with a shaky

smile.

"Sure you would! And a garden--"

"Oh, I'd love a little garden!" The girl smiled again.

"Well, then, why not, Julia?"

She looked at him obliquely.

"Suppose I stopped loving you, Mark?"

Mark gave a great laugh.

"Once I have you, Ju, I'll risk it!"

Child that she was, a glimpse of that complete possession stained her

cheeks crimson.

"I have to go down to Mama in Santa Clara next week," she submitted

awkwardly.

"Well, go down. But--how about New Year's, Julie? Will you marry me

then?"

Julia got up, and they walked away across the soft green of the grass.

"I don't honestly know what I want to do, Mark," she said a little

drearily. "I'm not crazy to go to Santa Clara, and yet it's something

awful--living at my grandmother's house! I'd like to kill my

grandfather, I know that. He's the meanest old man I ever saw. I suppose

I could keep at Artheris for an engagement--he's awfully decent--but now

that Rose and Connie have gone, I have to go round alone, and--it isn't

that I'm afraid of anything, but I simply don't seem to care any more! I

don't believe I want to be an actress. Artheris offered me small parts

with the Sacramento Star Stock, playing fourteen weeks and twenty plays,

this winter, but I thought of getting up there, and having to hunt up a

boarding-house--" Her voice sank indifferently. "I don't believe I'd

take anything less than ingenue," she added presently. "Florence Pitt

played ingenue in stock when she was only fifteen!"

"You could work up, Ju," Mark suggested, honestly anxious to console.

"Yes, the way Connie and Rose have!" the girl answered dryly. "Con's

been in the business six years and Rose nine!" Her eyes travelled the

blue spaces of the summer sky. "I wish I could go to New York," she said

vaguely.

"They say New York is jam-packed with girls hanging round theatrical

agencies," Mark submitted, to which Julia answered with a dispirited, "I

know!"

George had promised to send five dollars each week to old Mrs. Cox for

Julia's board, so that her stay in the Mission Street house was

agreeable for more than one reason, and her cousins understood perfectly

that Julia was to remain idle while they continued to be

self-supporting. They had no room in their crowded lives for envy of the

prettier and more fortunate Julia, but Julia vaguely envied them, seeing

them start off for work every morning, and joined by other girls and

young men as they reached the corner. Evelyn and Marguerite had each an

admirer, and between the romance of their evenings and the thousand

little episodes of the factory day, they seemed to find life cheerful

enough.

Julia tried, early in her stay, to make the room she shared with her

cousins, and her grandmother's kitchen, a little more attractive. But

the material to her hand was not very easily improved. In the bare

bedroom there was an iron bed, large enough to be fairly comfortable for

three tenants, two chairs, a washstand, and a chest of drawers that

would not stand straight. The paper was light, and streaked with dirt

and mould, and the bare wooden floor was strewn with paper candy bags

and crumpled programs from cheap theatres. There were no curtains at the

two windows, and the blue-green roller shades were faded by the sun. Not

a promising field for a reformer whose ideal was formed on a memory of

the Tolands' guest room!

The kitchen was quite as bad; worse in the sense that while Julia might

do as she pleased in the bedroom, her grandmother resented any

interference in what old Mrs. Cox regarded as her own domain. The old

woman found nothing amiss in the dirty newspapers that covered the

table, the tin of melting grease on the stove, the odds and ends of rags

and rope and clothespins and stockings that littered the chairs and

floor, the flies that walked on the ceiling and buzzed over the sugar

bowl. Julia quite enraged her on that morning that she essayed to clean

a certain wide shelf that, crowded to its last inch, hung over the sink.

"Do you need this, Grandma--can I throw this away?" the girl said over

and over, displaying a nearly empty box of blacking, a moist bag tightly

rolled over perhaps a pound of sugar, a broken egg beater, a stopped

alarm clock, a bottle of toothache drops, a dog's old collar, a cracked

saucer with a cake of brown soap tightly adhering to it, a few dried

onions, a broken comb, the two halves of a broken vase, and a score of

similarly assorted small articles.

"Jest don't meddle with 'em, Julia," Mrs. Cox said over and over again

uneasily. "I'm going to give all that a thorough cleaning when I get

around to it!"

She was obviously relieved when Julia gave the whole thing up as a bad

job, and went back to her aimless wandering about the house. Mrs. Cox

never went out except to church, but now and then Julia went down to

Mrs. Tarbury's and vaguely discussed the advisability of taking a

theatrical engagement, exactly as if several very definite offers were

under consideration.

Just at this time Julia's youngest uncle, Chester Cox, wrote his mother

from the big prison at San Quentin that he was coming home. The letter,

pencilled on two sheets of lined, grayish paper, caused a good deal of

discussion between Mrs. Cox, her husband, and her granddaughters.

Chester, now about thirty years old, had been pardoned because of late

evidence in his favour, when a five-year term for burglary was but one

quarter served, but in his old father's eyes a jailbird was a jailbird,

and Chester was still in some mysterious way to blame. Mrs. Cox was only

concerned because the boy was ill and out of a job and apt to prove a

burden, but the three girls, frankly curious about him, nevertheless

reserved judgment. He had always been an idler, he had always been a

weakling, but if he really were accused falsely, they could champion him

still.

The day he had set for his return was a Sunday, but he arrived

unexpectedly on the Saturday afternoon, to find great trouble in the

Mission Street house. Evelyn and Marguerite were free for the afternoon,

and were in the kitchen with Julia and their grandmother. It had lately

come to Evelyn's ears that her grandfather had been borrowing money on

the little property, and old Mrs. Cox was beside herself with anger and

fear. The house was her one hope against a destitute old age. She fairly

writhed at the contemplation of her husband's treachery in undermining

that one stay. While she was slaving and struggling, he had airily

disposed of three hundred dollars. She was stifled by the thought.

"He'd ought to be sent to jail for it!" the old woman said bitterly.

"You can't do it," Evelyn, the bearer of the badnews, assured her

impatiently.

"Well, he'll see what I can do, when he gets home!" Mrs. Cox muttered.

Julia, distressed by the scene, laid her hand over her grandmother's old

knotted one, as she sat beside her at the table, but could find no words

with which to comfort her. Her soul was sick with this fresh sordid

revelation; she felt as if she must scream in another minute of

existence in this dreary, dirty house, with the glaring sunshine

streaming in the kitchen window and a high summer wind howling outside.

The talk was ended by a ring at the door, and Julia went through the

dark, stifling passage to admit a lean, pale young man, with a rough

growth of light hair on his sunken cheeks, and a curious look of not

belonging to his clothes.

"It's Uncle Chess, Grandma," said she, leading the way back to the

kitchen. Mrs. Cox gave her youngest child a kiss, assuring him that she

never would have known him, he looked like a ghost, she said, and

Chester sat down and talked a little awkwardly to his mother and nieces.

His voice was husky, full of apologetic cadences; he explained

painstakingly the chance that had brought him home twenty-four hours

early, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Julia,

helping her grandmother with preparations for dinner, did not know why

she found Chester's presence unendurably trying; she did not know that

it was pity that wrung her heart; she only wished he were not there.

An hour's talk cheered the newcomer amazingly, as perhaps did also the

dinner odours of frying potatoes and bacon. He was venturing upon a

history of his wrongs when a damper fell upon the little company with

the arrival of the man of the house. Her husband's return brought back

in a flood to old Mrs. Cox's heart the memory of his outrageous

negotiations regarding the house; the three girls all cordially detested

the old man and were silent and ungracious in his presence, and Chester

flushed deeply as his father came in, and became dumb.

Old Cox made no immediate acknowledgement of the newcomer's arrival, but

grunted as he jerked a chair to the table, indicating his readiness for

dinner, and dinner was served with all speed. It was only when he had

drunk off half a cup of scalding strong tea that the man of the house

turned to his last born and said:

"So, you're out again?"

"I should never have been in!" Chester said, eagerly and huskily.

"Yes, I've heard lots of that kind of talk," the old man assured him.

"'Cording to what you hear there's a good many up there that never done

nothing at all!"

Julia saw the son shrink, and a look of infinite wistfulness for a

moment darkened his eyes. He was a stupid-looking, gentle-faced fellow,

pitiable as a sick child.

"Perhaps you'll read these, Pa," he said, fumbling in his pockets for a

moment before producing two or three short newspaper clippings from an

inner coat pocket. "There--there's the truth of it; it's all there," he

said eagerly. "'Cox will immediately be given his freedom--after sixteen

months as an innocent victim of the law'--that's what it says!"

"I'll read nothin'," the old man said, sweeping back the slips with a

scornful hand, his small, deep-set eyes blinking at his son like a

monkey's.

"Well, all right, all right," Chester answered, his thin face burning

again, his voice hoarsely belligerent.

"That's the jestice you'll get from your father!" the old woman said,

with a cackle. Julia gathered up the newspaper clippings.

"Aren't you mean, Grandpa!" she said, indignantly, beginning to read.

"Maybe I am, maybe I am," he retorted fiercely. "But you'll find there's

no smoke without some fire, my fine lady, and when a boy that's always

been a lazy, idle shame to his father and mother gets a taste of blame,

you can depend that no newspaper is going to make a saint of him!"

"Grandma, don't let him talk that way!" Julia protested, her breast

rising and falling. Chester turned to his father.

"Maybe if you'd a-give me a better chance," he said sullenly, "maybe if

us boys hadn't been kicked around so much, shoved into the first job

that came handy, seeing Ma and the girls afraid to breathe while you was

in the house--"

Both men were now standing, their faces close together.

"Well, you ain't going to have another chance here!" the old man

shouted. "I'll have no jailbirds settin' around here to be petted and

babied! Get that into your head! Don't you let me come into the house

and find you here again----"

"Pa!" protested Mrs. Cox, fired by the eyes of her granddaughters.

"Yes--an' 'Pa'!" he snarled, pulling on his old hat, and opening the

kitchen door. "But it'll be Pa on the wrong side of your face if you

make any mistake about it! Jailbird!" he muttered to himself, with a

final slam at the door. The others looked at each other.

"That's a sweet welcome home," said Chester, with a bitter laugh. He was

standing, his head lowered; there was bewilderment as well as anger in

his look.

"Pa's got to be a terrible crank," said Mrs. Cox, returning to her

teapot, after a glance through the window at her retiring lord. "He

carries on something terrible sometimes."

"Well, he won't carry on any longer as far as I am concerned!" Chester

said, a little vaguely.

"I don't know what's got into Pa!" his wife complained.

"Don't you care, Uncle Chess," Marguerite submitted with timid sympathy.

"Oh, no, sure I don't care," the man said with a short laugh. "Of course

it's nothing to me! A man comes home to his own folks, he's had a tough

time--" His voice sank huskily. The sleeves of his coat were too short

for him, and Julia noticed how thin his wrists were, as he gathered up

his newspaper clippings and restored them to his inside pocket. The

women watched him in silence. Presently he stooped down and kissed his

mother's forehead, at the edge of her untidy, grizzled hair.

"Good-bye, Ma!" he said. "Good-bye, girls!"

"It'll be a judgment on your father," Mrs. Cox protested. "I don't know

what's gotten into him!"

But she made no further objection; she did not get up from her place at

table when Chester crossed the kitchen, opened the street door, and went

out.

"Grandpa's a prince, all right!" said Marguerite then, and Evelyn added,

"Wouldn't it give you a pain?"

"But I notice that none of us did anything about it!" Julia said

bitterly.

"If your grandpa found Chess here when he got home to-night, there'd be

a reckoning!" the old woman asserted dully.

"And what is Uncle Chess supposed to do?" Julia demanded.

"I betcher he kills himself," Evelyn submitted.

"I betcher he does," her sister agreed.

"Well, it'll be on your grandfather's head!" the old woman said. She

began to cry, still drinking her tea.

"I wonder if he has any money?" speculated Julia.

"Where'd he get money?" Evelyn said. Julia, following an uncomfortable

impulse, went to the window in the close little parlour and looked out

into the street. It was about six o'clock, and still broad day. The wind

had died down, but the street was dirty, and the glaring light of the

sinking sun fell full on the faces of the home-going stream of men and

women. Julia's quick eye found Chester instantly. He had loitered no

farther than the corner, a hundred feet away, and was standing there,

irresolute, stooped, still wearing his look of vague bewilderment.

The girl ran upstairs, and snatched her hat and a light coat. Two

minutes later she was downstairs again, the chatelaine bag in which all

girls carried their money in those days jumping at her belt.

But in those two minutes Chester had disappeared. Julia felt sick with

disappointment as she reached the corner only to find him gone. She

stood looking quickly about her: up the street, down the street; he was

gone. It seemed to the girl that she could not go back to her

grandmother's house again; a disgust for everything and everybody in it

shook her from head to foot. She was sorry for them, her grandmother,

her cousins, but the simple fact remained that they could bear this sort

of existence and she could not; it was stifling her; it was killing her.

"If they minded things as I do they would change them, somehow!" said

Julia to herself, walking on blindly. "My grandmother should never have

let things get to such a pass--I can't bear it! The smells and the

fights--"

She stopped a car, one of the cable cars that ran out into the factory

district. Julia had no idea where she was going, nor did she care. She

got on because one of the small forward outside seats was empty, and she

could sit there comfortably. The car went on and on, through a less and

less populated district, but Julia, buried in unhappy thought, paid no

attention to route or neighbourhood.

"All off!" shouted the conductor presently. Julia had meant to keep her

seat for the return trip, but the man's glance at her young beauty

annoyed her, and she got off the car.

She walked aimlessly along a battered cement sidewalk, between

irregularly placed and shabby little houses. These were of too familiar

a type to interest Julia, but she presently came to a full stop before a

wide, one-story brick building, with a struggling garden separating it

from the street, and straggling window boxes at every one of the wide

windows. A flight of steps led up from the garden to the pretty white

front door, and a neat brass plate, screwed to the cement at the turn of

the steps, bore the words: "Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House."

It would have been a pretty house anywhere, with its crisp dotted muslin

curtains, its trim colonial walls, but in this particular neighbourhood

it had an added charm of contrast, and Julia stood before it literally

spellbound by admiration, and smitten, too, with that strange sick

fascination to which the mere name of Toland subjected her.

And while she stood there, Miss Anna Toland came to the door and stood

looking down at the street. Julia's heart began to beat very fast, and

the blood rushed to her face. She bowed, and Miss Toland bowed.

"Oh, Miss Page!" said Miss Toland then, crisply ready with the name and

the request. "This is very fortunate! I wonder if you won't come in and

help me a moment? I've been trying for one hour to make the hall key

work."

Julia said nothing. She mounted the steps and followed Miss Toland into

the hall.

CHAPTER VI

The Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House, familiarly known by all who

had anything to do with it as The Alexander, was small, as neighbourhood

houses go, but exceptionally pretty and complete, and financially so

well backed by a certain group of San Francisco's society women as to be

entirely free from the common trouble of its kind. Miss Toland had built

it, and had made it her personal business to interest some of her

friends in its success, but she now found herself confronted by an

unexpected problem: it seemed impossible to get an experienced woman as

resident worker with whom Miss Toland could live in peace. The few women

who had been qualified to try the position had all swiftly, quietly, and

firmly resigned, with that pained reticence that marks the trained

worker. Miss Toland told her committees, with good-humoured tolerance,

that Miss Smith or Mrs. Brown had been a splendid person, perfectly

splendid, but unable to understand the peculiar conditions that made

social work in San Francisco utterly--and totally--different from social

work elsewhere. Meanwhile, she did the best she could with volunteer

workers, daily bewailing the fact that, without the trained worker, her

girls' clubs and classes, her boys' and mothers' clubs, had been

difficult to start, and maintained but a languishing existence. She was

a sanguine woman, and filled with confidence in the eventual success of

The Alexander, and with energy to push it toward a completely fruitful

existence, but she herself was inexperienced, and Julia had chanced upon

her in a thoroughly discouraged mood.

Julia's first aid--in climbing through a transom and opening a stubborn

door--being entirely successful, Miss Toland kept her to show her the

little establishment, and was secretly soothed and pleased by the girl's

delight.

The front door opened into a wide square hall, furnished with neat

Mission chairs and tables, and with a large brown rug. There were two

doors on each side, and a large double door at the back. One door on the

right led to a model kitchen, floored in bright blue-and-white

linoleum, and with a shining stove, a shining dresser full of

blue-and-white china, a tiled sink, a table, and two chairs. The other

right-hand door opened into a little committee room, where there were

wall closets full of ginghams and boxes of buttons and braid, and more

Mission furniture. On the left each door opened into a bedroom, one

occupied by Miss Toland and littered by her possessions, one empty and

immaculate. The two were joined by a shining little bath. Julia looked

at the white bed in the unoccupied room, the white bureau, the white

chairs, the white dotted curtains at the windows, the dark-blue rugs on

a painted floor, and a gasp of honest admiration broke from her. Miss

Toland gave her a quick approving glance, but said nothing.

Through the big double door they stepped straight on the stage that

filled one end of the tiny auditorium, Miss Toland touching an electric

button that flooded the room with light, for Julia's benefit. There were

wide windows, curtained in crisp dotted white, all about the hall, and a

door at the far end that gave, as Julia afterward learned, on a side

street. An upright piano was on the stage, and at one side a flight of

three or four steps led down to the hall. The main floor was broken by

tables and benches, a hundred sewing bags of blue linen hung on numbered

hooks on the wall, and at the far end there were two deep closets for

kindergarten materials and sewing supplies.

The tour of inspection was ended in the kitchen, where Miss Toland put

several paper bags on the table, dropped into a chair, and asked Julia

also to be seated.

"Well, what do you think of it?" she said, reaching behind her to get a

knife from a drawer. With the knife she cut a spongy crust from a loaf

of bread, without fairly withdrawing it from the bag, and subtracting a

thin pink slice of ham from some oiled paper in another bag, she folded

it into the crust and began to eat it. "I picnic here--when I come,"

said Miss Toland, unembarrassed. "You've had your dinner?"

"Oh, yes," said Julia, "but do let me--" And without further words she

took two plates from the dresser, served the ham neatly, cut a slice or

two of bread, and removed the bags.

"Ah, yes, that's _much_ better!" Miss Toland said. "There's tea there. I

suppose you couldn't manage a cup?"

A deep and peculiar pleasure began to thrill through Julia. She stepped

to the entrance hall, laid aside her hat and jacket, and returned to set

about tea-making with deftness and quickness. She found a wilted slice

of butter in a safe, and set out cups and sugar beside it. Miss Toland

stopped eating, and watched these preparations with great satisfaction.

Presently she stood up to pin her handsome silk-lined skirt about her

hips, and pushed her face veil neatly above the brim of her hat. The

water in the white enamelled kettle boiled, and Julia made tea in a blue

Japanese pot.

"This is _much_ better!" said Miss Toland again. "I get to be a perfect

barbarian--eating alone!" She rummaged in a closet. "Here's some jam

Sally sent," said she, producing it. "They are always sending me pies

and fresh eggs and jelly; they are always afraid of my starving to

death."

They began the meal again, and this time Julia joined her hostess, and

really enjoyed her tea and bread and jam. It was dark now, and they drew

the shades at the two street windows and turned on the electric light.

Julia knew by some instinct that she need not be afraid of the

gray-haired, eccentric, kindly woman opposite; in that very hour she

assumed a maternal attitude that was to be the key to her relationship

with Miss Toland for many years. The two, neither realizing it,

instantly liked each other. Never in her rather reserved little life had

Julia shown her heart as she showed it in this hour over the teacups.

"So you like it?" said Miss Toland. "It's small, but it's the most

complete thing of the kind in the State. I've been scrambling along here

as best I might for three months, but as soon as I get a resident head

worker, we'll get everything straightened out." She gave her nose a

sudden rub with her hand, frowned in a worried fashion.

"Girls--regularly appointed girls ought to take care of all this!" she

went on, indicating the kitchen with a wave of her hand. "But no! You

can't get them to systematize! Now I tell you," she added sternly, "I am

going to lay down the law in this house! They do it in other settlement

houses, and it shall be done here! Every yard of gingham, every thimble

and spool of thread, is going to be _accounted_ for! Do you suppose that

at the Telegraph Hill House they allow the children to run about

grabbing here and grabbing there--poh! They'd laugh at you!"

"Of course," said Julia vaguely.

"Classes of the smaller girls should keep this kitchen and bathroom like

a _pin_," said Miss Toland sharply. "And, as soon as we get a regular

manager in here--Now that's what I tell my sister Sally, that is Mrs.

Toland," she broke off to say. "Here's Barbara, home from a finishing

school and six months abroad. Why couldn't she step in here? But no!

Barbara'll come in now and then if it's a special occasion--"

"But she has such wonderful good times at home; she has everything in

the world now," Julia said wistfully. Miss Toland gave her a shrewd

glance; it was as if she saw Julia for the first time.

"Barbara?" Barbara's aunt poured herself another cup of tea, and fell

into thought for a few moments. Then she set down her cup, straightened

herself suddenly, and burst forth: "Barbara! That's one of the most

absurd things in the world, you know--the supposition that a girl like

Barbara is perfectly happy! Perfectly wretched and discontented, if you

ask me!"

"Oh, no!" Julia protested.

"Oh, yes! Barbara's idle, she's useless, she doesn't know what to do

with herself. No girl of her age does. I know, for my mother brought me

up in the same way. She got a lot of half-baked notions in school; she

had a year of college in which to get a lot more; she came home afraid

to go back to college for fear of missing something at home, afraid of

staying home for fear of missing something at college; compromised on

six months in Europe. Now, here she is, the finished product. We've been

spending twelve years getting Barbara ready for something, and, as a

result, she's ready for nothing! What does she know of the world?

Absolutely nothing! She's never for one instant come in contact with

anything real--she can't. She's been so educated that she wouldn't know

anything real if she saw it! Mind you," said Miss Toland, fixing the

somewhat bewildered Julia with a stern eye, "mind you, I admit it's hard

for people of income to bring a girl up sensibly. 'But,' I've said to my

sister-in-law, 'hand me over one of the younger girls--I'll promise you

that she'll grow up something more than a poor little fashionably

dressed doll, looking sidewise out of her eyes at every man she meets,

to see whether he'll marry her or not!' Of course there's only one

answer to that. I've never married, and I don't know anything about it!"

"Miss Toland will marry," Julia submitted.

"Perhaps she will," her aunt said. "Perhaps, again, she won't. But at

all events, it's a rather flat business, all this rushing about to

dinners and dances; it'll last a few years perhaps--then what? I tell

you what, my dear, there's only one good thing in this world, and that's

_work_--self-expression. It hurts my pride every time I see a nice girl

growing older year after year, idle, expensive, waiting for some man to

miraculously happen along and take her out of it. I tell you the

interesting lives are those of people who've had to work up from the

bottom. A working girl may have her troubles, but they're _real_. Why,

let's suppose that Barbara marries, that she marries the man her mother

has picked out, for example, still she doesn't get away from the tiring,

the sickening conventions that all her set has laid down for her! I wish

I had my own girlhood to live over--I know that!" finished the older

woman, with a gloomy nod.

"Miss Toland seems to me to have everything in the world," Julia said,

in childish protest. "She's--she's beautiful, and every one loves her.

She's always been rich enough to do what she pleased, and go places, and

wear what she liked! And--and"--Julia's eyes watered suddenly--"and

she's a lady," she added unsteadily. "She's always been told how to do

things, she's--she's different from--from girls who have had no chances,

who--"

Her voice thickened, speech became too difficult, and she stopped,

looking down at her teacup through a blur of tears. Miss Toland watched

her for a silent moment or two; despite all her oddities, no woman who

ever lived had a kinder heart or a keener insight than Anna Toland. It

was in a very winning tone that she presently said:

"Tell me a little something about yourself, Miss Page!"

"Oh, there's nothing interesting about _me_!" Julia said, ashamed of

showing emotion. She jumped up, and began to put the kitchen in order.

But the recital came, nevertheless, beginning with Chester, and ending

with Julia's earliest memories of the O'Farrell Street house. The girl

tumbled it out regardless of sequence, and revealing far more than she

knew. Julia told of the episode of Carter Hazzard; she repeated the

conversation she had overheard at the club.

Miss Toland did not once interrupt her; she listened in an appreciative

silence. They washed and put away the dishes, straightened the kitchen,

and finally found themselves standing in the reception room, Julia still

talking.

".... so you see why it sounds so funny to me, your talking about your

niece," Julia said. "Because she--she seems to me such _miles_ ahead--she

seems to have everything I would like to have!" She paused, and then

said awkwardly: "I'll never be a lady, I know that. I--I wish I had a

chance to be!"

And she sat down at the little Mission table, and flung her arms out

before her, her face tired and wretched, her blue eyes dark with pain.

Miss Toland's face, from showing mere indulgent interest, took on a

sharper look. She was a quick-witted woman, and this chanced to touch

her in a sensitive spot.

"As for a lady, ladies are made and not born," she said decidedly.

"Don't ever let them fool you. Barbara may run around until she's tired

talking about belonging to the Daughters of Southern Officers; she can

stick a sampler up here, and lend a Copley portrait to a loan exhibition

now and then; but you mark my words, Barbara had to learn things like

any other girl. One sensible mother in this world is worth sixteen

distinguished great-grandmothers!"

Julia said nothing; she began to think it was time for her to go. But

Miss Toland was well launched in a favourite argument.

"Why, look here," said the older woman, who was enjoying herself,

"you're young, you're pretty, you're naturally inclined to choose what

is nice, what is refined. You say you're not a lady--how do you know?

You may take my word for it--Julia, your name is?--Julia, then, that if

you make up your mind to be one, nothing can stop you. Now I've been

thinking while we talked. Why couldn't you come here and try this sort

of thing? You could keep things running smoothly here; you could work

into the girls' clubs, perhaps; no harm to try, anyway. Do you sing?"

Julia had to clear her throat before she could say huskily:

"I can play the piano a little."

"You see--you play. Well, what do you think of it, then?"

"Live here?" stammered Julia.

"Certainly, live right here. I want some one right _here_ with me. You can

arrange your own work, you can read all the books you want, you'll come

in contact with nice people. I'm afraid to be here alone at night very

much, and I've come to the conclusion that we'll never accomplish

anything until I can stay, day out and in. Why don't you try it, anyway?

Telephone your grandmother--sleep right here to-night!"

Julia struggled for absolute control of her facial muscles.

"Here?" she asked, a little thickly.

"Right in here--you can but try it!" Miss Toland urged, throwing open

the door of the immaculate, unused bedroom. Julia looked again at the

fresh white bed, the rug, the bureau. Her own--her own domain! Just what

entering it meant to her she never tried to say, but the moment was a

memorable one in her life. She presently found herself telephoning a

message to the drug store that was nearest her grandmother's home. She

selected a flannelette nightgown from a deep drawer marked: "Nightgowns

and petticoats--Women's." She assured Miss Toland that she could buy a

toothbrush the next day, and when the older woman asked her how she

liked her bath in the morning, Julia said very staidly: "Warm, thank

you."

"Warm? Well, so do I," said Miss Toland's approving voice from the next

room. "This business of ice-cold baths! Fad. There's a gas heater in the

kitchen."

Julia, laying her underwear neatly over a chair, was struck by the

enormity of the task she had undertaken. A great blight of utter

discouragement swept over her--she never could do it! Her mother--all

her kin--seemed to take shadowy shape to menace this little haven she

had found. Chester--suppose he should find her! Suppose Mark should!

Sooner or later some one must discover where she was.

And clothes! These clothes would not do! She had no money; she must

borrow. And how was she to help in sewing classes and cooking classes,

knowing only what she knew?

".... said to her as nicely as I could, but firmly," Miss Toland was

saying, above the rasp of a running faucet in the bathroom, '"Well, my

dear Miss Hewitt, you may be a trained worker and I'm not, but you can't

expect your theories to work under conditions--'"

"What a bluffer I am," thought Julia, getting into bed. She snapped her

light off, but Miss Toland turned it on again when she came to the door

to look at Julia with great satisfaction.

"Comfortable, my dear?"

"Oh, yes, thank you."

"Have you forgotten to open your window?"

Julia raised herself on an elbow.

"Well, I believe I have," said she.

Miss Toland flung it up.

"We're as safe as a church here," she said, after a moment's study of

the street. "Sometimes the Italians opposite get noisy, but they're

harmless. Well, I'm going to read--you'll see my light. Sleep tight!"

"Thank you," said Julia.

Miss Toland went back to her room, and Julia, wide awake, lay staring at

her own room's pure bare walls, the triangle of light that fell in the

little passageway from Miss Toland's reading lamp, and the lights in the

street outside. Now and then a passing car sent lights wheeling across

her ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men

passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a

tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's

pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a

soprano voice floated out on the night air:

"But the waves still are singing to the shore As they sang in the happy

days of yore--"

To these and a thousand less sharply defined noises, to the constant,

steady flicking of stiff pages in Miss Toland's room, Julia fell asleep.

Miss Toland told her family of the arrangement some three months later.

She met her sister-in-law and oldest niece downtown for luncheon one day

in November, and when the ladies had ordered their luncheon and piled

superfluous wraps and parcels upon a fourth chair, Barbara, staring

about the Palm Room, and resting her chin on one slender wrist, asked

indifferently:

"And how's The Alexander, Aunt Sanna?"

"Why don't you come and see?" asked her aunt briskly. "You've all

deserted me, and I don't know whether I'm on speaking terms with you or

not! We're getting on splendidly. Nineteen girls in our Tuesday evening

club; mothers' meetings a great success. I've captured a rare little

personality in Julia."

She enlarged upon the theme: Julia's industry, her simplicity, her

natural sympathy with and comprehension of the class from which the

frequenters of The Alexander were drawn. Mrs. Toland listened smilingly,

her bright eyes roving the room constantly. Barbara did not listen at

all; she studied the scene about her sombrely, with heavy-lidded eyes.

Barbara was at an age when exactly those things that a certain small

group of her contemporaries did, said, and thought, made all her world.

She wished to be with these young people all the time; she wished for

nothing else, to-day she was heartsick because there was to be a weekend

house party to which she was not invited. A personal summons from the

greatest queen of Europe would have meant nothing to Barbara to-day,

except for its effect upon the little circle she desired so eagerly to

impress. Parents, sisters, and brothers, nature, science, and art, were

but pale shapes about her. The burning fact was that Elinor Sparrow had

asked the others down for tennis Saturday and to stay overnight, and had

asked her, Barbara, to join them on Sunday for luncheon--

"Tell Aunt Sanna about the wedding, dear!" commanded Mrs. Toland

suddenly. Barbara smiled with mechanical brightness.

"Oh, it was lovely! Every one was there. Georgie looked stunning--ever

so much prettier than Hazel!" she said, rather lifelessly.

"Tell Aunt Sanna who got the bride's bouquet!"

"Oh," Barbara again assumed an expression of animation. "Oh, I did."

"Jim go?"

"Oh, yes, he went with the Russells. That's getting to be quite a case,

you know," Barbara said airily.

"I _thought_ that was Elinor Sparrow and her mother," Mrs. Toland said,

bowing to two ladies who were now at some distance, and were leaving the

room. "They were at that table, but I couldn't be sure who they were

until they got up."

"Was Elinor right there?" Barbara asked quickly.

"Why, yes; but as I say--"

Barbara pushed back her broiled bird with a gesture of utter

exasperation.

"I think you might have _said_ something about it, Mother," she said,

angry and disappointed.

"Why, my darling," Mrs. Toland began, fluttered, "how could I

dream--besides, as I say, I couldn't see--"

"You knew how I felt about Saturday," Barbara said bitterly, "and you

let them sit there an hour! I could have turned around--I could have--"

"Listen to Mother, dear. You--"

"And I can't understand why you wouldn't naturally mention it," Barbara

interrupted, in a high, critical voice. Tears trembled into her eyes. "I

would have given a great deal to have seen Elinor to-day," she said

stiffly.

Mrs. Toland, smitten dumb with penitence, could only eye her with

sympathy and distress.

"Listen, dear," she suggested eagerly, after a moment. "Suppose you run

out and see Elinor in the cloakroom? Mother's so sorry she--"

"No, I couldn't do that," Barbara answered moodily. "It would have been

all right to have it just seem to happen--No, it doesn't make any

difference, Mother. Please--_please_--don't bother about it."

"I'm sure Elinor didn't see you," Mrs. Toland continued. Barbara,

throwing her a glance of utter weariness, begged politely:

"_Please_ don't bother about it, Mother. _Please_. I'd rather not."

"Well," Mrs. Toland conceded, with dissatisfaction. An uncomfortable

silence reigned, until Miss Toland began suddenly to talk of Julia.

"She's a very unusual girl," said she. "She's _utterly_ and _entirely_

satisfactory to me."

"I think you're very fortunate, Sanna," Mrs. Toland commented absently.

She speculated a little as to Julia; there really must be something

unusual about the girl; Sanna was notoriously difficult to live with.

"She's not stiff--she's amenable to reason," Miss Toland said, smiling

vaguely. "We--we have really good times together."

"I hope she's improved in appearance," Mrs. Toland remarked severely.

"You remember how dreadfully she looked, Barbara?"

Barbara smiled, half lifted dubious brows, and shrugged slightly.

"She's _enormously_ improved," Miss Toland said sharply. "She wears an

extremely becoming uniform now."

"She's evidently got _your_ number, Auntie," Barbara said, watching three

young men who were entering the room. "She evidently knows that you're

nutty about appearances!"

"I am not nutty about appearances at all," her aunt responded, as she

attacked an elaborate ice. "I like things done decently, and I like to

see Julia in her nice, trim dresses. That Eastern woman I tried, Miss

Knox, wouldn't hear of wearing a uniform--not she! Julia has more

sense."

"I expect that Julia hasn't an idea in her head that you haven't put

there," Barbara said dryly.

"Don't you believe it!" her aunt said with fire. She seemed ready for

further speech, but interrupted herself, and was contented with a mere

repetition of her first words, "Don't you _believe_ it."

"Your geese are all swans, Sanna," Mrs. Toland said, with a tolerant

smile.

"Very likely," Miss Toland said briefly, drinking off her black coffee

at a draught. "Now," she went on briskly, "where are you good people

going? Julia's to meet me here in the Turkish Room at two; we have to

pick out a hundred books, to start our library."

"It's after that now," Barbara said. "She's probably waiting. Let's go

out that way, Mother, and walk over to Sutter?"

They sauntered along the wide passage to the Turkish Room, and just

before they reached it a young woman came toward them, a slender, erect

person, under whose neatly buttoned long coat showed the crisp hem of a

blue linen dress. Julia bowed briefly to the mother and daughter, but

her eyes were only for Miss Toland. She was nervous and constrained;

bright colour had come into her cheeks; she could not speak. But Barbara

merely thought that the cheap little common actress had miraculously

improved in appearance and manner, and noted the blue, blue eyes, and

the glittering sweep of hair under Julia's neat hat, and Miss Toland

felt herself curiously touched by the appealing look that Julia gave

her.

"Now for the books, Julia," said she, beaming approval. The two went off

together, chattering like friends and equals.

"What does Aunt Sanna _see_ in her?" marvelled Barbara, watching.

"Your aunt is peculiar," Mrs. Toland said, with vague disapproval,

compressing her lips.

"Well, the way she runs The Alexander is curious, to say the least,"

Barbara commented vigorously. "I couldn't stay out there one _week_,

myself, and have Aunt Sanna carrying on the way she does, planning a

thing, and forgetting it in two seconds, and yelling at the children one

day, and treating them to ice-cream the next! Why, the last time I went

out there Aunt Sanna was in bed, at eleven o'clock, because she felt

like reading, and she'd called off the housekeeping class for no reason

at all except that she didn't feel like it!"

"Yes, I know, I know," Mrs. Toland said, picking her way daintily across

Market Street. "But she has her own money, and I suppose she'll go her

own gait!" But she looked a little uneasy, and was silent for some

moments, busy with her own thoughts.

Long before this Julia's whereabouts had been discovered by her own

family, and by at least one of her friends, Mark Rosenthal. Mark walked

in upon her one Sunday afternoon, when she had been about a month at The

Alexander. Miss Toland had gone for a few hours to Sausalito, and Julia

was alone, and had some leisure. She put on her hat, and she and Mark

walked through the noisy Sunday streets; everybody was out in the

sunshine, and saloons everywhere were doing a steady business.

"Evelyn told me where you were," Mark explained. Julia made a little

grimace of disapproval, and the man, watching her, winced.

"Are you so sorry to have me know?" he asked, a sword in his heart.

"Oh, it's not that, Mark! But"--Julia stammered--"but I only went home

to see grandma Thursday, and it struck me that Evelyn hadn't lost much

time!"

"Wouldn't you ever have written me?" Mark asked, his dark eyes caressing

her.

"Oh, of course I would. Only I wanted to get a start first. Why do you

laugh?" Julia broke off to ask offendedly.

"Just because I love you so, darling. Just because I've been hungry for

you all these weeks--and it's just ecstasy to be here!" Mark's eyes were

moist now, though he was still smiling. "You don't know it, but I just

_live_ to see you, Julie. I can't think of anything else. This--this new

job isn't going to make any difference about our marrying, is it,

darling?"

Julia surveyed a stretch of dirty street lined with dirty yet somewhat

pretentious houses. Women sat on drifts of newspapers on the steps,

white-stockinged children quarrelled in the hot, dingy dooryards.

"I wish you didn't care that way, Mark," she said, uncomfortably.

"Why, dearest?" he said eagerly. "Because I care more for you than you

do for me? I know that, Julie." He watched the cool little cheek nearest

him. "But wait until we're married, Julie, you'll love me then; I'll

_make_ you!"

But all his young fire could not touch her. He could only win an

occasional troubled glance.

"I want to stay here a long, long time, you know, Mark--if I can. I want

to read things and study things. I want to be let alone. It'll be _years_

before I want to marry!" Julia raised her anxious, harassed eyes to his.

"I don't really think of men or of marriage at all," said she.

"Well, that's all right, darling," Mark said, smiling down at her, a

little touched. "I'm going to be sent up to Sacramento for a while; I'll

not worry you. But see here, if I go back to the house with you again,

do I get a kiss?"

Julia gave him a grave smile, and let him follow her into the settlement

house. But Mark did not get his kiss, for Miss Toland was there, and a

group of eager club girls who had something to arrange for a meeting the

following night. Mark left the lady of his delight staidly discussing

the relative merits of lemonade and gingersnaps and two pounds of

"broken mixed" candy, as evening refreshments, and carried away a

troubled heart. He wrote Julia, at least twice a week, shyly

affectionate and honestly egotistical letters, but it was some months

before he saw her again.

Julia's visit to her grandparents, through which Mark had been able to

trace her, had taken place some days before, on a certain Wednesday

afternoon. Suddenly, after the daily three o'clock sewing class had had

its meeting in the big hall, the thought had come to her that she must

see her own people. It was a still autumn afternoon, a little chilly,

and Julia, setting forth, felt small relish for her errand.

Her grandmother's house presented a dingy, discouraging front. Julia

twisted the familiar old bell, and got the familiar old odours of

carbolic acid and boiling onions, superimposed upon a basis of thick,

heavy, stale air. But the hour she spent in the dirty kitchen was

nevertheless not an unpleasant one. Her grandmother was all alone, and

was too used to similar vagaries on the part of all her family to resent

Julia's disappearance and long silence.

"We had your postal," she admitted, in answer to her granddaughter's

embarrassed query. "You look thin, me dear; you've not got your old

bold, stylish look about you."

And she wrinkled her old face and studied Julia with blinking eyes. "The

girls was glad enough to use your dresses. Marguerite looked real nice

in the one she took. Your Mama wrote in to know what kind of a job you

had--Sit down, Julia," she said as she poked about the stove with a lid

lifter.

Julia, who had drawn a long breath to recount her experiences, suddenly

expelled it. It occurred to her, with a great relief, that her

grandmother was not interested in details. Her hard life had left her no

curiosity; she was only mildly satisfied at finding her granddaughter

apparently prosperous and well; Mrs. Cox was never driven to the

necessity of borrowing trouble.

Julia learned that her own father and mother were in Los Angeles, where

George was looking for employment. Evelyn had developed a sudden

ambition to be a dressmaker, Marguerite had a new admirer. Pa, Mrs. Cox

said, was awful cross and cranky. Julia, with a premonition of trouble,

asked for Chester.

"He's fine; he's the only one Pa'll speak to," her grandmother said,

unexpectedly.

"Oh," said Julia eagerly, "he's here?"

"Sure, he come back," Mrs. Cox assured her indifferently. "He's got good

work."

Walking home in the early darkness, Julia could have danced for very

lightness of heart. She had dreaded the call, dreaded their jealousy of

her new chance, dreaded the possibility of their wishing to share the

joys of The Alexander with her. She found them entirely uninterested in

her problems, and entirely absorbed in themselves. Marguerite remarked

that she did not see why Julia "let them make" her wear the plain linen

uniform of which Julia was secretly so proud. Evelyn was fretting

because dressmakers' apprentices could depend upon such very poor pay,

and vouchsafed Julia a moment's attention only when Julia observed that

the Tolands patronized a very fashionable dressmaker, and might say a

good word to her for Evelyn. This excited Evelyn very much, and she

suggested that perhaps she herself had better see Miss Toland.

"No--no! I'll do it," Julia said hastily.

Mrs. Cox, upon her departure, extended her granddaughter a warm

invitation.

"If they don't treat you good, dearie, you come right back here and

Grandma'll take good care of you," said she, and Evelyn and Marguerite,

eying Julia over their cups of tea, nodded half pityingly. They thought

it a very poor job that did not permit one to come home to this kitchen

at night, even less desirable than their own despised employments.

Julia's being kept at night only added one more item to the long total

that made the helplessness of the poor. It was as if Julia, dancing back

to The Alexander in the early darkness, hugged to her heart the

assurance that these kinswomen were as contentedly independent of her as

she of them.

These experiences belonged to early days at The Alexander. There were

other experiences, hours of cold discouragement and doubt, hours of

bitter self-distrust. Julia trembled over mistakes, and made a hundred

mistakes of which she never knew. But by some miracle, she never chanced

to offend her erratic superior. To Miss Toland there was small

significance in the fact of an ill-cut pattern or a lost key. At the

mothers' meetings, when Julia was dismally smitten with a sense of her

own uselessness, Miss Toland thought her shy little attempts at

friendliness very charming, and when she casually corrected the faults

of Julia's speech, she gave no further thought to the matter, although

Julia turned hot and cold at the recollection for many a day to come.

Julia never made any objection, never hinted by so much as a reproachful

eyelid, that Miss Toland's way of doing things was not that usually

adopted. Julia would show her delight when a shopping tour and a lunch

downtown were substituted for a sewing lesson; she docilely pushed back

her boiling potatoes and beef stew when Miss Toland was for delaying

supper while they went out to buy a waffle iron, and made some

experiments with batter. On three or four mornings each week there were

no classes, and on these mornings the two loitered along over their

coffee and toast, Miss Toland talking, Julia a passionately interested

listener. Perhaps the older woman would read some passage from Meredith

or de Balzac, after which Julia dipped into Meredith for herself, but

found him slow, and plunged back into Dickens and Thackeray. It amused

Miss Toland to watch her read, to have Julia burst out, with flaming

cheeks:

"Oh, I _hope_ Charles Darney won't be such a fool as to go to Paris

_now_--oh, _does_ he?" or:

"You wouldn't catch _me_ marrying George Osborne--a spoiled, selfish pig,

that's what _he_ is!"

So the months went by, and the day came when Julia, standing shyly

beside Miss Toland, said smilingly:

"Do you know what day _this_ is, Miss Toland?"

"To-day?" Miss Toland said briskly. "No, I don't. Why?"

"I've been here a year to-day," Julia said, dimpling.

"You _have_?" Miss Toland, handling bolts of pink-and-white gingham at a

long table, straightened up to survey her demure little assistant.

"Well, now I'll tell you what we'll do to celebrate," she said, after a

thoughtful interval. "I understand that the Sisters over on Lake Merritt

have a very _remarkable_ sewing school. Now, we ought to see that, Julia,

don't you think so?"

"We might get some ideas," Julia agreed.

"Precisely. So you put the card--'No Classes Today'--on the door, and

we'll go. And put your milk bottle out, because we may be late. I hate

to do it, but I really think we should know what they're doing over

there."

"I do, too," Julia said. This form preceded most of their excursions. A

few moments later they were out in the open air, with the long sunny day

before them.

The months sped on their way again, and Julia had been in the settlement

two years--three years. She was eighteen, and the world did not stand

still. She was nineteen--twenty. She changed by slow degrees from the

frightened little rabbit that had fled to Miss Toland for refuge to an

observant, dignified young woman who was quietly sure of herself and her

work. The rumpled ashen glory that had been her hair was transformed

into the soft thick braids that now marked Miss Page's head apart from

those of the other girls of her day. The round arms were guiltless of

bracelets; Julia wore her severe blue uniform, untouched by any

ornament; her stockings and shoes were as plain as money could buy.

Her beauty, somewhat in eclipse for a time, presently shone out again.

But there were few to see it. Miss Watts, the simple, sweet, middle-aged

teacher of the kindergarten, admired it wistfully, and Miss Toland

watched it with secret pride. But the society girls and young matrons

who flitted in once or twice a week to teach their classes never saw it

at all, or, seeing it, merely told each other that little Miss Page

would be awfully pretty in decent things, and the women and girls and

children who formed the classes at The Alexander never saw her at all.

The women were too much absorbed in their own affairs, children are

proverbially blind to beauty, and the girls who came to the monthly

dances, the evening sewing classes and reading clubs, thought their

sober little guardian rather plain, as indeed she was, when judged by

their standard of dress, their ruffled lace collars and high-heeled

shoes, their curls and combs and coloured glass jewellery.

Julia's amazing detachment from the ordinary ideals of girlhood was an

unending surprise to Miss Toland.

"She has simply and quietly set that astonishing little mind of hers

upon making herself a lady," Miss Toland said now and then to her

sister-in-law. Mrs. Toland would answer with only an abstracted smile.

If she had any convictions at all in her genial view of life, she

certainly believed a lady to be a thing born, not made. But she was not

concerned about Julia; she hardly realized the girl's existence.

Miss Toland, however, was keenly concerned about Julia. Julia had come

to be the absorbing interest of her life. It was quite natural that

Julia should love her, yet to the older woman it always seemed a

miracle, tremulously dear. That any one so young, so lovely, so ardent

as Julia should depend so utterly upon her was to Anna Toland an

unceasing delight. Julia had been bewildered and heartsick when she

turned to The Alexander, but she had never in her life known such an

aching loneliness as had been Miss Toland's fate for many years. To such

a nature the solitary years in Paris, the solitary return to California,

the tentative and unencouraged approaches to her nieces, all made a dark

memory. Rich as she was, independent and popular as she was, Miss

Toland's life had brought her nothing so sweet as this young thing, to

teach, to dominate, to correct, and to watch and delight in, too. As

Julia's grammar and manner and appearance rapidly improved, Miss Toland

began to exploit her, in a quiet way, and quietly gloried in the girl's

almost stern dignity. When the members of the board of directors were

buzzing about, Julia, with her neatly written report, was a little study

in alert and silent efficiency.

"She's a cute little thing," said Mrs. von Hoffmann, president of The

Alexander Toland Neighbourhood House, after one of these meetings of the

board, "but she never has much to say."

"No, she's a very silent girl," Miss Toland agreed, with that little

warmth at her heart the thought of Julia always brought.

"You imported her, Sanna?"

"Oh, no. She's a Californian."

"Really? And what do we pay her?"

"Forty."

"Forty? And didn't we pay that awful last creature sixty-five?"

"Seventy-five--yes." Miss Toland smiled wisely. "But she had been

specially trained, Tillie."

"Oh, specially trained!" Mrs. von Hoffmann, flinging a mass of rich

sables about her throat, began to work on the fingers of her white

gloves. "This girl's worth two of her," she asserted, "with her nice

little silent ways and her little uniform!"

"I'll see that she's treated fairly," Miss Toland promised.

"Well, do! Don't lose her, whatever you do! I suppose she has beaus?"

"Not Julia! She's entirely above the other sex. No; there's a young Jew

in Sacramento who writes her now and then, but that's a mere

boy-and-girl memory."

"Well, let's hope it remains one!" And the great lady, sailing out to

her waiting coupe, stopped on the outer steps to speak to Miss Page, who

was tying up some rain-beaten chrysanthemums in the little front garden.

"How crushed they are! Do you like flowers, Miss Page?"

"Oh, yes," smiled Julia, looking like a flower herself in the clear

twilight.

"You must come and see Mr. von Hoffmann's orchids some day," Mrs. von

Hoffmann volunteered. Julia smiled again, but did not speak. The older

woman glanced up and down the desolate street, and shuddered. "Dreadful

neighbourhood!" she said with a rueful smile and a shake of the head,

and climbing into her carriage, she was gone. Julia looked about her,

but found the neighbourhood only interesting and friendly, as usual, and

so returned to her flowers.

When her chrysanthemums were trim and secure once more, perhaps--if

this were one of the club evenings--she put on her long coat, and the

hat with the velvet rose, and went upon a little shopping expedition, a

brown twine bag dangling from one of her ungloved arms. The bakery was

always bright and odorous, and at this hour filled with customers. The

perspiring Swedish proprietress and a blond-haired daughter or two would

be handling the warm loaves, the flat, floury pies, and the brown

cookies as fast as hands could move; the cash register behind the

counter rang and rang, the air was hot, the windows obscured with steam.

Men were among the customers, but the Weber girls had no time to flirt

now. They rustled the thin large sheets of paper, snapped the flimsy

pink string, lifted a designated pie out of the window, or weighed pound

cake with serious swiftness.

From the bakery Julia crossed an indeterminate street upon which shabby

scattered houses backed or faced with utter disregard of harmony, and

entered a dark and disorderly grocery, which smelled of beer and brooms

and soap and stale cakes. Tired women, wrapped in shawls, their money

held tight in bony, bare hands, sat about on cracker boxes and cheese

crates, awaiting their turn to be served. A lamp, with a reflector, gave

the only light. The two clerks, red-faced young men in their shirt

sleeves, leaned on the dark counter as they took orders, listening with

impatient good nature to whispered appeals for more credit, grinding

coffee in an immense wheel, and thumping each loaf of bread as they

brought it up from under the counter.

Julia, out in the street again and enjoying, as she always did enjoy,

the sense of being a busy householder, facing the tide of home-goers,

would perhaps have an errand in the damp depth of the big milk depot,

would get chops or sausages at some small shop, or stop a fruit cart,

driving by in the dimness, for apples or oranges.

Then home to the brightly lighted little kitchen, the tireless little

gas stove. Julia, cheerfully attempting to do ten things at once, would

look up to see Miss Toland, comfortably wrappered and corsetless, in the

doorway.

"Don't forget your window shades, Julie."

"I know, but I wanted to get this oven started--if these sweets are to

bake."

"Give me something to do!" And the older woman, seated, was pleased to

cut bread and fill salt shakers at the request of her busy assistant.

"To-night's the older girls, is it?" she would yawn. "Is Miss Pierce

coming? Good! Well, tell me if you need me, and I'll dress and come

out."

"Oh, we're not doing much to-night," Julia invariably assured her. Miss

Toland never questioned the verdict that freed her for an evening of

restful reading. Julia it was who lighted the hall and opened the street

door, and welcomed the arriving club girls. Sometimes these young women

brought their sewing--invariably fancywork. Sometimes there was a

concert to rehearse, or they danced with each other, or stood singing

about Julia at the piano while she banged away at the crude

accompaniments of songs. Miss Pierce or Miss Watts, older women, usually

came in for a little while to see what was going on, but again it was

Julia alone who must bid the girls good-night and lock and darken the

hall.

Once a month there was a dance for the older girls, to which their

"friends," a word which meant to each girl her foremost male admirer,

were asked, and at which cake and ice-cream were served. Julia always

wore her uniform to these dances, but she also danced, when asked, and

never attempted to deny that she enjoyed herself. But that there was an

immense gulf already widening between her and these other girls, one of

whom she might have been, she soon began to perceive. They were noisy,

ignorant, coarse young creatures, like children unable to see beyond the

pleasure or the discomfort of the day, unable to help themselves out of

the sordid rut in which they had been born. Julia watched them soberly,

silently, as the years went by. One by one they told her of their

wedding plans, and introduced the boyish, ill-shaven, grinning lads who

were to be husbands and fathers soon. One by one Julia watched the

pitifully gay little weddings, in rooms poisonous with foul air and

crowded with noisy kinspeople. One by one she welcomed old members of

the Girls' Club as new members of the Mothers' Club. The young mother's

figure would be curiously shapeless now, her girlish beauty swept away

as by a sponge, her nervous pride in the beribboned baby weakened by her

own physical weakness and clouded by the fear that already a second

child's claim was disputing that of the first. And already her young

voice would borrow some of the hopeless whining tones of the older

women's.

Julia was really happiest in her relationship with the children. She

frequently peeped into the kindergarten during the morning, and had her

dearly loved favourites among the tiny girls and boys, and she could

never be absent from the sewing class every afternoon when some forty

small girls scattered themselves about the assembly hall, and chattered

and sang as they worked. Volunteers from among the city's best families

were usually on hand to inspect the actual sewing--vague, daintily

dressed girls who alternately spoiled and neglected their classes, who

came late and left early--but Julia kept order, supplied materials,

recited the closing prayer, and played the marches by which the children

marched out at five o'clock. Now and then she incited some small girl to

sing or recite for the others, and two or three times a year the sewing

classes gave an evening entertainment--extraordinary affairs at the

memory of which Julia and Miss Toland used to laugh for weeks. To drill

the little, indifferent, stupid youngsters in songs and dances, to

spangle fifty costumes of paper cambric and tissue, to shout emphatic

directions about the excited murmurings of the churning performers, to

chalk marks on the stage, and mark piano scores, were all duties that

fell to the two resident workers. Julia sacrificed her immaculate

bedroom for a green room, the perspiration would stream from her face as

she whipped off one dirty little frock after another, fastened the fairy

regalia over unspeakable undergarments, and loosened sticky braids of

black or yellow hair into something approaching a fairylike fluffiness.

One second to straighten her own tumbled hair at a mirror, another to

warn her carefully ranged performers in the passage, and Julia was off

to light the hall and open the street door to the clamorous audience.

Opening the performance with a crash of chords from the piano, fifteen

minutes later, she would turn her face to the stage, that the singers

might see her lips framing the words they were so apt to forget, and

manage to keep a watchful eye upon the noisy group of boys that filled

the back benches and the gaslights that might catch a fairy's spear or a

witch's wand.

"Well, we've had some _awful_ performances in the place, but really I

think to-night's was _about_ the worst!" Miss Toland might remark, when

the last dirty little garment had been claimed by its owner, and the

last fairy had reluctantly gone away.

"Well, the mothers and fathers thought it was fine," Julia would submit,

with a weary grin.

"When that awful Cunningham child, with her awful, flat, slapping feet,

began to dance the Highland Fling, I truly thought I would strangle,

trying not to laugh!" Miss Toland, gazing absently over her book, would

add reflectively.

"And the Queen of the Elves in those _dirty_ pink stockings! And poor

Hazel, bursting into tears as usual!" Julia, collapsed in a chair,

dishevelled and rosy, would give a long sigh of relaxation and relief.

"But we don't do the slightest good this way," Miss Toland sometimes

said with asperity. "We merely amuse them; it goes no further. Now, next

time, we will make it an absolute condition that every child has a bath

before coming, and wears clean clothes!"

"But we made that a condition this time, and it didn't do any good."

"Very well. Next time"--flushed at the merest hint of opposition, Miss

Toland would speak with annoyance--"next time every child who hasn't had

a bath will go straight into that tub, I don't care if the performance

doesn't begin until midnight!"

"Well," Julia would concede tolerantly. She very speedily learned not to

dispute these vigorous resolutions. Miss Toland always forgot them

before morning; she would not have considered them seriously in any

case.

"We are the laughing-stock of the city," she would frequently say with

bitterness, upon being informed that more thimbles were needed, or that

the girls hated to sew on the ugly gray ginghams. But sometimes Julia

found her giving out candy and five-cent pieces, without regard for the

girls' merits and achievements, for the mere pleasure of hearing their

thanks.

Or sometimes, when for any reason the attendance upon the sewing classes

was poor, Miss Toland bought herself a new blank book, dated it

fiercely, and proceeded to ransack the neighbourhood for children in a

house-to-house canvass. Julia and she would take a car into Mission

Street, eat their dinner at the Colonial dining-room, where all sorts

of wholesome dairy dishes were consumed by hungry hundreds every night,

and where a white-clad man turned batter cakes in the window.

"They do that everywhere in New York," said Miss Toland, thereby

thrilling Julia. "What, d'you like New York?" asked the older woman.

"I've never seen it!" Julia breathed.

"Well, some day we'll go on--study methods there. Spring's the time,"

said Miss Toland, raising gold-rimmed eyeglasses to study the grimy and

spotted menu. "Spring afternoons on the Avenue, or driving in the

Park--it's quite wonderful! I see they have chicken pie specially

starred, thirty-five cents; shall we try that?"

After the meal the canvassing began, Miss Toland doing all the talking,

while Julia stared about the small, stuffy interiors, and smiled at the

babies and old women. Miss Toland jotted down in her book all the

details she gathered in each house, and only stopped in her quest when

the hour and the darkened houses reminded her that the evening was

flying.

This might keep up every free evening for two weeks; it would end as

suddenly as it began, and Miss Toland enter upon a lazy and luxurious

phase. She would spend whole mornings and even afternoons in bed,

reading and dozing, and fresh from a hot bath at four o'clock, would

summon her assistant and make a suggestion or two.

"Julia, suppose we go down to the Palace for tea?"

Julia, standing gravely in the doorway, considered.

"The girls won't be gone for another hour, Miss Toland!"

"The--Oh, the girls, to be sure. Of course. Who else is there, Julia?"

"Miss Parker and Miss Chetwynde. And Mrs. Forbes Foster was here for a

little while."

Miss Toland, drawing on silk stockings, would make a grimace.

"What did you tell them?"

"Sick headache."

"Oh, yes, quite right! Well, get through out there, and we'll go

somewhere."

The assistant, about to depart, would hesitate:

"I have nothing to wear but my tailor-made and a white waist, Miss

Toland."

"And quite good enough! No one will notice us."

Perhaps truly no one noticed the eagerly talking, middle-aged woman and

her pretty and serious little companion, as they sat in a quiet corner

of the big grill-room, eating their dinner, but Julia noticed

everything, and even while she answered Miss Toland politely, her eyes

were moving constantly to and fro. She watched the cellarer, in his

leather apron, the well-dressed, chattering men and women who came and

went; she drank in the warm, perfumed air as if it were the elixir of

life. The music enchanted her, the big room with its lofty ceiling, its

clustered lights and flowers, swam in a glorious blur before her.

Miss Toland would bow now and then, and tell Julia about the people to

whom she bowed. Once they saw Doctor Studdiford laughing and talking at

a distant table with a group of young men, and once it was Barbara,

lovely in a blue evening gown, who came across the room to speak to her

aunt.

"And hello, Julia!" said Barbara pleasantly, on this occasion, resting

her armful of blue brocade and eiderdown upon a chair back. "It's

awfully nice to see you two enjoying yourselves!"

"What are you doing, dear?" her aunt asked.

"Mrs. Maitland's party--and we're going to the Orpheum. I don't care

much for vaudeville, though" And idly eying Julia, she added, "Do you,

Julia?"

Julia's heart leaped, her mouth felt dry.

"I like plays," she stammered, trying to smile, and clearing her throat.

"Well, so do I." Barbara shrugged, gathered up her coat again, and

drifted away. Julia heard nothing else that night but the kindly,

insolent little voice that seemed to make a friend and equal of her, and

when she was alone in bed in the dark, she went over and over the little

scene again, and thrilled again at Barbara's graciousness.

Perhaps six times a year Miss Toland went to Sausalito for a few days,

and then, during her first year as a settlement worker, Julia went to

her grandmother's house. Evelyn was now working with Ryan, the Tolands'

fashionable dressmaker, and doing extremely well. Marguerite was engaged

to be married, and as foolishly happy as if her eyes had been fixed upon

ideal unions since the days of her childhood. Nobody paid very much

attention to Julia except Marguerite's promised husband, who disgusted

her by hoarsely assuring her that she was a little peach, and attempting

to kiss her. There were several letters from her mother, from which

Julia learned that her father was well again, but that he had left her

mother, who had entered, with a friend, upon the boarding-house business

in Los Angeles. She wrote her mother an affectionate letter, and, after

a few months, stopped going to her grandmother's house.

Miss Pierce, a delicate, refined, unmarried woman, was a daily teacher

in the kindergarten, and grew very fond of the grave, demure, silent

Miss Page. Julia felt enormously flattered when Miss Pierce suggested

that she come home with her during one of Miss Toland's brief absences,

and as merry, impulsive, affectionate little Miss Scott followed suit,

she usually had the choice of two pleasant places in which to spend her

holidays.

Miss Pierce lived with her old mother in a handsome upper flat on

Broadway. Julia liked the quiet, dignified neighbourhood, and thought

Mrs. Pierce a lovely old lady. She chattered with Adachi, the Japanese

boy, tried the piano, whistled at the canary, and sat watching Mrs.

Pierce's game of patience with the absorption of a rosy-cheeked,

wide-eyed child. Miss Pierce, glancing up now and then from her

needlework, thought it very nice to see pretty Miss Page there and Mamma

so well amused, and wished that she had more inducements to offer her

young guest. But Julia found the atmosphere, the quiet voices and quiet

laughter, inducement enough, and quite touched Mrs. Pierce with her

gratitude.

The first visit to Miss Scott's house, however, was a revelation, and

the memory of it stood out in such bold colours as made the decorous

pleasures of the visit to Miss Pierce turn pale. Julia was rushed into

the centre of a group of eager, noisy, clever young people, six brothers

and sisters who had been motherless from babyhood, and were in mourning

now for their father. The Scotts were bold and outspoken in their grief

as in everything else; they showed Julia their father's picture before

she had been ten minutes in the house, and Kennedy--Julia's "Miss Scott"

of The Alexander--flung open the big desk so violently as to bring two

vases and a calendar to the floor, and read Julia various notes and

letters that had been sent them at the time of their father's death,

until tears stood in more than one pair of lovely black eyes. Dinner was

somehow cooked in a Babel of voices, served in a rush, and afterward

their chatter rose above the hissing of dishwater and the clash of hot

plates. Julia laughed herself tired at the nonsense, the mad plans, and

untrammelled dreams. Kennedy was to be a writer, 'Lizabeth the president

of a girls' college, little Mary wanted to live in "Venith." The boys

were all to be rich; Peter, the oldest, drew his brothers into a long,

serious discussion as to the exact proportions of the ideal private car.

"We'll have the finish mahogany, d'ye see?" said Peter, "and the walls

and curtains of dark green velvet."

"Dark green velvet!" Kennedy said, from the couch where she was sitting,

busy with a torn sleeve lining. "Oh, horrors! Why not red velvet and

gold braid!"

"Well, what would _you_ have?" Peter asked belligerently.

"Oh, grayish blue velvet," 'Lizabeth suggested rapturously.

"Very pale, you know, and silvery curtains," Kennedy agreed, "and one

gorgeous bluish-grayish-pinkish rug, like the two-thousand-dollar one

at the White House!"

"Well," Peter said, satisfied. "And what colour upholstery?"

"Dark blue might be beautiful," Julia submitted timidly.

"Dark blue--you're on, Miss Page!"

"Or a sort of blue brocade," 'Lizabeth said dreamily.

"And I'll tell you what we'll name the cars," George, the second

brother, suddenly contributed; "you know they've got to be named, Pete.

We'll call the dining-car, 'Dinah,' and the sleeper, 'Bertha'; do you

see?"

The others shouted approval, Peter adding with a grin, a moment later:

"And we might call the observation car 'Luke'!"

"Oh, _Peter_!" Kennedy expostulated, laughing. She presently interrupted

the completing details of the private train by general suggestions of

bed. The four girls went upstairs together.

"Oh, Mary, you've fixed everything, you little angel, you!" said

Kennedy, seeing that hats and wraps had been put away, and a couch made

up in a large shabby bedroom. 'Lizabeth, professing that she loved a

couch, settled herself upon it with great satisfaction, Julia had a

single bed, and Kennedy and the little Mary shared a somewhat larger

one.

Julia watched the sisters with deep admiration; they were all tired, she

knew, yet vigorous ablutions went on in the cold little bathroom, and

clothes were brushed and made ready for to-morrow's need. Their joyous

talk was pitifully practical, Mary raising the dread topic of new shoes

for Stephen, the youngest, and Kennedy somewhat ruefully conceding that

the shoes must be had, even at the cost of the needed gallon of olive

oil.

"No salads for a month, and they're so cheap!" she mourned. "And that

young terror seems to me to need shoes every week! Don't ever have sons,

Miss Page, they're a heart scald wid the bould ways av thim! Stephen had

nine pairs of shoes in eight months--that's true, isn't it, 'Lizabeth?

For we were keeping accounts then--while Dad's will was in probate, we

had to."

"A good thing to have a will to fall back on," said Julia.

"Even if we only inherited one hundred and sixteen dollars apiece,"

'Lizabeth added.

"Dad had had losses--it wasn't any one's fault--everything went to

smash," Kennedy supplemented instantly. "And of course when we found

that Steve had been braking his coaster with his feet, that helped. But

me--I'm going to have only girls--five darling little gray-eyed girls

with brown hair!"

"I'd like a boy to start off with," 'Lizabeth said. "He could take his

sisters to parties--"

"Yes, but they never do; they take other girls to parties!" the

fifteen-year-old Mary said suddenly, and the older girls laughed

together at her sapience.

"Peter has a girl," Kennedy said. "But naturally he won't desert the

bunch. Next year, when some bills we simply couldn't help--"

"Doctor and nurse when George and Mary had typhoid," 'Lizabeth

explained.

"--are paid off," Kennedy continued. "Then, if he still likes her, he

might. But he never stays in love very long," she ended hopefully.

The four girls talked late into the night, and after a picnic the next

day, a Sunday, Julia felt as if she loved them all, and she and Kennedy

began shyly to call each other by their given names. Peter and George

did not go on the picnic, having plans of their own for the day, but the

others spent a dreamy day on Baker's Beach, and the two older boys,

joining the group at dinner, ended the holiday happily. Julia carried

away definite impressions to be brooded over in her quiet times. The

Scotts were "ladies," of course. Somehow, although they were very poor,

they all worked very hard, and all dressed very shabbily, they were

"ladies," and knew only nice people. The sisters were really stronger

and braver than the brothers, and loved their brothers more than they

were loved. Julia wondered why. Also she came a little reluctantly to

the conclusion, as girls at twenty, whether they be Julias or Barbaras,

usually do, that if there were a great many nice young men in the world,

there were a great many marriageable girls, too. No girl could expect a

very wide choice of adorers, there were too many other girls. And

affairs of the heart, and offers of marriage, occurred much more often

in books than in life.

Two or three times a week Miss Toland liked to rise early and go to the

beautiful eight o'clock mass at St. Anne's, the big institution for

unfortunate girls that was not far from The Alexander Toland

Neighbourhood House. There was no church in the immediate vicinity, and

in asking for permission to come to the convent chapel, Miss Toland had

felt herself doing no extraordinary thing, had felt almost within her

rights.

But the good nuns in charge of St. Anne's had whetted her appetite for

the experience by interposing unexpected objections. Their charges, they

explained, about two hundred in number, were very impressionable, very

easily excited. A stranger in the chapel meant a sensation. Of course,

the lay workers of the institution and the old people from the Home

across the way sometimes came in, but they were so soberly dressed.

Perhaps if Miss Toland and Miss Page would dress in dark things, and

assure Good Mother that they would not speak to the girls--

"Oh, certainly!" Miss Toland had agreed eagerly. Julia, awed by the

airy, sombre interior of the great building, the closed doors, the

far-away echoes of footsteps and subdued voices, was a little pale.

"And this is your little assistant?" said Good Mother, suddenly, turning

a smile of angelic brightness upon Julia. "Well, come to mass by all

means, both of you. And pray for our poor children, dear child; we are

always in need of prayers."

"You must have extraordinary experiences here," Miss Toland said.

"And extraordinary compensations," said the nun. "Of course, some of our

poor children are very wild--at first. We do what we can. I had a little

pet of mine here until yesterday, Alice, ten years old; she is--"

"_Ten_!" ejaculated Miss Toland.

"Oh, yes, my dear! And younger; she was but eight when she came. What I

was going to say was that her mother took her away yesterday, and Sister

Philip Neri was amused to see how sad I was to have her go. She reminded

me that when Alice first came here she had bitten my hand to the bone,

so that I could not use it for three weeks. Ah, well!" And Good Mother

gave the sweet toneless laugh of the religious. "That is not the worst

of it--a clean bite on the hand!"

Miss Toland bought an alarm clock on the way home, and she and Julia

went to early mass on the very next morning. Julia found this first

experience an ordeal; she and Miss Toland were in a side pew before the

big gong struck, and Julia did not raise her eyes from her book as the

girls filed in. The steady rustle of frocks and shuffle of feet made her

feel cold and sick.

A day or two later she could watch them, although never without profound

emotion. Two hundred girls, ranging in years from ten to twenty, with

roughly clipped hair, and the hideous gray-green checked aprons of the

institution. Two hundred faces, sullen or vacuous, pretty, silly faces,

hard faces, faces tragically hopeless and pale. These young things were

offenders against the law, shut away here behind iron bars for the good

of the commonwealth. Julia, whose life had made her wise beyond her

years, watched them and pondered. Here was an almost babyish face; what

did that innocent-looking twelve-year-old think of life, now that she

had thrown her own away? Here was a sickly looking girl a few years

older, coughing incessantly and ashen cheeked; why had some woman borne

her in deathly anguish, loved her and watched her through the years that

least need loving and watching? This thing that they had all done--this

treasure they had all thrown away--what did they think about it?

She would come out very soberly into the convent garden, and walk home,

through the delicious airs of a spring morning, without speaking,

perhaps to break out, over her belated coffee:

"Oh, I think it's horrible--their being shut up there, the poor little

things!"

"They have sensible work, plenty to eat, and they're safe," Miss Toland

might answer severely. "And that's a great deal more than they deserve!"

"Nobody worried about them until it was too late," Julia suggested once,

in great distress. "Lots of them never would have done anything wrong if

they'd had work and food _then_!"

"Well, the nuns are very kind to them," Miss Toland answered

comfortably; and Julia knew this was true, as far as possible.

One morning, when Julia slipped into her place in St. Anne's, she saw,

two feet away from her, on an undraped trestle, a narrow coffin, and in

the coffin the rigid form of a girl who had been prayed for a few

mornings earlier as very ill. There was not a flower on the still, flat

young breast, and no kindly artifice beautified the stern face or the

bare, raw little hands that protruded from the blue-green gingham

sleeves. The ruined little tenement that had served some man's pleasure

and been flung aside lay there as little beholden to the world in death

as it had been in life. And as if the usual silence of the chapel would

be too hard to bear, the living girls chanted to-day the "Dies Irae" and

the "Libera me."

When winter came, the little trestle was often in requisition, for the

inmates of St. Anne's were ill-fitted to cope with any sickness. Once it

was a nun, in her black robes, who lay there, her magnificent still face

wearing its usual deep, wise smile, her tired hands locked about her

crucifix. For her there were flowers, masses of flowers, and more than

one black-robed priest, and a special choir, and Julia knew that the

other nuns envied that one of their number who had gone on to other work

in other fields.

She grew grave, who was always grave, thinking of these things, and

talked them over with Kennedy Scott. Kennedy was deeply, even

passionately, concerned for a while, and she and Julia decided to

establish a home some day for girls who were still to be saved.

Time went very swiftly now: years were not as long as they used to be,

one birthday was in sight of another. Sometimes Julia was astonished and

a little saddened, as is the way of youth, at the realization of the

flying months. She was busy, contented, beloved; she was accomplishing

her ambition--but at what a cost of years! The great moment might come

now at any time--Prince Charming might be on his way to her now, but

meantime she must work and eat and sleep--and the birthdays came apace.

Sometimes she grew very restless; this was not life! But a visit to her

grandmother's house usually sent her back to The Alexander with fresh

courage. No possible alternative offered itself anywhere.

Just at first she had hoped for inspiring frequent glimpses of her

adored Tolands, but these were very few. Sometimes Barbara or the

younger girls would come to Easter or Christmas entertainments at the

settlement, but Julia, always especially busy on these occasions, saw no

more than Barbara's pretty, bored face, framed in furs, across a room

full of people, or returned a dignified good-bye to Sally's hasty,

"Mother and the others have gone on, Miss Page; they asked me to say

good-bye!" But then there was the prospect of a day with Kennedy Scott,

to console her, or perhaps the reflection that little Mr. Craig, who

came out on Tuesday evenings to the meetings of the Boys' Club, was in

love with her. She did not wish to marry Mr. Craig, still it was nice of

him to admire her; it was nice to have a new hat; it was pleasant to

visit the San Jose convent, with Miss Toland, and be petted by the nuns.

So Julia cheated herself, as youth forever cheats itself, with the

lesser joys.

She went home for three or four days at the time of her father's death,

and afterward deliberately decided not to accompany her mother on a trip

south. Emeline had nine thousand dollars of life insurance, and thought

of buying a half interest in a boarding-house in Los Angeles.

"All the theatrical trade goes there," said Emeline, "and you could get

a berth as easy as not!"

"Yes, I know," Julia said, gently, concealing an inward shudder. She

went quietly back to The Alexander, when the funeral was over, to her

mother's disgust. Emeline did not go south, but lingered on at home,

drinking tea and gossiping with her mother, quarrelling with her old

father, and gradually eating into her bank account. She called upon her

daughter, to Julia's secret embarrassment, though the girl introduced

this overdressed, sallow, hard-eyed mother with what dignity she could

muster to Miss Pierce, Miss Scott, and Miss Toland. Emeline laughed and

talked with an air of ease, was forced into silence when Julia said the

closing prayer, and burst out laughing at its close.

"That does sound so funny, dolling! But I mustn't laugh," said Emeline.

"I'm sure you do wonders for these girls, and they need it," she added

graciously to Miss Toland. She followed Julia into the little kitchen.

"Don't she help you cook?" she asked in a low tone, indicating Miss

Toland with a jerk of her much-puffed head.

"Sometimes she does," Julia answered, annoyed.

"H'm!" Emeline said. And she asked curiously a moment later, "Why you do

it is what gets me! Here's Marguerite going to get married, and Ev has

an elegant job, and I want you to go south with me; you'd have a _grand_

time!"

She stopped on a complaining note, her eyes honestly puzzled. Julia

closed the oven door upon some potatoes, and stood up.

"I'm perfectly satisfied, Mama," said she briefly. "I'm doing what I

want to do."

"Lord!" Emeline ejaculated, discontentedly, vaguely baffled by the

girl's definiteness and dignity. She left soon after, Julia dutifully

walking with her to her car. Miss Toland said nothing of the visitor

when Julia came back, but she knew the girl was troubled, and lay awake

a long time herself that night, conscious that Julia, in the next room,

was restless and wakeful.

Besides a certain troubled consciousness of her failure to please her

own people, Julia had in these years a more definite source of worry.

Mark Rosenthal was still her patient adorer, and if, like Julia, he

allowed the flying months to steal a march upon him, and drifted along

in the comfortable conviction that "a little while" would bring a change

in Julia's feeling, still he was none the less a watchful and ardent

lover, with whom she sometimes found it very difficult to deal.

Mark, always tall, was broad as well now, an imposing big fellow,

prosperous, shrewd, and self-confident. He had handsome dark eyes, and

showed white teeth when he laughed; he dressed well, but not

conspicuously; his shoes might be well worn, but they were always

bright; and if his suit were shabby, still he was never without gloves.

He liked to talk business; he had long ago given up his music and

devoted himself with marvellous success to his work. He was no longer

with the piano house, but had an excellent position as adjuster of

damages, out of court, for one of the street railway companies. The

history of his various promotions and his favour with his employers was

absorbing to him; but the time came, when Julia was about twenty-two,

when his determination to win her became a serious menace to her peace.

His manner, which had once been boyish and uncertain, was in these days

good-humouredly proprietary. He laughed at little Julia's earnest

explanations, and would answer her most eager appeal only with a lover's

fond comment upon her eyes.

"Yes, darling, I wasn't listening--forgive me!" he said one day, when,

with a spark of real anger, Julia had begged him to make his calls at

the settlement house a little less frequent and less conspicuous. "What

was it?" And with twinkling eyes he caught up the hand that lay near him

on the table and kissed it.

"I want you not to do that, Mark," said Julia gravely, moving a little

farther away, "and please don't call me darling!"

"All right, darling!" smiled Mark.

"I'm not joking," Julia said resentfully, two red spots in her cheeks.

Mark moved to lay his hand over hers penitently, and said, in the low,

gentle voice Julia dreaded:

"Do you know what's the matter with you, Julie? I'll tell you. You love

me and you won't admit it. Girls never will. But that's what makes you

so unhappy--you won't let yourself go. Ah, Julia! be fair to yourself,

darling! Tell me that you care for me. I've waited seven years for you,

dear--"

"Oh, you have not!" Julia said impatiently.

"I'd like to know why I haven't!" Mark said challengingly. "Ah, but you

know I have, darling. And I want my wife." It was a Saturday afternoon,

and Miss Toland was dozing in her own room. Julia and Mark were alone in

the deserted assembly hall. Suddenly he slipped on his knees beside her,

and locked one arm about her waist. "You will, won't you, Julia?" he

stammered.

Julia, scarlet cheeked, tried to rise, and held him off with her hands.

"Oh, please, _please_," she begged. "I can't, Mark. You are awfully good

to me--I'm not worth it, and all that--but I _can't_. I--it's not my fault

I don't want to, is it? It would be wrong to do it, feeling this way--"

She was on her feet now, and Mark stood up, too. Both were breathing

hard; they looked at each other through a widening silence. Flies buzzed

against the closed windows, a gust of summer wind swept along the street

outside. Suddenly Mark caught Julia fiercely in his arms, and felt her

heart beating madly against him, and forcing up her chin with a gentle

big hand, kissed her again and again upon her unresponsive lips.

"There!" he said, freeing her, a laugh of triumph in his voice. "Now you

belong to me! That's the kind of a man that's in love with you, my girl,

and don't you think for one instant that you can play fast and loose

with him!"

Julia sat still for a long time after the street door banged, staring

straight ahead of her. She was going for this week-end to the little

house the Scotts had been loaned in Belvedere for the season, and she

dressed and packed her suitcase very soberly. Miss Toland went with her

to the ferry, both glad to get the fresh breath of the water, and Julia

had a riotous dinner with the Scotts, and a wonderful evening drifting

about in their punt between the stars in the low summer sky and the

stars in the bay. When they were in their porch beds she told Kennedy

all about Mark, and Kennedy commented that he certainly was a

gratifyingly ardent admirer.

"Ardent? I should think so!" sighed Julia, and went to sleep, not

ill-pleased with her role of the inaccessible lady. But the fact that

Mark's persistence could not be discouraged fretted her a good deal. He

rarely gave her a chance for a definite snub; if she was ungracious, his

humble patience waited tirelessly upon her mood; and if she smiled, he

showed such wistful delight that even Julia's cool little heart was

stirred. That he never stirred her in any deeper way, that his kisses

did not warm her, was not a serious trouble to Mark. She would be all

the sweeter to win; he would wake her in his arms to the knowledge that

she loved him! And Julia won, as his little wife, would be dearer even

than the demure and inaccessible Julia of to-day. Mark fed his hungry

heart on love tales; many a man had won a harder fight than his; these

cold, shy girls made the best wives in the world!

Julia began seriously to consider the marriage. She visioned a safe and

pleasant life, if no very thrilling one. Mark was handsome, devoted, he

was making money, he would be faithful to his wife and adore his

children. Julia would have no social position, of course. She sighed.

She would be a comfortable little complacent wife among a thousand

others. She would have her silk gowns, her cut glass; she could afford

an outing at Pacific Grove with the children; some day she and Mark

would go to New York--

No, not she and Mark! She couldn't; she didn't love him enough to sit

opposite him all the mornings of her life, to sell her glowing dreams

for him! She had come so far from the days that united her childhood

with all the Rosenthals--she had not seen Mrs. Tarbury, nor Rose, nor

Connie for years. She was climbing, climbing, away from all those old

associations. And she could climb faster alone!

CHAPTER VII

One warm morning in August, when Miss Toland was stretched out on the

reception-room couch, and Julia, who had washed her hair, was shaking

it, a flying, fluffy mop, over the sill of the bathroom window, a sudden

hubbub broke out in the kindergarten. Miss Toland flung down her book

and Julia gathered her loose wrapper about her, and both ran to the door

of the assembly hall. The children, crying and frightened, were gathered

in a group, and in the centre of it Julia, from the elevation of the

stage, could see Miss Pierce half-kneeling and leaning over as if she

tried to raise something from the floor. While they watched she arose,

holding the limp body of a five-year-old child in her arms.

"What is it--what is it?" screamed Miss Toland, but as every one else

was screaming and crying, and Julia's automatic, "Is she dead?" was

answered over and over again only by Miss Pierce's breathless,

"No--no--no--I don't think so!" it was some time before any clear idea

of the tragedy could be had. The small girl was carried in to Julia's

bed, where she lay half-conscious, moaning; great bubbles of blood

formed from an ugly skin wound in her lip, and her little frock was

stained with blood. As an attempt to remove her clothes only roused her

to piercing screams, Julia and Miss Pierce gave up the attempt, and fell

to bathing the child's forehead, which, with the baby curls pushed away

from it, gave a ghastly look to the little face.

"Well, you've killed her, Miss Pierce!" said Miss Toland, beside herself

with nervousness. "That's a dying child, if I ever saw one. That ruins

_this_ Settlement House! That ends it! Poor little thing!"

"I was at the board," said Miss Pierce, white-lipped, and in a low tone.

"I don't care where you were," said Miss Toland. "There, there, darling!

I pay you to watch these children! It's a fine thing if a child is going

to be killed right here in the house! Where was Miss Watts?" she broke

off to ask.

"Miss Watts is at home, sick," Miss Pierce said eagerly. "And I was at

the board, when some of those bigger boys set a bench up on top of

another bench. I heard the noise and turned around; this child--poor

little Maude Daley, it is--was standing right there, and got the full

weight of both benches as they fell."

"This boy is back," said Julia, coming from the front door, "and he says

that Doctor White is out and Doctor McGuire is out, too!"

"Great heavens!" Miss Toland began despairingly. "No doctor! of course,

eleven o'clock they're all out on morning rounds! And the child's

mother, where is she? Am I the only person here who can do something

except sit around and say 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'"

"She has no mother, and her grandmother's out," Julia said soothingly.

"Miss Toland, if I telephone do you think I can catch Doctor Studdiford

at the City and County?"

"A two hours' trip from Sausalito!" Miss Toland said scornfully. "You

must be crazy, that's all! No! Go into Mission Street--"

"I don't mean in Sausalito," Julia said firmly; "he's at the City and

County on Wednesday mornings, you know. I could get him there."

Miss Toland stared at her unblinkingly for a second.

"Yes, do that!" she said then. "Yes, that's a good idea!" And as Julia

ran to the telephone she called after her, "Yes, that's a very good

idea!"

Julia's heart thumped as she called the big institution, thumped when

after a long wait a crisp voice, out of utter silence, said:

"Yes? This is Doctor Studdiford!"

She explained as concisely as she could, feeling that he listened

attentively.

"Keep the child flat, no pillow," he said, as Julia concluded. "Tell my

aunt I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Julia, thrilled by she knew not what, knotted her flying hair loosely on

her neck and buttoned on a fresh uniform. Ten minutes later she admitted

Doctor Studdiford to the sickroom.

He had laid aside his hat and washed his hands. Now he sat down by the

bed and smiled at the dazed, moaning little Maude. Julia felt something

expand in her heart as she watched him, his intense, intelligent face,

his singularly winning smile, the loose lock of dark hair on his

forehead.

"Now, then, Maude," said he, his clever, supple fingers on her wrist,

"where does it hurt?"

Maude whimpered something made unintelligible by the fast-stiffening

cut in her lip.

"Her back's broken, Jim, no doubt about it," said Miss Toland grimly.

"I think her side hurts," Miss Pierce submitted eagerly.

"Well, we'll see--we'll see!" Doctor Studdiford said soothingly. "Now,

if you'll help me, Miss Page, we'll get off these clothes--ah!" For an

anguished moan from the sufferer coincided with his discovery that the

little left arm hung limp. Julia loosened the sleeve as the surgeon's

scissors clipped it away, and she held the child while the arm was set

and bandaged. Miss Pierce was faint, and Miss Toland admitted freely

that she hated to see a child suffer, and went away. "Only a clean

dislocation, Aunt Sanna!" said Jim, cheerfully, when he came out of the

sickroom. "She'll have to lie still for a while, but that's all. The cut

on her mouth doesn't amount to anything. She's all right, now--Miss Page

is telling her stories. She ought to have a glass of milk, or soup, or

something; then she'll go to sleep. I'll be in to-morrow. By the way,

you have a little treasure there in Miss Page!"

"Julia? Glad you have the sense to see it, Jim!"

"She--is--a--peach!" the doctor mused, packing his very smart little

instrument case. "Who is she?"

"A little girl I found. Yes, she's a nice child, Julia. She's been here

six years now."

"Six years! Great Scott! How old is she?"

"Twenty-two--twenty-three--something like that."

"It doesn't sound much of a life for a young girl, Aunt Sanna. Imagine

the Barbary-flower!" Doctor Studdiford shook his thermometer, looked at

it, and screwed it into its case.

"How _is_ Barbara?" Miss Toland asked dryly.

"Fine! Mother came to me with a long tale, the other day, about her

being run down, or blue, or something, but I don't see it. She has a

dandy time."

"Why doesn't she marry? Barbara must be twenty-six," her aunt said, with

directness.

"Oh, I don't know; why don't all the girls? The fellows they run with

are an awfully bum lot," Jim said contentedly. "Look at me! Why don't

I?" he added, laughing.

"Well, why don't you?"

"I'm waiting to settle the others off, I guess. Besides, you know, I've

been working like the devil! Sally's been worrying Mother with her

affairs lately," said Jim.

"_Sally_--and who?"

"Keith Borroughs!" Jim announced, grinning.

"Keith Borroughs? Why, he's ten years younger!"

"He's about three years younger, and he's an awful fool," said Jim, "but

he's very much in love with Sally, and she certainly seems to like it!"

"I think that's disgusting!" said Miss Toland. "Has he a _job_?"

"Job? He's a genius, my dear aunt. His father pays for his music

lessons, and his mother gives him an allowance. He's a pianist."

"H'm!" commented the lady briefly.

"Ned has definitely announced his intention of marrying his Goldfield

girl," pursued Jim.

"Yes, I knew that. Kill your mother!"

"It'll just about kill her. And the latest is Ted--falling in love with

Bob Carleton!"

"Carleton! Not the lumber man? But he's fifty!"

"He's forty-five, forty-seven perhaps."

"But he's married, Jim!"

"Divorced, Aunt Sanna."

"Oh, Jim, that's awful!" said his aunt, horrified.

"Well, it may come to nothing. Ted's only twenty--I hope devoutly it

will. There--that's all the news!" Jim jumped up from his chair, and

gave his aunt a kiss. "Why don't you come over and get it for yourself,

now and then! I don't know how much there is in any of this stuff,

because I use my rooms at the club a good deal, but it's all in the

wind. That little Julia Page is a peach, isn't she?"

"You said that once," Miss Toland said dispassionately. Jim grinned,

unabashed. He had been in love with one girl or another since his

fourteenth year, and liked nothing so much as having his affairs of the

heart discussed.

"Well, it's true, and I'll say it again for luck!" said he. "Who is she?

I suppose Pius Aloysius Maloney, or some good soul who comes to teach

the kids boxing, has got it all framed up with her?"

"I don't know any Mr. Maloney," Miss Toland answered imperturbably. "Mr.

Craig is director of the Boys' Club, and I know he admires her, and she

has another admirer, too, who comes here now and then. But how likely

she is to marry I really can't say! She's an extremely ambitious girl,

and she has determined to raise herself."

"Raise herself!" Jim said, with a casual laugh. "I don't suppose she

started much lower than other people?"

"Oh, I imagine she did. Her father was a--I don't know--a sort of

drummer, I guess, but her mother is an awful person, and her grandfather

was a day labourer!"

"Ha!" Jim said, discomfited. "Well, see you tomorrow!" he added,

departing. He walked briskly to the corner of the street, and

experienced a thump at the heart when a casual backward glance

discovered Julia, in a most fetching hat, coming out of the settlement

house with a market basket on her arm. She did not see him, and Jim

decided not to see her. Of course she _was_ a little peach, but that

labourer grandfather was too much.

That same evening Julia used the accident to little Maude as an excuse

to break a half engagement with Mark. He was to be given only a few

moments' chat before the Girls' Club met for a rehearsal, but he showed

such bitter disappointment at losing it that Julia, half against her

will, promised to spend at least part of her Sunday afternoon with him.

This was on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Saturday Doctor Studdiford

came to see his little patient, and both times saw Julia, too. He asked

Julia what books she liked, and, surprised that she knew nothing of

Browning, he sent her a great volume of his poetry, a leather-bound

exquisite edition that Jim had taken some trouble to find. With the book

came a box of violets, and Julia, opening the package, suddenly

remembered that he was a rich man, and stood, flushed and palpitating to

a thousand emotions, looking down at the damp, fragrant flowers.

She wore a few violets at the breast of her sober little gown when she

met Mark on Sunday for the promised walk. Julia had been most reluctant

to go, but Maude had been moved to her own home, and the child's father

was sitting with her, so that Julia had no excuse to visit her.

"I want to show you something--something you'll like!" said Mark

eagerly. "We take the Sixteenth Street car and transfer down

Sacramento."

Julia accepted his guidance good-naturedly, and they crossed the city,

which lay in a clear wash of the warm September sunlight. Mark led Julia

finally to the ornate door of a new apartment house in Sacramento

Street.

"What is it, Mark?" the girl asked, as they went in. "Some one we know

live here?"

"You wait!" Mark said mysteriously. He went to a desk in the handsome

entrance hall, and talked for a few moments to a clerk who sat there.

Then a quiet-looking, middle-aged woman came out, and Mark and Julia

went upstairs with her, in a little elevator.

The woman turned a key in a door, and led them into a charmingly bright

front apartment of four good-sized rooms and a shining bathroom. There

was a bedroom with curly-maple furniture, a dining-room with a hanging

lamp of art glass on a brass chain, and Mission oak table and chairs, a

kitchen delightfully convenient and completely equipped, and a little

drawing-room, with a gas log, a bookshelf, a good rug, a little desk,

and some rocking chairs and small tables. The sun shone in through fresh

net curtains, and the high windows commanded a bright view of city roofs

and a glimpse of the bay.

Julia began to feel nervous and uncomfortable. She did not understand at

all what Mark meant by this, but it was impossible to doubt, from his

beaming face, that some plan involving her was afoot. He couldn't have

furnished this apartment in the hope--?

"Whose place _is_ this, Mark?" she asked, trying to laugh naturally.

"Do you like it?" Mark countered, his eyes dancing.

"Like it? It's simply sweet, of course! But whose is it?"

"Well, now listen," Mark explained. "It's Joe Kirk's furniture; he's

just been married, you know. He and his wife had just got back from

their honeymoon when Joe got an offer of a fine job in New York. He

asked me to see if I couldn't find a tenant for this--two years' lease

to run--just as it stands; no raise in rent. And the rent's fifty-five?"

he called to the woman in the next room.

"Fifty, Mr. Rosenthal," she answered impassively.

"Fifty!" Mark exulted. "Think of getting all this for fifty! Ah,

Julia"--he came close to her as she stood staring down from the window,

and lowered his voice--"will you, darling? Will you? You like it, don't

you? Will you marry me, dearest, and make a little home here with me?"

"Oh, Mark!" Julia stammered, a nervous smile twitching her lips.

"Well, why won't you, Ju? Do you doubt that I love you? Answer me that!"

"Why, no--no, I don't, of course." Julia moved a little away.

"Don't go over there; she'll hear us! And you love me, don't you, Ju?"

"But not that way I don't, Mark," Julia said childishly.

"Oh, 'not that way'--that's all rubbish--that's the way girls talk;

that's just an expression they have! Listen! Do you doubt that I'll

always, _always_ love you?"

"Oh, no, Mark, of course not!" Julia admitted. "But I don't want to

marry any one--"

"Well, what do you want? Haven't I loved you since you were a little

girl?"

"Yes, I know--of course you have! Only"--Julia gave him a desperate

smile--"only I can't discuss such things here," she pleaded, "with that

woman so near!"

"You're right!" Mark said, with military promptness, and as one who

loves to receive his lady's orders. "We'll go out. Only--I wanted you to

see it!"

And as they went out he must stop to show her the admirably deep drawers

of the little sideboard and the ingenious arrangement by which the gas

was electrically lighted.

They thanked the woman, and began the long ride back to the settlement

house, for Julia never left Miss Toland long alone. In the Sacramento

Street car they both had to stand, but Mark found seats without

difficulty on the dummy of the Fillmore Street car, and laying his arm

along the back of Julia's seat, swung about so that his face was very

close to hers. A world of wistful tenderness filled his voice as he said

again:

"Well, darling, what do you think of it?"

Poor Mark! Perhaps if he had asked her only a week earlier, his lady

might have given him a kinder answer. But Julia was walking in a golden

dream to-day, a dream peopled only by herself and one other, and she

hardly noticed his emotion. She fixed her blue eyes vaguely on the black

eyes so near, and smiled a little.

"Oh, answer me, Julia!" Mark said impatiently. And a second later he

asked alertly: "Where'd you get the violets?"

"Oh--somebody," Julia temporized. Pink flooded her cheeks.

"Who?" said Mark, very calm.

"Oh, Mark, what a tone! Nobody you know!" Julia laughed.

"Is he in love with you?" Mark asked fiercely.

"Oh, don't be so silly! No, of course he's not."

"Tell me who he is!" Mark commanded grimly.

"Now, look here, Mark," Julia said sternly, "you stop that nonsense, or

you can get straight off this car, and I'll go home alone! And don't you

sulk, either, for it's too ridiculous, and I won't have it!"

Mark succumbed instantly.

"It's because I love you so," he said humbly. There was a little

silence, then Julia, watching the Sunday streets, said suddenly:

"Look, Mark, look at the _size_ of that hat!"

Mark, disdaining to turn his eyes for the fraction of a moment from her

face, said reproachfully:

"Are you going to answer me, Julia?"

"How do you mean?" Julia said nervously.

"You know what I mean," Mark answered, with an impatient nod.

"No, I don't," Julia said, with a little laugh.

"Now, you look-a-here, Julia--you look-a-here," Mark began, almost

angrily. "I am going to ask you to marry me! You've fooled about it, and

you've laughed about it, and I've got a right to _know_! I think about it

all the time; I lie awake at night and think about it. I"--his voice

softened suddenly--"I love you awfully, Julia," he said. And then, with

a sort of concentrated passion that rather frightened the girl, he

added, "So I'm going to ask you once more. I want you to answer me, d'ye

see?"

The car sped on, clanged across Market Street, turned into the Mission.

Julia had grown a little pale. She gave Mark a fleeting glance, looked

away, and finally brought her eyes back to him again.

"I wish you wouldn't take things so _seriously_, Mark," she began

uneasily. "You're always forcing me to say things--and I don't want

to--I don't want to get married _at all_--"

"Nonsense!" said Mark harshly.

"It's not nonsense!" Julia protested, glad to feel her anger rising.

Mark saw her heightened colour, and misread it.

"Yes," he said sneeringly. "That's all very well, but I'll bet you'd

feel pretty badly if I never came near you again--if I let the whole

thing drop!"

"Oh, Mark," said Julia fervently, "if you only _would_--I don't mean

that!" she interrupted herself, compunction seizing her at the look of

mortal hurt on his face. "But I mean--if you only didn't love me! You

see, I'm perfectly happy, Mark, I've got what I want. And if Miss Toland

takes me abroad with her next year, why, it'll mean more to me than _any_

marriage could, don't you see that? You know what my childhood was,

Mark; my mother didn't love my father--" And as a sudden memory of the

old life rose to confront her, Julia's tone became firm; she felt a

certain sureness. "Married people ought to love each other, Mark," she

said positively. "I _know_ that. And I won't--I _never_ will marry a man I

don't love. If everything goes wrong, after that, you have only yourself

to blame. And so many times it goes wrong, Mark! I should be unhappy, I

should keep wondering if I wouldn't be happier going my own way--wondering

if I wouldn't have--have gotten farther--do you understand me?"

This was a long speech for Julia, and during it Mark had twisted about,

and pulled his hat over his face. Now, in a voice curiously dead and

hard, he asked briefly:

"Gotten farther--_where_?"

"I don't know," said Julia candidly. "But the more I read, and the more

I think, the more it seems to me that anyone can be anything in this

world; there's some queer rule that makes you rise if you want to rise,

if only you don't compromise! The reason so many people _don't_ ultimately

get what they want is because they stop trying for it, and take

something else!"

"And marriage with me would be a compromise, is that it?" Mark muttered

sullenly.

"It would be for me," Julia answered serenely. "Because staying where I

am keeps me nearer what I want."

"Money, huh?" asked Mark.

"Oh, money, _no_! Books and talk--things. And--and if I loved you, Mark,

then don't you see it _would_ be the right thing to marry you?" she added

brightly. "But now, it would only be because it was easier, or because I

was tired of The Alexander, do you see?"

"I suppose so," Mark answered drearily.

A long silence ensued. In silence they got off the car, and walked

through the cheerless twilight of the dirty streets, and they were

almost in sight of the settlement house before Mark burst out, a little

huskily:

"Then there's no chance for me at all, Julie?"

"Oh, Mark, I feel rotten about it!" said Julia frankly, her eyes full of

pity and regret, and yet a curious relief evident in her voice. "I _am_ so

sorry! I've just been thinking of girls who like this sort of thing--I

don't see how they _can_! I _am_ so sorry! But you won't mind very long,

Mark; you won't always care; you'll--why, there's Doctor Studdiford's

automobile!"

For they were in sight of The Alexander now, and could see the electric

runabout at the door. Motor cars were still new to San Francisco and to

the world, and a crowd of curious children surrounded the machine.

"What's he there for?" Mark asked gruffly.

Julia explained: the accident--the emergency call.

"Well, but the kid is not there now, you say?"

"Yes, I know. But he didn't know that. I suppose he's calling on his

aunt."

To this Mark made no immediate answer. Presently he said:

"City and County! I'll bet the city pays for his automobile!"

"Oh, no!" Julia protested. "He's a rich man in his own right, Mark."

They were at the house now, and went up the steps together. Doctor

Studdiford was in the little reception hall with Miss Toland. He looked

very handsome, very cheerful, as he came forward with his fine eyes on

Julia. And Julia stood looking up at him with an expression Mark never

had won from her, her serious, beautiful little face flooded with light,

her round eyes soft and luminous. A woman at last, she seemed as she

stood there, a grave and wise and beautiful woman, ripe for her share of

loving and living, ready to find her mate.

"You got the book?" Jim said, with a little laugh. He laughed because

his heart was shaking curiously, and because the sudden sight of Julia

disconcerted him so that he hardly knew what he said.

Julia did not answer; she only touched the wilting and fragrant violets

on her breast with her free hand. Jim still held one hand.

"You--you'll like Browning," added Jim. And inconsequentially he added,

"I was thinking of our little talk yesterday--all night."

"So was I," Julia breathed. They turned suddenly and self-consciously

to Miss Toland and Mark. Julia introduced the men; her breath was coming

unevenly and her colour was exquisite; she talked nervously, and did not

meet Mark's eye. Mark was offered a lift in Doctor Studdiford's motor

car, and declined it. The doctor seemed to be in no hurry to go;

wandered into her room to advise his aunt upon the placing of a

telephone extension. Julia and Mark loitered about the assembly hall for

a few empty moments, and then Mark said he must go, and Julia, absently

consenting, went with him toward the stage door.

"And he's rich, is he?" said Mark.

Julia came out of a brief dream.

"He's very rich--yes!" she smiled.

She mounted to the stage as she spoke, and Mark held out his hand and

turned about as if to say goodbye. The next instant Julia felt as if the

dull twilight room had turned to brass and was falling with a wild

clamour; she felt as if her heart were being dragged bodily to her lips,

and she heard her own wild scream.

Silence fell, and Mark was still staring at her, still smiling. But now

he toppled slowly toward her and stumbled, and as his body, with a

hideous, slithering sound, slipped down to the floor, his arm fell lax,

and the still smoking revolver slid to Julia's very feet.

"_Stop_, Julia--what is it?--what is it?" Miss Toland was crying. She

locked her arms tight about the girl, and drew her back into the

reception hall. Julia was silent, suddenly realizing that she had been

screaming. She moved her tongue over her dry lips, and struggled to

explain.

"Now we understand perfectly!" Doctor Studdiford said soothingly. "He

shot himself, poor fellow. I'm going to take care of him, do you see?

Just keep _still_, Aunt Sanna, or we'll have a crowd here. Aunt Sanna, do

you want this to get into the papers?" For Miss Toland's surmises were

delivered at a sort of shriek.

"Oo--oo--oo!" shuddered Julia, fearful eyes on the assembly room door.

"He was--we were just talking--"

"Is he dead, Jim?" asked Miss Toland fearfully.

"I think so. I'm going to call the hospital for an ambulance, anyway."

Doctor Studdiford was all brisk authority.

"But what ever possessed him?" shrilled Miss Toland again. "Of all

_things_!"

"Had you quarrelled?" asked Jim, keen eyes on Julia as he rattled the

telephone hook.

"No," Julia said shortly, like a child who holds something back. Then

her face wrinkled, and she began to cry. "He wanted to marry me," she

said piteously. "He wanted me to promise! But he always has asked

me--ever since I was fifteen years old, and I always said no!"

"Well, now," Jim said soothingly. "Don't cry. You couldn't help it. Do

you know why he carried a revolver?"

"He has to carry it, his business isn't a very safe one," Julia said

shakily. "He's shown it to me once or twice!" Her voice dropped on a

trembling note, and her eyes were wild with fright.

"Now, Aunt Sanna," said Jim quietly, after telephoning, "I think that

you and Miss Page ought to get out of here. You'll have a raft of

reporters and busybodies here to-morrow. It's a ghastly thing, of

course, and the quieter we keep it the better for every one. I'll manage

my end of it. I'll have as conservative an account as I can in the

papers--simply that he was despondent over a love affair and, in a fit

of temporary aberration--and so on. Could you close this place up for a

week?"

"Certainly!" said Miss Toland, with Spartan promptness, beginning to

enjoy the desperate demand of the hour.

"And could you take that poor child somewhere, out of the public eye?"

"I will indeed, Jim!"

"Well, that's the best way to do. You're a trump, Aunt Sanna! I will say

that Miss Page is naturally prostrated, and gone away to friends."

"Jim, has that poor boy a chance?"

"A chance? No. No; he died instantly. It was straight through the brain.

Yes, terrible--naturally. Now, will you take what you need--"

"Instantly!" said Miss Toland, with a shudder. "Oh, Jim, I'm so glad

you're a doctor," she added weakly, clutching his arm, "and so cold

blooded and reliable!"

"I'm glad I was here," Jim answered simply. "Hello, look at poor little

Miss Page! She's fainted!"

CHAPTER VIII

It was Christmas time before Julia saw Doctor Studdiford again, and then

it was but for a few minutes. Christmas Eve was wet and blowy out of

doors, but the assembly hall of The Alexander looked warm and bright;

there were painfully made garlands of green looped about the windows,

bells of red paper hung from all the chandeliers, and on the stage an

enormous Christmas tree glittered with colour and light. Six hundred

people were crowded into the room, more than half of them children.

Babies twisted and climbed on the laps of their radiant mothers, small

girls and boys everywhere were restless with excitement and

anticipation. Miss Toland only appeared at intervals, spending most of

the afternoon with a few chosen guests in the reception hall, but Julia

was everywhere at once. She wore a plain white linen gown, with a bit of

holly in her hair and on her breast, and whether she was marshalling

small girls into groups, stopping to admire a new baby, meeting the

confectioner's men and their immense freezers at the draughty side door,

talking shyly with the directors in Miss Toland's room, or consoling

some weeping infant in the hall, she was followed by admiring eyes.

At three o'clock the general restlessness visibly increased, and the air

in the hall, between steaming wet garments and perspiring humanity,

became almost insufferable. Julia experimentally opened a door and let

in a wet blast of air, but this was too drastic, and her eyes were

brought back from a wistful study of the high windows by a voice that

said:

"Merry Christmas! Give me a stick, and I'll do it for you!"

The girl found her hand in Doctor Studdiford's, and their eyes met.

"I didn't know you were here!" said Julia, in swift memory of their last

meeting.

"Just come." He looked at her, all kindliness. "How goes it?"

"Finely," Julia answered. When he had opened a window, he followed her

across the room. "I may stay near you, mayn't I?"

"I am just going to begin," Julia said, taking her place at the piano,

and facing the room across the top of it. Her small person seemed

suddenly fired with authority. She struck a full chord. "Children!" she

said. "_Children_! Who is talking? Some one is still talking! Keep still,

everybody, please! Keep still, every one.

"Now we are going to sing the 'Adeste'--four verses. And then we'll give

out the presents. Listen, every one! We are going to sing the 'Adeste,'

and then give out the presents. The presents, of course, go only to our

own girls and boys, do you understand that? Listen, children, please!

"But we have a box of candy for every child here, whether that child

comes to any of the classes or not! So don't go home without your candy.

And don't come up for your present until you hear your name called, do

you understand that? If I see any child coming up before Miss Pierce

calls her name, I'll send her right back to her seat! Now, the 'Adeste,'

please!"

Jim had listened in intense amusement. How positive she was and how

authoritative! Her straight little back, her severe braids, her stern

blue eyes roving the hall as she touched the familiar chords, were all

so different from the vague young women who were Barbara's friends. She

played a few wandering chords after the distribution of gifts began,

watching the children file up the aisle, and listening, with only an

occasional lifting of her blue eyes to his face, to Doctor Studdiford's

smiling comments. Her heart was beating high under a flood of unsensed

joy, she did not know why--but she was happy beyond all words.

"I'm afraid I'll have to go help Miss Pierce and Miss Furey, Doctor,"

she said presently, standing up. "Our Miss Scott, who got married two

years ago, used to be a perfect wonder at times like this! Here, little

girl, little girl! You don't come to the classes, do you? No? Well,

then, go back to your seat and wait--you see!" She turned despairingly

to Jim. "You see, they're simply making a _mess_ of it!"

"I have to go, anyway," said Jim.

"Oh?" Julia turned surprised eyes toward him, and said the one thing she

meant to avoid. "But Mrs. Toland and Miss Barbara are coming," she

submitted.

"And what of it?" Jim said meaningly. It was his turn to say the awkward

thing. "How are the nerves these days?" he asked quickly.

Colour flooded Julia's face.

"Much better, thank you! I gave the tonic up weeks ago. It was just

nerves," explained Julia, "a sort of breakdown after we came back from

Cloverdale! And I'm so much obliged to you!" she ended shyly.

"Oh, not at all, not at all!" Jim protested gruffly. An unmanageable

silence hung between them for a few seconds; then Julia, with a murmured

excuse, went to the extrication of Miss Pierce, now hopelessly involved

in a surge of swarming children, and Jim went on his way. He carried

with him a warm memory of the erect young figure in white, and the thick

twisted braid, set against a background of Christmas green. For Julia

the rest of the afternoon was enchanted; an enchantment subtly flavoured

with the odour of evergreen, and pierced by rapturous voices, and by the

glowing colours of the Christmas tree, and the slapping rain at the

window.

She and Miss Toland sat down, exhausted and well satisfied, at seven

o'clock, to a scrappy little supper in the littered dining-room: one

director had left chocolates, another violets; a child's soiled hair

ribbon, still tied, lay on the floor; the chairs were pushed about at

all angles.

"Give me some more coffee, dear, and open that box of candy," said Miss

Toland luxuriously. "We'll sleep late, and go to high mass at the

Cathedral. Alice always has room in her pew. And then we might go over

to Sausalito and say 'Merry Christmas.' They'll all be scattered; Jim

tells me he and my brother have an operation at twelve, poor wretches!

And I suppose Barbara and little Sally will be off somewhere. Sally

always tries to keep them together for Christmas Eve, but in my opinion

they're all bored by this tree and stocking business. But of course Ned

and his extraordinary wife will be all over the place!"

"I've not been in Sausalito, except once, for eight years," Julia said

reflectively.

"I know you've not. Well, we'll go to-morrow." Miss Toland reached for a

cigarette; yawned as she lighted it. But Julia's heart began to beat

fast in nervous anticipation.

Mrs. Toland received them very graciously the next day, and Julia was at

once made to feel at home in the pretty house, which was littered

charmingly to-day with all sorts of Christmas gifts, and bright with

open fires. Barbara was there, and the crippled Richie, but Sally had

gone to a Christmas concert with her devoted little squire, Keith

Borroughs, and Mrs. Toland presently took Miss Sanna aside for a long,

distressed confidence. Theodora, it seemed, had had a stormy argument

with her father on the subject of her admirer, Robert Carleton, some

days before, and yesterday had left, in defiance of all authority, to

meet him for a walk, and lunch with him. She and her father had not

spoken to each other since, and Ted was keeping her room. Julia met

Ned's wife, a pretentious, complacent little gabbling village belle, and

was dragged about by the younger sisters to look at everybody's

presents.

"Must be a long time since we saw you here, Miss Page?" said the old

doctor, smiling at her over his glasses, as he carved at luncheon.

"I was here two years ago, one afternoon," Julia smiled. "But I think I

haven't seen _you_ since 'The Amazons'--eight years ago!"

"Eight years!" Barbara said, struck. "Mother, do you realize that it is

eight years since I was in that play with the Hazzards and Gray Babcock

and the Grinells? Isn't that _awful_?" She fell into sombre thought.

Julia went through the day in a sort of deep study. This was the

enchanted castle that had stood to her for so long as the unattainable

height of dreams; these were the envied inhabitants of that castle.

Everything was the same, except herself, yet how incredibly the change

in her affected everything about her! She was at home here now, could

answer the table pleasantries with her ready, grave smile, could feel

that her interest in Constance and Jane was a pleasure to them, or could

pick a book from the drawing-room table with the confidence that what

she said of it would not be ridiculous. She could even feel herself

happier than Barbara, who listened so closely to what Julia said of the

settlement house, and sighed as she listened.

After luncheon Richie took her driving over cold country roads, behind a

big-boned gray mare, and adored her, though she never dreamed it,

because she neither offered to take the reins nor asked him at intervals

if his back was tired. He was finishing work at the school of medicine

now, and although he could never hope to be in regular practice, his

thin, bony face was very bright as he outlined his plans. Julia listened

to him sympathetically, and said good-bye to him at the boat with a

sense of genuine liking on both sides. Miss Toland was waiting for her

on the upper deck, her long nose nipped and red in the cold air.

"Well, he saw that you didn't miss it, after all!" said she, with a

welcoming light for Julia in her sharp eyes, though she did not smile.

"Sit down! I've been hearing nice things about you, my dear! I said to

Sally, 'So there _is_ something in old maids' children, eh?'" Miss Toland

chuckled; she was well pleased with her protegee. Julia settled herself

comfortably beside her. She liked to watch the running gray water, and

to feel the cold December wind in her face. The thought of Mark was

always with her, poor Mark! so much more in her heart dead than living!

But to-day his memory seemed only a part of the tender past; it was

toward the future that her heart turned; she felt young and strong and

full of hope.

In the new year Jim began to come pretty regularly to the settlement

house. Sometimes he stayed but for two minutes, never for more than ten,

and usually, even if Julia was out, he left some little gift for her, a

book or a magazine, flower seeds, or violets, or a box of candy. She

would glance up from the soiled and rumpled sewing of some small girl to

find Jim smiling at her from the stage door, or come back from her

little shopping round and have a moment's chat with him on the steps.

She grew more and more silent, more and more self-contained, but her

beauty deepened daily, and her eyes shone like blue stars.

"God, I will not believe it--I _cannot_ believe it!" said Julia, on her

knees, at night, her hands pressed tight against her eyes. "But I think

he is beginning to love me!" And she walked in a strange dazzle of

happiness, rejoicing in every sunny morning that, with its warmth and

blueness and distant soft whistles from the bay, seemed to promise the

spring, and rejoicing no less when rain beat against the windows of The

Alexander, and the children rushed in upon her at three o'clock with

raindrops in their hair and on their glowing cheeks. The convent garden,

in the February mornings, the assembly room, with late uncertain

sunlight checking its floor in the long afternoons, the Colonial

restaurant filled with lights and the odours of food at night, all these

familiar things seemed strangely new and thrilling, and the arrival of

the postman was, twice a day, a heart-shaking event.

In April Doctor Toland went on a fortnight's trip to Mexico, and took

his third daughter with him, in the undisguised hope of winning some

small share of her confidence, and convincing her of his own

disinterested affection. Two days later Barbara telephoned her aunt the

harrowing news of Sally's elopement with Keith Borroughs, and Miss

Toland went at once to Sausalito, taking Julia along.

They found the big house full of excitement. Richie was with his mother,

who had retired to her room and was tearful and hysterical; Ned and his

wife had gone back after Christmas to the country town, where he held a

small position under his father-in-law; and Jim was doing both his own

work and that of his foster father for the time being, and could not be

found by telephone; so Julia was received by Barbara and the two younger

girls, who were not inclined to make light of the event.

"Four years younger than Sally!" said Constance, not for the first time.

"It's not _that_," Barbara contributed disgustedly. "But he's only

nineteen--not of age, even! And he hasn't one single penny! Why, Mrs.

Carter was thinking of sending him abroad for two years' work with his

music. I _see_ her doing it now! Little sloppy-haired, conceited idiot,

that's what _he_ is!"

"And Richie says he'll have to have his mother's consent before he can

marry her," said Jane with a virtuous air.

"It's too disgusting!" Barbara added, giving Jane a sharp glance. "And

you oughtn't talk that way, Jane; it doesn't sound very well in a girl

your age to talk about any one's having to marry any one!"

"I know this," said Constance gloomily. "It's going to give this family

a horrible black eye. A fine chance we'll have to marry, we younger

ones, with Sally disgracing every one this way!" Constance was the

handsomest of all the Tolands, and felt keenly the disadvantages of

being the youngest of four unmarried sisters.

"Don't worry about your marriage until it comes along, Con," said

Barbara wearily.

"I'll bet I marry before you do!" said Constance, without venom.

"I long ago made up my mind never to marry at all," Barbara said, with a

bored air. Julia chuckled.

"It is so funny to hear you go at each other," she explained. "It sounds

so cross--and it really isn't at all! Don't worry, Miss Toland," she

added soothingly, "Miss Sally wouldn't marry him if she didn't love

him--"

"Oh, she loves him fast enough!" Barbara admitted, consoled.

"And if people love each other, it's all right," Julia went on. Barbara

sighed.

"Oh, I hope it is, Julia!" said she, as conscious of the little

familiarity for all her abstracted air as Julia was, and suspecting that

it thrilled Julia, as indeed it did.

"And it's all the result of idleness, that's what it is, and that's what

I've been telling your mother," said Miss Toland, coming in. "You've all

got nothing to do except sit about and think how bored you are!"

"Oh, Auntie, aren't you low?" Barbara said tranquilly, going to take an

arm of her chair. "All sorts of people elope--there's nothing so

disgraceful in _that_."

"It's disgraceful considering what a father you've got, and what a

mother!" Miss Toland said vexatiously. "And Ted worrying your father to

death about that scamp, too! I declare it's too much!"

"He's a pretty rich scamp, and a pretty attractive scamp," Barbara said

in defence of Theodora's choice. "He's not like that _kid_ of a Keith!"

Julia heard the garden gate slam, and a quick, springing step on the

porch before the others did, but it was Jane who said, "Here's Jim!" and

Barbara who went to let him in.

"Oh, Jimmy, have you heard of Sally?" she faltered, and as they came in

from the hall Julia's quick eye saw that she was half clinging to his

shoulder, sister fashion, and that his arm was half about her.

"Hello, every one!" said his big, reassuring voice. "How's Mother?

Hello, Aunt Sanna--and Miss Page, too! Well, this is fun, isn't it? Yes,

Miss Babbie, I've heard of Sally, Sally Borroughs, as she is now--"

"What! Married?" said every one at once, and Mrs. Toland, making an

impressive entrance with Richie, sank into a deep chair and echoed:

"Married?"

"Married, Mother dear," said Jim. "They found me in Dad's office at five

o'clock; Keith's father, a fierce sort of man, was with them, and was

for calling the whole thing off. Sally was crying, poor girl, and Keith

miserable--"

"Oh, poor old Sally!" said Barbara's tender voice.

"You should have brought her straight home to me!" Mrs. Toland added

severely.

"Well, so I thought at first. But they had their license, which would be

in the morning papers anyway, and Sally had done the fool thing of

mailing letters to two girl friends when she left here this morning--"

"She left me a mere scribble, pinned to her pin-cushion," said her

mother, magnificently. "Just as any common actress--"

"Oh, Mother! it wasn't pinned to her cushion at all!" Barbara protested.

"She had no pincushion, she has a pin tray."

"I hardly see how it matters, Babbie; it was on her bureau, anyway! Just

like a servant girl!" Mrs. Toland persisted.

"Well, anyway, it seemed best to push it right through," said Jim,

"especially as they persisted that they would do it again or die--or

rather, Sally did!"

"Oh, Jim, _don't_!" wailed Sally's mother. "Poor, deluded child!"

"I don't mean that Keith wasn't fiery enough," Jim hastened to say.

"He's a decent enough little fellow, and he's madly in love. So we all

went up to the French church, and Father Marchand married them--"

"A child of mine!" said Mrs. Toland, stricken.

"Keith's father and I witnessed," pursued Jim, "and we both kissed the

bride--"

"Sally! And she was such a dear sweet baby!" whispered Mrs. Toland, big

tears beginning to run down her cheeks.

"Ah, Mother!" Constance said soothingly, at her mother's knees.

"Sally's of age, of course," Jim argued soothingly, "and one couldn't

bring her home like a child. The thing would have gotten out, and she'd

have been a marked girl for life! There's really no _reason_ why they

shouldn't marry, and the boy--Keith, that is, put her into a carriage

quite charmingly, and they drove off. They'll go no farther than

Tamalpais or the Hotel Rafael, probably, for Keith has to be back at

work on Monday, and I made him promise to bring Sally here on Sunday

night."

"And what will they live on?" Mrs. Toland asked stonily.

"That isn't worrying them. Sally has--what? From those bonds of her

grandfather's?"

"Three hundred a year," Mrs. Toland said discouragingly.

"And Keith gets fifty-five a month. That's eighty--h'm!" pursued Jim.

"Well, some of us simply will have to help them," suggested Mrs. Toland,

with a swift, innocent glance at Miss Sanna.

"His father will have to help," Miss Toland countered firmly.

They presently adjourned to the dining-room, all still talking--even

Julia--of Sally. Sally would have to take the Barnes cottage, at fifteen

dollars a month, and do her own cooking, and her own sewing--

"They can dine here on Sundays," said Sally's mother, sniffing and

wiping her eyes.

"And wouldn't it be awful if they had a baby!" Jane flung out casually.

Every one felt the indelicacy of this, except Julia, who relieved all

Jane's hearers by saying warmly:

"Oh, don't say awful! Why, you'd all go wild over a dear little baby!"

Doctor Studdiford gave her a curious look at this, and though Julia did

not see it, Barbara did. After dinner the doctor and Barbara played

whist with the older ladies, and Julia sat looking over their shoulders

for a few minutes, and then went upstairs with Constance and Jane for a

long, delightful gossip. The girls must show her various pictures of

Keith and Sally, books full of kodak prints, and everywhere Julia saw

Jim, too: Jim from the days of little boyhood on to to-day, Jim as camp

cook, Jim as tennis champion, Jim riding, yachting, fishing; a younger

Jim, in the East at college, a small, stocky, unrecognizable Jim, in

short trousers and straw hat. And everywhere, with him, Barbara.

"That's when they gave a play--I was only five," Constance said. "See,

this is Jim as Jack Horner, and Babbie as Mother Goose. And look! here's

Jim on a pony--that's at his grandfather's place in Honolulu, He stayed

there a month every year, when he was a little boy, and Mother and

Barbara visited there once. Here we all are, swimming, at Tahoe. And

here's Bab in the dress she wore at her coming-out tea--isn't it dear?

And look! here she is in an old dress of Jim's mother, and see the old

pearls; aren't they lovely? Jim gave them to her when she was twenty."

"Jim was crazy about her then," said Jane.

"_I_ don't think he was," Constance said perversely.

"Oh, Con, you know he was!" Jane protested. "He _was_, too," she added, to

Julia.

"_I_ don't think he was," persisted Constance lightly.

Barbara came in a second later, and again the talk went back to Sally.

"Mother and Aunt Sanna said good-night," reported Barbara, "and Aunt

Sanna said to leave the door between your rooms open, and--oh, yes,

Doctor Studdiford has been teasing Aunt Sanna to stay for a few days,

Miss Page; he says you look as pale as a little ghost!"

"I liked so much to have you call me Julia," was Julia's extremely

tactful answer to this. Barbara, perhaps glad to find her message so

casually dismissed, smiled her prettiest.

"Julia--then!" and Barbara sat down on a bed, and began to roll up her

belt. "Aunt Sanna says she gives Sally and Keith about three months--"

she began.

Two days later, on Sunday, the bride and groom came home. Sally, who

looked particularly well and was quite unashamed, rushed into her

mother's arms, and laughed and cried like a creature possessed. She

kissed all her sisters, and if there was a note of disapproval in her

welcome, she did not get it. Richie having charitably carried off the

somewhat sullen young husband, the bride was presently free to open her

heart to the women of the house.

"It's all so different when you're married, isn't it, Mother?" bubbled

Sally. "Going into hotels and everything--you don't care who looks at

you, you know you've a perfect right to go anywhere with your husband!

Now, that look that Keith just gave me, as he went off with

Richie--_blazing_! Well, it would just have amused me when we were

engaged, but now I know that he's simply wretched with jealousy, and

I'll have to pet him a little and quiet him down! He is a perfect child

about money; he _will_ spend too much on everything, and if we go abroad

I'll simply have to--"

"Go abroad?" every one echoed.

"Oh, I think we must, for Keith's music," Sally said gravely. "He can't

settle down here, you know. He's got to live abroad, and he's got to

have lessons--expensive lessons. Office work makes him too nervous,

anyway."

"Well, my dear, I hope you have money enough to carry out these pleasing

plans," said Miss Toland dryly.

"Well, we have my twenty-five a month," Sally said capably, "and Keith's

father _ought_ to give him another twenty-five, because the expense of

having Keith live at home will be gone, and"--Sally fixed a hopeful eye

on her mother--"and I should think Dad would give me at least that,

Mother," said she. "I must cost him much more than that!"

"Oh, I--don't--know!" said Mrs. Toland guardedly, taken unawares, and

slowly shaking her head.

"Then I thought," pursued the practical Sally, "that if you would give

me half the clothes of a regular trousseau, and if Dad would give us our

travelling expenses to Berlin for a wedding present--why, there you

are!"

"But you two couldn't live on seventy-five dollars a month, Sally!"

"Oh, Mother, Jeannette said you could get a lovely room for two--in a

pension--for a dollar a day! And that leaves forty for lessons, two a

week, and five dollars over!"

"For laundry and carfare and doctor's bills," said Miss Toland

unsympathetically.

"Well!" Sally flared, resentful colour in her cheeks.

"And Dad will never consent to anything so _outrageously_ unfair as living

on thirty-five and spending forty for lessons!" said Barbara.

Poor little Sally looked somewhat crushed.

"For heaven's sake don't let Keith hear you say that, Babbie!" she said

nervously. "It makes him frantic to suggest that you can get decent

lessons in harmony for nothing! I don't know what you know about it,

anyway. I'll fix it with Dad!"

"If Dad allows Sally so much, he ought to do the same for the rest of

us," Constance suggested. Julia, foreseeing a scene, slipped out of the

room.

In the hallway she encountered Doctor Studdiford, who was just

downstairs after a late sleep. Jim had the satisfied air of a man who

has had a long rest, a shave and a bath, and a satisfactory breakfast.

"Family conference?" he said, nodding toward the sitting-room door.

"Sally and Keith are here," Julia announced.

"Oh, are they? Well, I ought to go in. But I also ought to walk up to

the Ridge, and see that poor fellow who ran a shaft into his leg." Jim

hesitated. "I suppose you wouldn't like to go with me?" he asked, with

his sudden smile. Julia's heart jumped; her eyes answered him. "Well,

wrap up snug," said Jim, "for there's the very deuce of a wind!"

So Julia tied herself into the most demure of hats, and buttoned her

long coat about her, and Jim shook himself into his heaviest overcoat,

and pulled an old cap down over his eyes. They let themselves out at a

side door, and a gust of wet wind howled down upon them, and shook a

shower from the madly rippling ivy leaves. The sky was high and pale,

and crossed by hurrying and scattered clouds; a clean, roaring gale tore

over the hills, and ruffled the rain pools in the road, and bowed the

trees like whips. The bay was iron colour; choppy waves chased each

other against the piers. Now and then a pale flicker of sunlight

brightened the whole scene with blues and greens and shadows

spectacularly clear; then the clouds met again, and the wind sang like a

snapped wire.

Julia and the doctor climbed the long flights of stairs that cut

straight up through the scattered homes on the hill. These earthen steps

were still running with the late rain, and moss lay on them like a green

film. Julia breathed hard, a veil of blown hair crossed her bright eyes,

her stinging cheeks glowed.

"I love this kind of a day!" she shouted. Jim's gloved hand helped her

to cross a wide pool, and his handsome eyes were full of all delight as

he shouted back.

Presently, when they were in a more quiet bit of road, he told her of

some of his early boyish walks. "Listen, Julia!" he said, catching her

arm. "D'you hear them? It's the peepers! We used to call them that,

little frogs, you know--sure sign of the spring!"

And as the wind lulled Julia heard the brave little voices of a hundred

tiny croakers in some wet bit of meadow. "We'll have buttercups next

week!" said Jim.

He told her something of the sick man to whom they were going, and spoke

of other cases, of his work and his hopes.

"Poor Kearney!" said Jim, "his oldest kid was sick, then his wife had a

new baby, and now this! You'll like the baby--he's a nice little kid. I

took him in my arms last time I was here, and I wish you could have seen

the little lip curl up, but he wouldn't cry! A kid two months old can be

awfully cunning!" He looked a little ashamed of this sentiment, but

Julia thought she had never seen anything so bright and simple and

lovable as the smile with which he asked her sympathy.

She was presently mothering the baby, in the Kearneys' little hot

living-room, while Doctor Studdiford caused the patient in the room

beyond to shout with pain. The howling wind had a sinister sound, heard

up here within walls, and Julia was glad to be out in it, and going down

the hills again.

"Well, how do you like sick calls?" asked Jim.

"I was glad not to have to see him," Julia confessed. "But it is a

darling baby, and such a nice little wife! She has a sister who comes up

every afternoon, so she can get some sleep, poor thing. His mother is

going to pay their rent until he gets well, and he gets two dollars a

week from his union. But she said that if you hadn't--"

"Well, you know now, for such a quiet little mouse of a girl, Julia, you

are a pretty good confidence woman!"

"And the baby's to be named for you!" Julia ended triumphantly.

"Lord, they needn't have done that!" said the doctor, with his confused,

boyish flush. "Look, Julia, how the tide has carried that ferryboat out

of her course!"

Julia's heart flew with the winds; she felt as if she had never known

such an hour of ecstasy before. They had crossed the upper road, and

were halfway down the last flight of steps, when Jim suddenly caught her

hand, and turned her about to face him. Dripping trees shut in this

particular landing, and they were alone under the wind-swept sky. Jim

put his arms about her, and Julia raised her face, with all a child's

serene docility, for his kiss.

"_Do_ you love me, Julie?" said Jim urgently, then. "Do you love me,

little girl? Because I love you _so_ much!"

Not the words he had so carefully chosen to say, but he said them a

score of times. If Julia answered, it was only with a confused murmur,

but she clung to him, and her luminous eyes never moved from his own.

"Oh, my God, I love you so!" Jim said, finally releasing her, only to

catch her in his arms again. "Won't you say it once, Julia, just to let

me hear you?"

"But I did say it," Julia said, dimpling and rosy.

"Oh, but darling, you don't know how _hungry_ I am to hear you!"

"How--how could I help it?" Julia stammered; and now the blue eyes she

raised were misty with tears.

Jim found this satisfactory, intoxicatingly so. They went a few steps

farther and sat on a bit of dry bulk-heading, and began to discuss the

miracle. About them the winds of spring shouted their eternal promise,

and in their hearts the promise that is as new and as old as spring came

to dazzling flower.

"My clever, sweet, little dignified girl!" said Jim. "Julia, do you know

that you are the most fascinating woman in the world? I never saw any

one like you!"

"I--Oh, Jim!" was all that Julia said, but her dimples and the nearness

of the blue eyes helped the stammered words.

"Among all the chattering, vapid girls I know," pursued Jim, "you stand

utterly alone, you with your ambitions, and your _wiseness_! By George!

when I think what you have made of yourself, I could get down and

worship you. I feel like a big spoiled kid beside you! I've always had

all the money I could spend, and you, you game little thing, you've

grubbed and worked and made things do!"

"I never had any ambition as high as marrying _you_," Julia said, with the

mysterious little smile that at once baffled and enchanted him. "When I

think of it, it makes me feel giddy, like a person walking in a valley

who found himself set down on top of a mountain! I never thought of

marriage at all!"

"But you are going to marry me, sweet, aren't you?" Jim asked anxiously.

"And you _are_ happy, dear? For I feel as if I would die of joy and

pride!"

"Oh, I'm happy!" Julia said, and instantly her lip quivered, and her

eyes brimmed with tears. She jumped to her feet, and caught him by the

hand. "Come on!" she said. "We _mustn't_ be so long!"

"But darling," said Jim, infinitely tender, "why the tears?"

For answer she caught his coat in her shabbily gloved little hands.

"Because I love you so, Jim," she faltered, trying to smile. "You don't

know how much!" Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and for a moment her

eyes looked far beyond him, down into the valley, and at the iron-cold

bay with its racing whitecaps. Then she took his hand, and they began to

descend the steps.

"I may tell my mother, Julie?" Jim asked joyously. "And Aunt Sanna? And

do you know that Julia is one of my favourite names--"

"No, I want you not to tell any one," Julia decided quickly. "You must

promise me that. Nobody." Something in her tone surprised, a little

chilled, him.

"Julie--but why?"

"Well, because we want to be _sure_--"

"Oh, sure! Why, but, dearest, _aren't_ you--"

"No, but wait a moment," Julia interrupted, and Jim, turning toward her,

saw a real trouble reflected in her face. "I want you to meet my mother,

and my own people," she said, scarlet cheeked. Jim's grave,

comprehensive look met hers.

"And I want to, dear," he said. And then, as her face did not brighten:

"Why, my dearest, you aren't going to worry because your people aren't

in the Social Register, and don't go to the Brownings'? I know all sorts

of people, Ju--Kearney, up there, is a good friend of mine! And I know

from Aunt Sanna that you're a long way ahead of your own people."

"I don't know whether it's 'ahead' or not," said Julia, with a worried

laugh. "I suppose only God knows the real value of finger bowls and

toothbrushes and silk stockings! I _suppose_ it's 'ahead'!"

She opened the Tolands' side gate as she spoke, and they went into the

bare garden.

"Well--but _don't_ go in," pleaded Jim, "there'll be a mob about us in no

time, and I've never had you to myself before! When may I come see your

people?"

"Will you write?" Julia asked at the side door.

"Oh, but darling, when we've just begun to talk!" fretted Jim. "Would

you dare to kiss me right here--no one could possibly see us!"

"I would _not_!" And Julia flashed him one laughing look as she opened the

door. A moment later he heard her running up the stairway.

Julia found Miss Toland upstairs, hastily packing. "Well, runaway!" said

the older lady. And then, in explanation, "I think we'd best go, Julia,

for my brother and Teddy have just got home, and there'll have to be a

great family council to-night."

"Would you stay if I went?" Julia asked, coming close to her.

"No, you muggins! I'd pack you off in a moment if that was what I meant!

No, I'm glad enough to get out of it!" Miss Toland stood up. "What's Jim

Studdiford been saying to you to give you cheeks like that?" she asked.

"I don't know," Julia whispered, with a tremulous laugh. And for the

first time she went into Miss Toland's open arms, and hid her face, and

for the first time they kissed each other.

"Anything settled?" the older woman presently asked in great

satisfaction.

"Not--quite!" Julia said.

"Not quite! Well, that's right; there's no need of hurry. Oh, law me!

I've seen this coming," Miss Toland assured her; "he all but told me

himself a week ago! Well, well, well! And it only goes to show, Julia,"

she added, shaking a skirt before she rolled it into a ball and laid it

in her suitcase, "that if you give a girl an occupation, she's better

off, she's more useful, and it doesn't keep her fate from finding her

out! You laugh, because you've heard me say this before, but it's true!"

Julia had laughed indeed; her heart was singing. She would have laughed

at anything to-day.

Four days later, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Doctor Studdiford

called at The Alexander, and Miss Page joined him, in street attire, at

once. They walked away to the car together, in a street suddenly flooded

with golden sunshine.

"Did you tell your mother I was coming, dear?"

"Oh, Jim, of course! I never would dare take them unawares!"

"And did you tell her that you were going to be my adored and beautiful

little wife in a few months?"

"In a few months--hear the man! In a few years! No, but I gave them to

understand that you were my 'friend.' I didn't mention that you are a

multi-millionaire and a genius on leg bones--"

"Julia, my poor girl, if you think you are marrying a multi-millionaire,

disabuse your mind, dear child! Aren't women mercenary, though! Here I

thought I--No, but seriously, darling, why shouldn't your mother have

the satisfaction of knowing that your future is pretty safe?"

"Well, that's hard to say, Jim. But I think you will like her better if

she takes it for granted that you are just--well, say just the sort of

doctor we might have called in to the settlement house, establishing a

practice, but quite able to marry. I feel," said Julia, finding her

words with a little difficulty, "that my mother might hurt my

feelings--by doubting my motives, otherwise--and if she hurt my

feelings she would anger you, wouldn't she?"

"She certainly would!" Jim smiled, but the look he gave his plucky

little companion was far removed from mirth.

"And I do dread this call," Julia said nervously. "I came down here

yesterday, just to say we were coming, and it all struck me as

being--However, there's the house, and you'll soon see for yourself!"

The house itself was something of a shock to Jim, but if Julia guessed

it, he gave her no evidence of his feeling, and was presently taken into

the stifling parlour, and introduced to Julia's mother, a little gray

now, but hard lipped and bright eyed as ever, and to Mrs. Cox, who had

been widowed for some years, and was a genial, toothless, talkative old

woman, much increased in her own esteem and her children's as the actual

owner of the old house.

"Mother, we want some air in here!" Julia said, going to a window.

"Julia's a great girl for fresh air," said Emeline. "Sit down, Doctor,

and don't mind Ma!" Mrs. Cox, perhaps slightly self-conscious, was

wandering about the room picking threads from the carpet, straightening

the pictures on the walls, and dubiously poking a small stopped clock on

the mantel.

"How's your arm to-day?" Julia asked, stopping behind her mother's

chair, and laying two firm young hands on her shoulders.

"What do you think of a girl that runs off and doesn't see her mother

for weeks at a time, Doctor?" Mrs. Page demanded a little tartly. "Her

papa and I was devoted to her, too! But I suppose if she marries, she'll

be too grand for us altogether!"

"Now, Mother!" said Julia pleadingly, half vexed, half indulgent.

"I had an elegant little place myself when I was first married," Mrs.

Page continued, in a sort of discontented sing-song. "Julia must have

told you about her papa--"

Julia's serious eyes flashed a look to Jim, and he saw something almost

like humour in their blue deeps.

"That's a crayon enlargement of my youngest son," the old woman was

presently saying, "Chess. A better boy never lived, but he got in with

bad companions and they got him in jail. Yes, indeed they did! On'y the

governor let him out again--"

The call was not long. Doctor Studdiford shook hands with both the

ladies, in departing, and Julia kissed her mother and grandmother

dutifully. The two walked almost in silence to the car.

"Downtown?" asked Julia, in surprise.

"Downtown, for tea," Jim said. And when they were comfortably

established in a secluded corner of the Golden Pheasant, he expelled a

long breath from his lungs, and sent Julia his sunniest smile as he

said:

"Well, you're a wonder!"

"I?" Julia touched her heart with her fingers, and raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, yes, you are!" Jim repeated. "You're a little wonder! To make

yourself so sweet and fine and dear, it shows that you're one of the big

people of the world, Julie! Some one of the writers, Emerson I guess it

was, says that when you find a young person who is willing to accept the

wisdom of older people, and abide by it, why, you may watch that young

person for great things. And you see, I propose to!"

Julia had no answering smile ready. Instead her face was very grave as

she said musingly:

"I hardly know why I wanted you to meet my mother and grandmother, Jim.

I don't know quite what I expected when you _did_ meet them, but--but you

mustn't make light of the fact that they _are_ different from your people,

and different from me, too. For three or four days and nights now I've

been thinking about--us. I've been wondering whether this engagement

would be a--a happy thing for you, Jim. I've wondered--"

"But, sweetheart!" he interrupted eagerly, "I love you! You're the only

woman I ever wanted to marry! I love you just because you _are_ different,

you are so much wiser and deeper and truer than any other girl I ever

knew, and if your people and your life have made you that, why I love

them, too! And you do love me, Julie?"

Julia raised heavy eyes, and he could see that tears were pressing close

behind them. She did not speak, but her look suddenly enveloped him like

a cloud. Jim felt a sudden prick of tears behind his own eyes.

"Sweetness," he said gravely, "I know you love me! And Julia, my whole

soul is simply on fire for you. Don't--_don't_ let any mere trifle come

between us now. Let me tell my mother and father to-morrow!"

A clear light was shining in Julia's eyes. Now, as she automatically

arranged the tea things before her, and poured him his first cup of tea,

she said:

"Jim, I told you that I haven't thought much about marriage for myself.

I suppose it's funny that I shouldn't, for they say most girls do! But

perhaps it was because the biographies and histories I began to read

when I came to the settlement house were all about men: how Lincoln

rose, how Napoleon rose, how this rich man sold newspapers when he was a

little boy, and that other one spent his first money in taking his

mother out of the poorhouse. And of course marriage doesn't enter so

much into the lives of men. It came to me years ago that what wise men

are trying to din into young people everywhere is just this: that if you

make yourself ready for anything, that thing will come to you. Just do

your end, and somewhere out in the queer, big, incomprehensible

machinery of the world your place will mysteriously begin to get ready

for you--Am I talking sense, Jim?"

"Absolutely. Go on!" said Jim.

"Well, and so I thought that if I took years and years I might--well,

you won't see why, but I wanted to be a lady!" confessed Julia, her lips

smiling, but with serious eyes. "And, Jim, everything comes so much more

easily than one thinks. Your aunt knew I wasn't, but I happened to be

what she needed, and I kept quiet, and listened and learned!"

"And suppose you _hadn't_ happened upon the settlement house?" asked Jim,

his ardent eyes never moving from her face.

"Why, I would have done it somehow, some other way. I meant to take a

position in some family, and perhaps be a trained nurse when I was

older, or study to be a librarian and take the City Hall examinations,

or work up to a post-office position! I had lots of plans, only of

course I was only a selfish little girl then, and I thought I would

disappear, and never let my own people hear from me again!"

"But you softened on that point, eh?" asked Jim.

"Oh, right away!" Julia's wonderful eyes shone upon him with something

unearthly in their light. "Because God decides to whom we shall belong,

Jim," said she, with childish faith, "and to start wrong with my own

people would mean that I was all wrong, everywhere. But my highest

ambition then was to grow, as the years went on, to be useful to nice

people, and to be liked by them. I never dreamed every one would be so

friendly! And when Miss Pierce and Miss Scott have asked me to their

homes, and when Mrs. Forbes took me to Santa Cruz, and Mrs. Chetwynde

asked me to dine with them, well, I can't tell you what it meant!"

"It meant that you are as good--and better, in every way--than all the

rest of them put together!" said the prejudiced Jim.

"Oh, Jim!" Julia looked at him over her teacup, a breach of manners

which Jim thought very charming. "No," she said, presently, pursuing her

own thoughts, "but I never thought of marriage! And now you come along,

Jim, so--so good to me, so infinitely dear, and I can't--I can't help

caring--" And suddenly her lip trembled, and tears filled her eyes. She

looked down at her teacup, and stirred it blindly.

"You angel!" Jim said.

"Don't--make--me--cry--!" Julia begged thickly. A second later she

looked up and laughed through tears. "And I feel like a person who has

been skipped over four or five grades at school; I don't know whether I

_can_ be a rich man's wife!" she said whimsically. "I know I can go on as

I am, reading and thinking, and listening to other people, and keeping

quiet when I have nothing to say, but--but when I think of being Mrs.

James Studdiford--"

"Oh, I love to hear you say it!" Jim leaned across the table, and put

one warm big hand over hers. "My darling little wife!"

The word dyed Julia's cheeks crimson, and for the long hour that they

lingered over their tea she seemed to Jim more charming than he had ever

found her before. Her gravity, with its deep hint of suppressed mirth,

and her mirth that was always so delicate and demure, so shot with

sudden pathos and seriousness, were equally exquisite; and her beauty

won all eyes, from the old waiter who hovered over their happiness, to

the little baby in the street car who would sit in Julia's lap and

nowhere else. Jim presently left Julia to her Girls' Club, consoling

himself with the thought that on the following night they were to make

their first trip to the theatre together.

But when, at half-past seven the next evening, Jim presented himself at

the settlement house, he found Julia alone, and obviously not dressed

for the theatre. She admitted him with a kiss that to his lover's

enthusiasm was strangely cool, and drew him into the reception hall.

"Your aunt had to go out with Miss Parker," said Julia. "But she'll

positively be here a little after eight."

"My darling, I didn't come to see Aunt Sanna!" Jim caught her to him.

"But, sweetheart," he said, "how hot your face is, and your poor little

hands are icy! Aren't you well?"

"No, I don't believe I'm very well!" Julia admitted restlessly, lighting

the shaded lamp on the centre table, and snapping off the side lights

that so mercilessly revealed her pale face and burning eyes.

"Not well enough for the theatre? Well, but darling, I don't care one

snap for the theatre," Jim assured her eagerly. "Only I hate to see you

so nervous and tired. Has it been a hard day? Aunt Sanna--?"

"No, your aunt's an angel to me--no, it's been an easy day," Julia said,

dropping into a chair, and pushing her hair back from her face with a

feverish gesture. A second later she sprang up and disappeared into the

assembly hall. "I thought I mightn't have locked the door," she said,

returning.

"Why, sweetheart," Jim said, in great distress, "what is it? You're not

one bit like yourself!"

"No, I know I'm not," Julia said wildly. She sat down again. "I've been

thinking and thinking all day, until I feel as if I must go _crazy_!" she

said with a desperate gesture. "And it's come to this, Jim--Don't think

I'm excited--I mean it. I--we can't be married, Jim. That's all.

Don't--don't look so amazed. People break engagements all the time,

don't they? And we aren't really engaged, Jim; nobody knows it. And--and

so it's _all_ right!"

Anything less right than Julia's ashen face and blazing eyes, and the

touch of her cold wet little hands, Jim thought he had never seen. He

stepped into the bathroom, and ran his eye along the trim row of

labelled bottles on the shelf.

"Here, drink this, dear," he said, coming back to her with something

clear and pungent in a glass. "Now, come here," and half lifting the

little figure in his arms he put her on the couch, and tucked a plaid

warmly about her. "Don't forget that your husband is also a doctor,"

said Jim, sitting down so that he could see her face, and hold one hand

in both of his. "You're all worn out and excited, and no wonder! You

see, most girls take out their excess emotion on their families, but my

little old girl is too much alone!"

Julia's eyes were fixed on him as if she were powerless to draw them

away. It was sweet--it was poignantly sweet--to be cared for by him, to

feel that Jim's warm heart and keen mind were at her service, that the

swift smile was for her, the ardour in his eyes was all her own. For

perhaps half an hour she rested, almost without speaking, and Jim talked

to her with studied lightness and carelessness. Then suddenly she sat

up, and put her hands to her loosened hair.

"I must look wild, Jim!"

"You look like a ravishing little gipsy! But I wish you had more colour,

mouse!"

"Am I pale?" Julia asked, with a little nervous laugh. Jim dropped on

one knee beside her, and studied her with anxious eyes, and she pushed

the hair off his forehead, and rested her cheek against it with a long

sigh as if she were very tired.

"What is it, dear?" asked Jim, with infinite solicitude.

"Well!" Julia put the faintest shadow of a kiss on his forehead, then

got abruptly to her feet and crossed the room, as if she found his

nearness suddenly insufferable. "I can't break my engagement to you this

way, Jim," said she. "For even if I told you a thousand times that I had

stopped loving you"--a spasm of pain crossed her face, she shut her

hands tightly together over her heart--"even then you would know that I

love you with my whole soul," she said in a whisper with shut eyes. "But

you see," and Julia turned a pitiful smile upon him, "you see there's

something you don't understand, Jim! You say I have climbed up alone,

from being a tough little would-be actress, who lived over a saloon in

O'Farrell Street, to this! You say--and your aunt says--that I am wise,

wise to see what is worth having, and to work for it! But has it never

occurred to _one_ of you--" Julia's voice, which had been rising steadily,

sank to a cold, low tone. "No," she said, as if to herself, sitting down

at the table, and resting her arms upon it. "No, it has never occurred

to one of them to ask _why_ I am different--to ask just what made me so!

Life boils itself down to this, doesn't it?" she went on, staring

drearily at the shadowy corner of the room beyond her. "That women have

something to sell, or give away, and the question is just how much each

one can get for it! That's what makes the most insignificant married

woman feel superior to the happiest and richest old maid. She says to

herself, 'I've made my market. Somebody chose me!' That's what

motherhood and homemaking rest on: the whole world is just one great big

question of sex, spinning away in space! And even after a woman is

married, she still plays with sex; she likes to feel that men admire

her, doesn't she? At dinners there must be a man for every woman; at

dances no two girls must dance together! And here, the minute a new girl

comes to join my clubs, I try to read her face. Is she pure, or has she

already thrown away--"

"Julia, _dear_!" said Jim, amazed and troubled, but she silenced him with

a quick gesture. Her cheeks were burning now, and her words came fast.

"Those poor little girls at St. Anne's," she said feverishly, "they've

thrown their lives away because this thing that is in the air all about

them came too close. They were too young legally to be trusted as Nature

has trusted them for years! They heard people talk of it, and laugh

about it--it didn't _seem_ very dangerous--"

"Julia!" Jim said again, pleadingly.

"Just one moment, Jim, and I'll be done! When they had learned their

lesson, when they had found out what sorrow it brought, when they knew

that there was only loss and shame in it for them--then it was too late!

Then men, and women, too, expected them to go on giving; there was

nothing else to do. Oh," said Julia, in a heartbreaking voice, bringing

her locked hands down upon the table as if she were in physical agony,

"if the law would only take a hand before and not afterward! Or if, when

they are sick to death of men, they could believe that time would wash

it all away; that there was clean, good work for them somewhere in the

world!"

"My darling, why distress yourself about what can't possibly concern

you?" Jim said. Julia stared at him thoughtfully for a few silent

seconds.

"It _does_ concern me. That's how I bought my wisdom," she said quietly

then, with no emotion deeper than a mild regret visible in her face.

Voice and manner were swept bare of passion; she seemed infinitely

fatigued. "That's why I can't marry you, Jim."

"What do you mean?" Jim said easily, uncomprehendingly, the indulgent

smile hardly stricken from his lips.

Julia's eyes met his squarely across the lamplight.

"That," she said simply.

There was a silence, and no change of expression on either face. Then

Jim stood up.

"I don't believe it!" he said, with a short laugh.

"It's true," said Julia. "I was not fifteen. How long ago it was! Nobody

has ever known--you need not have known. But I am glad I told you. I

have been thinking of nothing else but telling you for two days and two

nights. And sometimes I would say to myself that what that old little

ignorant Julia did would not concern you--"

Jim made an inarticulate sound, from where he sat with his elbows on his

knees, with his face dropped in his hands.

"But I see it does concern you!" Julia said, quickly, with great

simplicity. "I--luckily I decided to tell you this morning," she said,

"for I am absolutely exhausted now. It was a terrible thing to keep

thinking about, and I could not have fought it out any longer! There

were extenuating circumstances, I suppose. I was a spoiled little

empty-headed girl; the girls all about me were reckless in everyway; I

did not know the boundary-line, or dream that it mattered very much, so

long as no one knew! My mother had been unhappy in my childhood, and

used to talk a good deal about the disappointment of marriage. Perhaps I

don't make myself clear?"

"_You_! Julia!" Jim whispered, his hands still over his face.

"Yes, I know," Julia said drearily. "I don't seem like that sort of a

girl, I know."

Then there was a long silence.

"You--poor--little--kid!" Jim said, after a while, getting up and

beginning to walk the floor. "Oh, my God! My God! Poor little kid!"

"I suppose there are psychological moments when one wakes up to things,"

Julia went on, in a tone curiously impersonal. "I was in some

theatricals with your sister, years ago. Every one snubbed me, and no

wonder! There was a man named Carter Hazzard--and I suddenly seemed to

wake up at about that time--"

"Carter Hazzard!" The horror in Jim's voice rang through the room. Julia

frowned.

"I only saw him two or three times," she said. "No. But he flirted with

me, and flattered me, and then Barbara told me he was married, and then

I found out that they all thought I was vulgar and common--and so I was.

And I suppose I wanted to be loved and made much of, and he--this

man--was good to me!"

"Not you--of all women!" Jim said dully, as if to himself.

"I know how you feel," Julia said without emotion, "because of course I

feel that way, too--now! And I never loved him, never even thought I

did! It was only a little while--two weeks or three, I guess--before I

told him I couldn't ever love him. I said I thought I might, but it was

like--like realizing that I had been throwing away gold pieces for

dimes. Do you know what I mean? And the most awful disgust came over me,

Jim--a sort of disappointment, that this talked-of and anticipated thing

was no more than that! And then I came here, and I knew that keeping

still about it was my only chance, and oh, how sick I was, soul and

body, for a fresh start! And then your aunt talked to me, and said what

a pity it is that young girls think of nothing but love and lovers, and

so throw away their best years, and I thought that I was done with love;

no more curiosity--no more thrill--and that I would do something with my

life after all!"

Her voice dropped, and again there was silence in the room. Jim

continued to pace the floor.

"Why, there's never been a morning at St. Anne's that I haven't looked

at those girls," Julia presently resumed, "and said to myself that I

might have been there, with my head shaved and a green check dress on!

Lots of them must be better than I!"

"Don't!" Jim said sharply, and there was a silence until Julia said

wonderingly:

"Isn't it funny that all last night, and the night before, I thought I

was going to _die_, telling you this--and now it just doesn't seem to

matter at all?"

"That's why you've never married?" Jim said, clearing his throat.

"I've never wanted to until now," Julia said. "And I--I am so changed

now that somehow I would never think of that--that bad old time, in

connection with marriage! It was as if that part of my life was sealed

beyond opening again--

"And then you came. I only wanted no one to guess that I cared at first.

And then, when I saw that you were beginning to care, too, oh, my God! I

thought my heart would burst!"

And with sudden terrible passion in her voice, she got up in her turn

and began to pace the room. Jim, who had flung himself into a chair

opposite hers, rested his elbows on the table, and his face in his

hands.

"But I feel this about your caring for me, Jim," Julia said. "In a

strange, mysterious way I feel that giving you up--giving you up, my

best and dearest, is purification! When--when this is over, I shall have

paid! It may be"--tears flooded her eyes, and she came back to her chair

and laid her head on her arm--"it may be that I can't bear it, and that

I will die!" sobbed Julia. "But I shall always be glad that I told you

this to-night!" There was a long silence, and then again Jim came to

kneel beside her, and put one arm about her.

"My own little girl!" said he. At his voice Julia raised her head, and

put her arms about his neck like a weary child, and rested her wet face

against his own.

"My own brave girl!" Jim said. "I know what courage it took to have you

tell me this! It will never be known to any one else, sweetheart, and we

will bury it in our hearts forever. Kiss me, dearest, and promise me

that my little wife will stop crying!"

For a moment it was as if she tried to push him away.

"Jim," she whispered, tears running down her face, "have you

thought--are you _sure_?"

"Quite sure, sweetheart," he said soothingly and tenderly. "Why, Julie,

wouldn't you forgive me anything I might have done when I was only an

ignorant little boy?"

Julia tightened her arms about him, and sobbed desperately for a long

while. Then her breathing quieted, and she let Jim dry her eyes with his

own handkerchief, and listened, with an occasional long sigh, to his

eager, confident plans. They were still talking quietly when the street

door was flung open and Miss Toland came in, on a rush of fresh air.

"Rain!" said Miss Toland. "Terrible night! Not an umbrella in the Parker

house until Clem came home--it's quarter to ten!"

"Congratulate us, Aunt Sanna," said Jim, rising to his feet with his arm

still about Julia. "Julia has promised to marry me!"

End of Part One

PART II

CHAPTER I

Yet Dr. James Studdiford, walking down to his club, an hour later, with

the memory of his aunt's joyous congratulations ringing in his ears, and

of Julia's last warm little kiss upon his cheek, was perhaps more

miserable than he had been before in the course of his life. Julia was

his girl--his own girl--and the thrill of her submission, the enchanting

realization that she loved him, rose over and over again in his heart,

like the rising of deep waters--only to wash against the firm barrier

of that hideous Fact.

Jim could do nothing with the Fact. It did not seem to belong to him, or

to Julia, to their love and future together, or to her gallant,

all-enduring past. Julia was Julia--that was the only significant thing,

the sweetest, purest, cleverest woman he knew. And she loved him! A rush

of ecstasy flooded his whole being; how sweet she was when he made her

say she loved him--when she surrendered her hands, when she raised her

gravely smiling blue eyes! What a little wife she would be, what a gay

little comrade, and some day, perhaps, what a mother!

Again the Fact. After such a little interval of radiant peace it seemed

to descend upon him with an ugly violence. It was true; nothing that

they could do now would alter it. And, of course, the thing was serious.

If anything in life was serious, this was. It was frightful--it seemed

sacrilegious to connect such things for an instant with Julia. Dear

little Julia, with her crisp little uniforms, her authority in the

classroom, her charming deference to Aunt Sanna! And she loved him----

"Damn it, the thing either counts or it doesn't count!" Jim muttered,

striding down Market Street, past darkened shops and corners where

lights showed behind the swinging doors of saloons. Either it was all

important or it was not important at all. With most women, all

important, of course. With Julia--Jim let his mind play for a few

minutes with the thought of renunciation. There would be no trouble with

Julia, and Aunt Sanna could easily be silenced.

He shook the mere vision from him with an angry shake of the head. She

belonged to him now, his little steadfast, serious girl. And she had

deceived them all these years! Not that he could blame her for it!

Naturally, Aunt Sanna would never have overlooked that, and presumably

no other woman would have engaged her, knowing it, even to wash dishes

and sweep steps.

"Lord, what a world for women!" thought Jim, in simple wonder. Hunted

down mercilessly, pushed at the first sign of weakening, they know not

where, and then lost! Hundreds of thousands of them forever outcast, to

pay through all the years that are left to them for that hour of

yielding! Hundreds of thousands of them, and his Julia only different

because she had made herself so--

It seemed to Jim, in his club now, and sunk in a deep chair before the

wood fire in the quiet library, that he could never marry her. It must

simply be his sorrow to have loved Julia--God, how he did love her!

But, through all their years together, there must not be that shadow

upon their happiness; it was too hideous to be endured. "It must be

endured," mused Jim wretchedly. "It is true!

"Anyway," he went on presently, rousing himself, "the thing is no more

important than I choose to make it. Ordinarily, yes. But in this case

the thing to be considered is its effect on Julia's character, and if

ever any soul was pure, hers is!

"And if we marry, we must simply make up our minds that the past is

dead!" And suddenly Jim's heart grew lighter, and the black mood of the

past hour seemed to drop. He stretched himself luxuriously and folded

his arms. "If Julia isn't a hundred per cent, sweeter and better and

finer than these friends of Babbie's, who go chasing about to bad plays

and read all the rottenest books that are printed," he said, "then

there's no such thing as a good woman! My little girl--I'm not half

worthy of _her_, that's the truth!"

"Hello, Jim!" said Gray Babcock, coming in from the theatre, and

stretching his long cold hands over the dying fire. "We thought you

might come in to-night. Hazzard and Tom Parley had a little party for

Miss Manning, of the 'Dainty Duchess' Company, you know--awfully pretty

girl, straight, too, they say. There were a couple of other girls, and

Roy Grinell--things were just about starting up when I came away!"

Jim rose, and kicked the scattered ends of a log toward the flame.

"I've not got much use for Hazzard," he observed, frowning.

Babcock gave a surprised and vacant laugh.

"Gosh! I thought all you people were good friends!"

"Hazzard's an ass," observed Jim irritably. "There are some things that

aren't any too becoming to college kids--however, you can forgive them!

But when it comes to an ass like Hazzard chasing to every beauty show,

and taking good little girls to supper--"

"Alice don't care a whoop what he does," Babcock remarked hastily.

"Yes, so of course that makes everything all right," Jim said

ironically. But Mr. Babcock was in no mood to be critical of tones.

"Sure it does!" he agreed contentedly. And when Jim had disgustedly

departed, he remained still staring into the fire, a pleased smile upon

his face.

Julia spent the next day in bed fighting a threatened nervous breakdown,

and Jim came to see her at two o'clock, and they had a long and

memorable talk, with Jim's chair drawn close to the couch, and the

girl's lax hand in his own. She had not slept all night, she told him,

and he suspected that she had spent much of the long vigil in tears.

Tears came again as she begged a hundred times to set him free, but he

quieted her at last, and the old tragedy that had risen to haunt them

was laid. And if Julia felt a rush of blind gratitude and hope when they

sealed their new compact with a kiss, Jim was no less happy--everything

had come out wonderfully, and he loved Julia not less, but more than he

had ever loved her. The facts of her life, whatever they had been, had

made her what she was; now let them all be forgotten.

"Still, you are not sorry I told you, Jim?" Julia asked.

"No, oh, no, dearest! If only because you would have been sure to want

to do it sooner or later--it would have worried you. But now I do know,

Julie, you little Spartan! And this ends it. We'll never speak of it

again, and we'll never think of it again. You and I are the only two who

know--And we love each other. When all's said and done, it's I that am

not good enough for you, darling, not worthy to tie your little shoe

laces!"

"Oh, _you_!" Julia said, in great content.

The rest followed, as Julia herself said, like "a house-maid's dream."

Jim went home to tell his own people that night, and the very next

morning Julia, surprised and smiling, took in at the door a trim little

package that proved to be a blue-and-white Copenhagen teacup, with a

card that bore only the words "Miss Barbara Lowe Toland." Julia twisted

it in her fingers with a curious little thrill at the heart. The

"nicest" people sent cups to engaged girls, the "nicest" people sent

their cards innocent of scribbled messages. She, Julia Page, was one of

the "nicest" people now, and these were the first tentacles of her new

estate reaching out to meet her.

Notes and flowers from the Tolands and the warm-hearted Tolands

themselves followed thick and fast, and in a day or two notes and

cups--cups--cups--were coming from other people as well. The Misses

Saunders, the Harvey Brocks, the George Chickerings, Mr. Peter Coleman,

Mr. Jerome Phillips, Mrs. Arnold Keith, and Miss Mary Peacock--all had

found time to go into Nathan Dohrmann's, or Gump's, or the White House,

and pick out a beautiful cup to send Miss Julia Page.

Six weeks--five weeks--three weeks to the wedding, sang Julia's heart;

the time ran away. She had dreaded having to meet Jim's friends, and had

dreaded some possible embarrassment from an unexpected move on the part

of her own family, but the days fled by, and the miracle of their

happiness only expanded and grew sweeter, like a great opening rose.

Their hours together, with so much to tell each other and so much to

discuss, no matter how short the parting had been, were hours of

exquisite delight. And as Julia's beauty and charm were praised on all

sides, Jim beamed like a proud boy. As for Julia, every day brought to

her notice something new to admire in this wonderful lover of hers: his

scowl as he fixed his engine, the smile that always met hers, the

instant soberness and attention with which he answered any question as

to his work from the older doctor--all this was delightful to her. And

when he took her to luncheon, his careless big fingers on the ready gold

pieces and his easy nod to the waiter were not lost upon Julia. She had

loved him for himself, but it was additionally endearing to learn that

other people loved him, too, to be stopped by elderly women who smiled

and praised him, to have young people affectionately interested in his

plans.

"You know you are nothing but a small boy, Jim," Julia said one day,

"just a sweet, happy kid! You were a spoiled and pitied little boy, with

your big eyes and your velvet suits and your patent leathers; you loved

every one--every one loved you; you had your allowance, you were born to

be a surgeon, and chance made your guardian a doctor--"

"I fell down on my exams," Jim submitted meekly. "And there was a fellow

at college who said I bored him!"

"Oh, dearest," Julia said, beginning to laugh at his rueful face, "and

are those the worst things that ever happened to you?"

"About," said Jim, enjoying the consolatory little kiss she gave him.

"And your youngness baffles me," pursued Julia thoughtfully. "You're ten

years older than I am, you've been able to do a thousand things I never

did, you're a rising young surgeon, and yet--and yet sometimes there's a

sort of level--level isn't the word!--a sort of _positive_ youth about you

that makes me feel eighty! It's just as if you had been born everything

you are, ready made! When you have to straighten a child's hip, you push

your hair back like a nice little kid, and say to yourself, 'Sure--I

can do that!' You seem as pleased and surprised as any one else when

everything comes out right!"

"Well, gosh! I never can put on any lugs!" said James, rumpling his hair

in penitential enjoyment.

"I have to learn things so _hard_," Julia mused, "they dig down right into

the very soul of me--"

"You're implying that I'm shallow," said the doctor sternly. "You think

I'm a pampered child of luxury, but I'm not! I just think I'm a pretty

ordinary fellow who came in for an extraordinary line of luck. I would

have made a pretty good bluff at supporting myself in any sort of life;

as it was, when I was a youngster, growing up, I used to say to myself,

'You think you're going to be rich, but half the poor men in the world

are born rich, anything may happen!' However, I enjoyed things just the

same, and I went to medical college just because Dad said every man

ought to be able to support himself. Then I got interested in the thing,

and old Fox was a king to me, and told me I ought to go in for surgery.

My own father was a surgeon, you know. Some hands are just naturally

better for it than others, and his were, and mine are. And at

twenty-five I came of age, and found that my money was pretty safely

fixed, and that Dad was kind of counting on my going in with him. So

there you are! Things just come my way; as I say, I'd have been

satisfied with less, but I've got in the habit of taking my luck for

granted."

"And some people, like--well, like my grandmother, for instance, just

get in the habit of bad luck," Julia said, with a sigh. "And some, like

myself," she added, brightening, "are born in the bad belt, and push

into the good! And we're the really lucky ones! I shall never put on a

fresh frock, or go downtown with you to the theatre, without a special

separate joy!"

Jim said, "You angel!" and as she jumped up--they had been sitting side

by side in the hall at The Alexander--he caught her around the waist,

and Julia set a little kiss on the top of his hair.

"But you do love me, Ju?" Jim asked.

"But I do indeed!" she answered. "Why do you always ask me in that

argumentative sort of way? But me no buts!"

"Ah, well, it's because I'm always afraid you'll stop!" Jim pleaded.

"And I do so want you to begin to love me as much as I do you!"

"You must have had thousands of girls!" Julia remarked, idly rumpling

his hair.

"I never was engaged before!" he assured her promptly. "Except to that

Delaware girl, as I told you, and after five years she threw me over for

a boy named Gregory Biddle, with several millions, but no chin, Julia,

and had the gall to ask me to the wedding!"

"Jim, and you went?"

"Sure I went!" Jim declared.

"Oh, Jim!" and Julia gave him another kiss, through a gale of laughter,

and ran off to change her gown and put on her hat.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and they were going to Sausalito. But first

they went downtown in the lazy soft spring afternoon, to buy gloves for

Julia and a scarf pin for Richie, who was to be Jim's best man, and to

go into the big railroad office to get tickets for the use of Dr. and

Mrs. James Studdiford three days later.

"Where are we going?" Julia asked idly, her eyes moving about the bright

pigeonholed office, and to the window, and the street beyond. Jim for

answer put his thumb upon the magic word that stared up at her from the

long ticket.

"New York!" she whispered; her radiant look flashed suddenly to him.

"Oh, Jim!" And as they went out he heard a little sigh of utter content

beside him. "It's too much!" said Julia. "To go to New York--with you!"

"Wherever you go, you go with me," he reminded her, with a glance that

brought the swift colour to her face.

Then they went down to the boat. It was the first hot afternoon of the

season; there was a general carrying of coats, and people were using the

deck seats; there was even some grumbling at the heat. But Sausalito was

at its loveliest, and Julia felt almost oppressed by the exquisite

promise of summer that came with the sudden sound of laughter and voices

in lanes that had long been silent, and with the odour of dying grass

and drooping buttercups beside the road. The Toland garden was full of

roses, bright in level sunshine, windows and doors were all wide open,

and the odours from bowls of flowers drifted about the house. Barbara,

lovely in white, came to meet them.

"Come in, you poor things, you must be roasted! Jim, you're as red as a

beet; go take a bath!" said Barbara. "And Julia, Aunt Sanna is here, and

she says that you're to lie down for not less than an hour. And there

are some packages for you, so come up and lie down on my bed, and we'll

open them!"

"Barbara, I am so happy I think my heart will burst!" said Julia, ten

minutes later, from Barbara's pillows.

"Well, you ought to be, my good woman! Jim Studdiford--when he's

sober--is as good a husband as you're likely to get!" said Barbara,

laughing. "Now, look, Julia, here's a jam pot from the Fowlers--Frederic

Fowlers--I call that decent of them! Janey, come in here and put this

jam pot down on Julia's list! And this heavy thing from the Penroses. I

hope to goodness it isn't more carvers!"

It was Barbara who said later to Julia, in a confidential undertone:

"You know you've got to write personal notes for every bit of this

stuff, Julia, right away? Lots of girls do it on their honeymoons."

"Well, I wanted to ask you, Barbara: how do I sign myself to these

people I've never seen: 'Yours truly'?"

"Oh, heavens, no! 'Sincerely yours' or 'Yours cordially' and make 'em

short. The shorter they are the smarter they are, remember that."

"And if I sign J. P. Studdiford, or Julia P. Studdiford--then oughtn't

'Mrs. J. N.' go in one corner?"

"Oh, _no_, you poor webfoot! No. Just write a good splashy 'Julia Page

Studdiford' all over the page; they'll know who you are fast enough!"

"Thanks," said Julia shyly.

"You're welcome," Barbara said, smiling. "Are you ready to go down?"

After dinner the young Tolands, augmented by several young men, and by

Julia and the doctor, all wandered out into the thick darkness,

rejoicing in the return of summer. Sausalito's lanes were sweet with

roses, lights shone out across the deep fresh green of gardens, and

lights moved on the gently moving waters of the bay. A ferryboat, a mass

of checkered brightness, plowed its way from Alcatraz--far off the city

lay like a many-stranded chain of glittering gems upon the water. Julia

and Doctor Studdiford let the others go on without them, and sat

together in the dim curve of the O'Connell seat, and the heartbreaking

beauty of the night wrapped them both in a happiness so deep as to touch

the borderland of pain.

"Was there ever such a night?" said little Julia. "Shall we ever be so

happy again?"

Jim could not see her clearly, but he saw her bright, soft eyes in the

gloom, the shimmer of her loosened hair, the little white-clad figure in

the seat's wide curve, and the crossed slim ankles. He put his arm about

her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Don't say that, darling!" said Jim. "This is great, of course. But it's

nothing to all the happy months and years that we'll belong to each

other. Nothing but death will ever come between you and me, Julie!"

"And I shouldn't be afraid of death," murmured Julia, staring up at the

stars. "Strange--strange--strange that we all must go that way some

day!" she mused.

"Well, please God, we'll do some living first," Jim said, with healthy

anticipation. "We'll go to New York, and gad about, and go to Washington

and Boston, and pick up things here and there for the house, do you see?

Then we'll come back here and go to a hotel, and find a house and fix it

up!"

"That'll be fun," said Julia.

"You bet your life it'll be fun! And then, my dear, we'll give some

corking dinners, and my beautiful wife will wear blue velvet, or white

lace, or peachy silk--"

"Or all three together," the prospective wife suggested, "with the flags

of all nations in my hair!"

"Then next year we'll visit old Gilchrist, at Monterey, and go up to

Tahoe," continued Jim, unruffled. "Or we could take some place in

Ross--"

"And then I will give a small and select party for one guest," said

Julia whimsically, "and board him, free, for fifteen or twenty years--"

"Julia, you little _duck_!" Jim bent his head over her in the starlight,

and felt her soft hair brush his face, and caught the glint of her

laughing eyes close to his own, and the vague delicious little perfume

of youth and beauty and radiant health that hung about her. "Do you know

that you are as cunning as a sassy kid?" he demanded. "Now, kiss me once

and for all, and no nonsense about it, for I can hear the others coming

back!"

Two days later they were married, very quietly, in the little Church of

Saint Charles Borromeo, where Julia's father and mother had been married

a quarter of a century ago. They had "taken advantage," as Julia said,

of her old grandfather's death, and announced that because the bride's

family was in mourning the ceremony would be a very quiet one. Even the

press was not notified; the Tolands filled two pews, and two more were

filled by Julia's mother, her grandmother, and cousins. Kennedy Scott

Marbury and her husband were there, and sturdy two-year-old Scott

Marbury, who was much interested in this extraordinary edifice and

impressive proceeding, but there were no other witnesses. Julia wore a

dark-blue gown, and a wide black hat whose lacy brim cast a most

becoming shadow over her lovely, serious face. She and Miss Toland drove

from the settlement house, and stopped to pick up Mrs. Page, who was

awed by Julia's dignity, and a little resentful of the way in which

others had usurped her place with her daughter. However, Emeline had

very wisely decided to make the best of the situation, and treated Miss

Toland with stiff politeness. Julia was in a smiling dream, out of which

she roused herself, at intervals, for only a gentle, absent-minded "Yes"

or "No."

"I tried to persuade her to be married at the Cathedral, by His Grace,"

said Miss Toland to Mrs. Page. "But she wanted it this way!"

"Well, I'm sure she feels you've done too much for her as it is,"

Emeline said mincingly. "Now she must turn around and return some of

it!"

To this Miss Toland made no answer except an outraged snort, and a

closer pressure of her fine, bony hand upon Julia's warm little fingers.

They presently reached the church, and Julia was in Barbara's hands.

"You look lovely, darling, and your hat is a dream!" said Barbara, who

looked very handsome herself, in her brown suit and flower-trimmed hat.

"We go upstairs, I think. Jim's here, nervous as a _fish_. You're

wonderful--as calm! I'd simply be in spasms. Ted was awful; you'd think

she had been married every day, but Robert--his collar was _wilted_!"

They had reached the upper church now, and Miss Toland and Mrs. Page

followed the girls down the long aisle to the altar. Julia saw her

little old grandmother, in an outrageous flowered bonnet, and Evelyn who

was a most successful modiste now, and Marguerite, looking flushed and

excited, with her fat, apple-faced young husband, and three lumpy little

children. Also her Aunt May was there, and some young people: Muriel,

who was what Evelyn had been at fifteen, and a toothless nine-year-old

Regina, in pink, and some boys. On the other side were the elegant

Tolands, the dear old doctor in an aisle seat, with his hands, holding

his eye-glasses and his handkerchief, fallen on either knee; Ted lovely

in blue, Constance and Jane with Ned and Mrs. Ned, frankly staring.

As Julia came down the aisle, with a sudden nervous jump of her heart,

she saw Jim and Richie, who was limping badly, but without his crutch,

come toward her. The old priest came down the altar steps at the same

time. She and Jim listened respectfully to a short address without

hearing a word of it, and found themselves saying the familiar words

without in the least sensing them. Julia battled through the prayer with

a vague idea that she was losing a valuable opportunity to invoke the

blessing of God, but unable to think of anything but the fact that the

bride usually walked out of church on the groom's arm, and that St.

Charles's aisle was long and rather dismal in the waning afternoon

light.

"Here, darling, in the vestry!" Jim was whispering, smiling his dear,

easy, reassuring smile as he guided her to the nearby door. And in a

second they were all about her, her first kiss on the wet cheek of Aunt

Sanna, the second to her mother--"Evelyn, you were a darling to come way

across the city, and Marguerite, you were a darling to bring those

precious angels"--and then the old doctor's kiss, and Richie's kiss, and

a pressure from his big bony fingers. Julia half knelt to embrace little

Scott Marbury. "He's beautiful, Kennedy; no wonder you're proud!" And

she tore her beautiful bunch of roses apart, that each girl might have a

few.

"I've got to get her to the train!" Jim protested presently, trying

patiently to disengage his wife's hands, eyes, and attention. "Julia!

Julia Studdiford!"

"Yes, I know!" Julia laughed, and was snatched away, half laughing and

half in tears, and hurried down to the side street, where a carriage was

waiting. And here there was one more delay: Chester Cox, a thin

shambling figure, came forward from a shadowy doorway, and rather

timidly held out his hand.

"I couldn't get away until jest now," said Chester. "But of course I

wish you luck, Julia!"

"Why, it's my uncle!" Julia said, cordially clasping his hand. "Mr.

Cox--Doctor Studdiford. I'm so glad you came, Chess!"

"Glad to know you, Mr. Cox," Jim said heartily.

"And I brought you a little present; it ain't much, but maybe you can

use it!" mumbled Chester, terribly embarrassed, and with a nervous laugh

handing Julia a rather large package somewhat flimsily wrapped and tied.

"Oh, thank you!" Julia said gratefully. And before she got in the

carriage she put her hand on Chester's arm, and raised her fresh,

exquisite little face for a kiss.

"Now, about this--" Doctor Studdiford began delicately, glancing at

Chester's gift, which Julia had given him to hold. "I wonder if it

wouldn't be wise to ask your uncle to send this to my mother's until we

get back, Ju. You see, dear--"

"Oh, no-no!" Julia said eagerly, leaning out of the carriage, and taking

the package again. She sent Chester a last bright smile, as Jim jumped

in and slammed the door, but it was an April face that she turned a

second later to her husband.

"They're all so good to me, and it just breaks my heart!" she said.

"At last--it's all over--and you belong to me!" exulted Jim. "I have

been longing and _longing_ for this, just to be alone with you, and have

you to myself. Are you tired, sweetheart?"

"No-o. Just a little--perhaps."

"But you do love me?"

"Oh, Jim--you idiot!" Julia slipped her hand into his, as he put one arm

about her, and rested against his shoulder. "When I think that I will

often ride in carriages," she mused, half smiling, "and that, besides

being my Jim, you are a rich man, it makes me feel as if I were

Cinderella!"

"You shall have your own carriage if you want it, Pussy!" he smiled.

"Oh, don't--don't give me anything more," begged Julia, "or a clock

somewhere will strike twelve, and I'll wake up in The Alexander, with

the Girls' Club rehearsing a play!"

When she had examined every inch of her Pullman drawing-room, and

commented upon one hundred of its surprising conveniences, and when her

smart little travelling case, the groom's gift, had been partly

unpacked, and when her blue eyes had refreshed themselves with a long

look at the rolling miles of lovely San Mateo hills, then young Mrs.

Studdiford looked at her Uncle Chester's wedding gift. She found a brush

and comb and mirror in pink celluloid, with roses painted on them,

locked with little brass hasps into a case lined with yellow silk.

"Look, Jim!" said Julia pitifully, not knowing whether to laugh or to

cry.

"Gosh!" said the doctor thoughtfully, looking over the coat he was

neatly arranging on a hanger. "I've often wondered who buys those

things!"

"I'll give it to the porter," Julia decided. "He may like it. Dear old

Chess!" And Jim grinned indulgently a few minutes later at the picture

of his beautiful little wife enslaving the old coloured porter, and

gravely discussing with him the advantages and disadvantages of his

work.

"You know, we could have our meals in here, Ju," Jim suggested. "Claude

here"--all porters were "Claude" to Jim--"would take care of us,

wouldn't you, Claude?"

"Dat I would!" said Claude with husky fervour. But Julia's face fell.

"Oh, Jim! But it would be such fun to go out to the dining-car!" she

pleaded.

Jim shouted. "All right, you baby!" he said. "You see, my wife's only a

little girl," he explained. "She's--are you eight or nine, Julia?"

"She sho' don't look more'n dat," Claude gallantly assured them, as he

departed.

"I'll be twenty-four on my next birthday," Julia said thoughtfully, a

few moments later.

"Well, at that, you may live three or four years more!" Jim consoled

her. "Do you know what time it is, Loveliness? It's twenty minutes past

six. We've been married exactly two hours and twenty minutes. How do you

like it?"

"I love it!" said Julia boldly. "Do I have to change my dress for

dinner?"

"You do not."

"But I ought to fix my hair, it's all mashed!" Julia did wonders to it

with one of the ivory-backed brushes that had come with the new

travelling case, fluffing the thick braids and tucking the loose golden

strands about her temples trimly into place. Then she rubbed her face

with a towel, and jumped up to straighten her belt, and run an

investigating finger about the embroidered "turn-down" collar that

finished her blue silk blouse. Finally she handed Jim her new

whisk-broom with a capable air, and presented straight little shoulders

to be brushed.

Jim turned her round and round, whisking and straightening, and

occasionally kissing the tip of a pink ear, or the straight white line

where her hair parted.

"Here, you can't keep that up all night!" Julia suddenly protested,

grabbing the brush. "I'll do you!" But Jim stopped the performance by

suddenly imprisoning girl and whiskbroom in his arms.

"Do you know I think we are going to have great fun!" said he. "You're

such a good little sport, Ju! No nerves and no nonsense about you! It's

such fun to do things with a person who isn't eternally fussing about

heat and cold, and whether she ought to wear her gloves into the

dining-car, and whether any one will guess that she's just married!"

"Oh, I have my nervous moments," Julia confessed, her eyes looking

honestly up into his. "It seems awfully strange and queer, rushing

farther and farther away from home, alone with you!" Her voice sank a

little; she put up her arms and locked them about his neck. "I have to

keep reminding myself that you are just you, Jim," she said bravely,

"who gave me my Browning, and took me to tea at the Pheasant--and then

it all seems right again! And then--such lots of nice people _have_ got

married, and gone away on honeymoons," she ended, argumentatively.

The laughter had gone from Jim's eyes; a look almost shy, almost

ashamed, had taken its place. He kept her as she was for a moment, then

gave her a serious kiss, and they went laughing through the rocking cars

to eat their first dinner together as man and wife. And Jim watched her

as she radiantly settled herself at table, and watched the frown of

childish gravity with which she studied her menu, with some new and

tender emotion stirring at his heart. Life had greater joys in it than

he had ever dreamed, and greater potentialities for sorrow, too. What

was bright in life was altogether more gloriously bright, and what was

dark seemed to touch him more closely; he felt the sorrow of age in the

trembling old man at the table across the aisle, the pathos of youth in

the two young travelling salesmen who chattered so self-confidently over

their meal.

Several weeks later young Mrs. Studdiford wrote to Barbara that New York

was "a captured dream." "I seem to belong to it," wrote Julia, "and it

seems to belong to me! I can't tell you how it _satisfies_ me; it is good

just to look down from my window at Fifth Avenue, every morning, and say

to myself, 'I'm still in New York!' For the first two weeks Jim and I

did everything alone, like two children: the new Hippodrome, and Coney

Island, and the Liberty Statue, and the Bronx Zoo. I _never_ had such a

good time! We went to the theatres, and the museums, and had breakfast

at the Casino, and _lived_ on top of the green 'busses! But now Jim has

let some of his old college friends know we are here, and we are

spinning like tops. One is an artist, and has the most fascinating

studio I ever saw, down on Washington Square, and another is an editor,

and gave us a tea in his rooms, overlooking Stuyvesant Square, and

Barbara, everybody there was a celebrity (except us) and all so sweet

and friendly--it was a hot spring day, and the trees in the square were

all such a fresh, bright green.

"They make a great fuss about the spring here, and you can hardly blame

them. The whole city turns itself inside out; people simply stream to

the parks, and the streets swarm with children. Some of the poorer women

go bareheaded or with shawls, even in the cars--did you ever see a

bareheaded woman in a car at home? But they are all much nearer the

peasant here. And after clean San Francisco, you wouldn't believe how

dirty this place is; all the smaller stores have shops in the basements,

and enough dirt and old rags and wet paper lying around to send Doctor

Blue into a convulsion! And they use pennies here, which seems so petty,

and paper dollars instead of silver, which I hate. And you say 'L' or

'sub' for the trains, and always 'surface cars' for the regular

cars--it's all so different and so interesting.

"Tell Richie Jim is going to assist the great Doctor Cassell in some

demonstrations of bone transplanting, at Bellevue, next week--oh, and

Barbara, did I write Aunt Sanna that we met the President! My dear, we

did. We were at the theatre with the Cassells, and saw him in a box, and

Doctor Cassell, the old darling, knows him, and went to the President's

box to ask if we might be brought in and presented, and, my dear, he got

up and came back with Doctor Cassell to our box, and was simply _sweet_,

and asked me if I wasn't from the South, and I nearly said, 'Yes, south

of Market Street,' but refrained in time. I had on the new apricot

crepe, and a black hat, and felt very Lily-like-a-princess, as Jane

says.

"But we're both getting homesick; it will seem good to see the old ferry

building again--and Sausalito, and all of you."

Early in July they did start homeward, but by so circuitous a route, and

with such prolonged stops at the famous hotels of Canada, that it was on

a September afternoon that they found themselves taking the Toland

household by storm. And Julia thought no experience in her travels so

sweet as this one: to be received into the heart of the family, and to

settle down to a review of the past five months. Richie was so brotherly

and kind, the girls so admiring of her furs and her diamonds, so full of

gay chatter, the old doctor so gallant and so affectionate! Mrs. Toland

chirped and twittered like the happy mother of a cageful of canaries;

and Julia, when they gathered about the fire after dinner, took a low

stool next to Miss Toland's chair and rested a shoulder, little-girl

fashion, against the older woman's knee.

"It was simply a tour of triumph for Ju," said Doctor Jim, packing his

pipe at the fireplace, with satisfied eyes on his wife. "She has friends

in the Ghetto and friends in the White House. We went down to the

Duponts', on Long Island, and Dupont said she--"

"Oh, please, Jim!" Julia said seriously.

"Dupont said she was one of the most interesting women he ever talked

to," Jim continued inexorably, "and John Mandrake wanted to paint her!"

"Tell me the news!" begged Julia. "How's The Alexander, Aunt Sanna--how

is Miss Striker turning out?"

"She's turned out," said Miss Toland grimly, her knitting needles

flashing steadily. "She came to me with her charts and rules, and oh,

she couldn't lie in bed after half-past six in the morning, and she

couldn't put off the sewing class, and she would like to ask me not to

eat my breakfast after nine o'clock! A girl who never cared what she

ate--sardines and tea!--and she wouldn't come in with me to dinner at

the Colonial because she was afraid they used coal tar and

formaldehyde--ha! Finally she asked me if I wouldn't please keep the

expenditures of the house and my own expenditures separate, and that was

the _end_!"

Jim's great laugh burst out, and Julia dimpled as she asked demurely:

"What on _earth_ did you say?"

"Say? I asked her if she knew I built The Alexander, and sent her

packing! And now"--Miss Toland rubbed her nose with the gesture Julia

knew so well--"now Miss Pierce is temporarily in charge, but she won't

stay there nights, so the clubs are given up," she observed

discontentedly.

"And what's the news from Sally?" Julia pursued.

"Just the loveliest in the world," Mrs. Toland said. "Keith is working

like a little Trojan; and Sally sent us a perfectly charming description

of the pension, and their walks--"

"Yes, and how she couldn't go out because she hadn't shoes," Jane added,

half in malice, half in fun. "_Don't_ look so shocked, Mother dear, you

know it's true. And the landlady cheating them out of a whole week's

board--"

"Gracious me!" said Mrs. Toland, in a low undertone full of annoyance.

"Did any one ever hear such nonsense! All that is past history now,

Janey," she reminded her young daughter, in her usual hopeful voice.

"Dad sent a cheque, like the dear, helpful daddy he is, and now

everything's lovely again!"

Julia did not ask for Ted until she saw Barbara alone for a moment the

next day. It was about ten o'clock on a matchless autumn morning, and

Julia, stepping from her bedroom's French window to the wide sunny porch

that ran the width of the house, saw Barbara some forty feet away

sitting just outside her own window, with a mass of hair spread to the

sun.

Julia joined her, dragged out a low, light chair from Barbara's room,

and settled herself for a gossip.

"Had breakfast?" Barbara smiled. "Jim downstairs?"

"Oh, hours ago!" Julia said to the first question, and to the second,

with the young wife's conscious blush, "Jim's dressing. He's the most

impossible person to get started in the morning!"

Barbara did not blush but she felt a little tug at her heart.

"Come," she said, "I thought Jim had no faults?"

"Well, he hasn't," Julia laughed. And then, a little confused by her own

fervent tone, she changed the subject, and asked about Ted.

"Why, Ted's happy, and rich, and simply adored by Bob Carleton," Barbara

summarized briefly, in a rather dry voice, "but Mother and Dad never

will get over it, and I suppose Ted herself doesn't like the idea of

that other wife--she lives at The Palace, and she's got a seven-year-old

girl! It's _done_, you know, Julie, and of course Ted's accepted

everywhere; she'll go to the Brownings' this year, and Mrs. Morton has

asked her to receive with her at some sort of dinner reception next

month, you'll meet her everywhere. But I do think it's terribly hard on

Mother and Dad!"

"But how _could_ she, that great big black creature?"

"Oh, she loves him fast enough! It was perfectly legal, of course. I

think Dad was at the wedding, and I think Richie was, but we girls never

knew anything until it was all over. Mother simply announced to us one

night that Ted was married, and that there was to be no open break, but

that she and Dad were just about _sick_! I never saw Mother give way so!

She said--and it's true--that if ever there was a mother who deserved

her children's confidence, and so on! All the newspapers blazed about

it--Ted's picture, Bob's picture--and, as I say, society welcomed her

with open arms. They've got a gorgeous suite at the St. Francis, and Ted

really looks stunning, and acts as if she'd done something very smart.

Con says that when she called, it reminded her of the second act of a

bad play. Ted came here with Bob, one Saturday afternoon, but Mother

hasn't been near her!"

"It seems too bad," Julia said thoughtfully, "when your father and

mother are always so sweet!"

"There must be some reason for it," Barbara observed, "I suppose we were

all spoiled as kids, with our dancing schools and our dresses from

Paris, and so now when we want things we oughtn't have, we just take

'em, from habit! I remember a governess once, a nice enough little

Danish woman, but Ned and I got together and decided we wouldn't stand

her, and Mother let her go. It seems funny now. Mother used to say that

never in her life did she allow her children to want anything she could

give them; but I'm not at all sure that's a very wise ideal!"

"Nor I," said Julia earnestly. Barbara had parted and brushed her dark

hair now, and as she gathered it back, the ruthless morning sunlight

showed lines on her pretty face and faint circles about her eyes.

"Because life gets in and gives you whacks," Barbara presently pursued,

"you're going to want a lot of things you can't have before you get

through, and it only makes it harder! Sally's paying for her jump in the

dark, poor old Ned is condemned to Yolo City and Eva for the rest of his

life, and somehow Ted's the saddest of all--so confident and noisy and

rich, boasting about Bob's affection, buying everything she sees--and so

_young_, somehow! As for me," said Barbara, "my only consolation is that

nearly every family has one of me, and some have more--a nice-looking,

well-liked, well-dressed young woman, who has cost her parents an

enormous amount of money, to get--nowhere!"

"Why, Lady Babbie!" Julie protested. "It's not like you to talk so!"

Barbara patted the hand that had been laid upon her knee, and laughed.

"And the moral of that is, Ju," she said, "if you have children, don't

spoil them! You've had horribly hard times, but they've given you some

sense. As for Jim, he's an exception. It's a miracle he wasn't

ruined--but he wasn't!" And she gathered up her towels and brushes to go

back into her room. "But I needn't tell you that, Julie!" said she.

"Ah, well, Jim!" Julia conceded, smiling.

Jim had no faults, of course. Yet the five-months wife sighed

unconsciously as she went back to her room. Jim had qualities that had

now and then caused a faint little cloud to drift across Julia's life,

but that sheer loyalty had kept her from defining, even in her inmost

heart. Now this talk with Barbara had suddenly seemed to make them

clear. Jim was--spoiled was too harsh a word. But Jim wanted his own

way, in little things and big--all the time. The world just now for Jim

held only Julia. What she wanted he wanted, and, at any cost, he would

have. If her gown was not right for the special occasion, she should

have a new gown; if the motor car was out of order, telephone for

another; if the steward assured them that there was not another table in

the dining-room--tip him, tip everybody, make a scene, but see that the

"Reserved" card comes off somebody's table, and that the Studdifords are

seated there in triumph.

At first Julia had only laughed at her lord's masterful progress. It was

very funny to her to see how quickly his money and his determination won

him his way. A great deal of money was wasted, of course, but then, this

was their honeymoon, and some day they would settle down and spend

rationally. Jim, like all rich men, had an absolute faith in the power

of gold. The hall maid must come in and hook Mrs. Studdiford's gown; oh,

and would she be here at, say, one o'clock, when Mrs. Studdiford came

home? She went off at twelve, eh? Well, what was it worth to her to stay

on to-night, until one? Good. And by the way, Mrs. Studdiford had torn a

lace gown and wanted it to-morrow; could the maid mend it and press it?

She didn't think so? Well, come, there must be somebody who would rush

it through for Mrs. Studdiford? Ah, that was fine, thank you very much,

that would do very nicely. Or perhaps it was a question of theatre

tickets, and Jim would stop his taxicab on Broadway at the theatre's

door. Here, boy! Boy, come here! Go up and ask him what his best for

to-night are? There's a line of people waiting, eh?--well, go up and ask

some fellow at the top of the line what it's worth to him to get two

seats for me. Oh, fine. Much obliged to you, sir. Thank you. And

here--boy!

"Do you think the entire world circles about your convenience, Jim?"

Julia asked amusedly one day, after some such episode. "Sure," he

answered, grinning.

"Jim, you don't think you can go through life walking over people this

way?"

"Why not, my good lady?"

"Well," said Julia gravely, "some day you may find you want something

you _can't_ buy!"

"There ain't no such animal," Jim assured her cheerfully.

Only a trifling cloud, after all, Julia assured herself hardily. But

there was a constant little sensation of uneasiness in her heart. She

tried to convince herself that the sweetness of his nature had not been

undermined by this ability to indulge himself however fast his fancies

shifted; she reasoned that because so many good things were his, he need

not necessarily hold them in light esteem. Yet the thought persisted

that he knew neither his own mind nor his own heart; there had been no

discipline there, no hard-won battles--there were no reserves.

"I call that simply borrowing trouble!" said Kennedy Scott Marbury

healthily, one day when she and the tiny Scott were lunching with Julia

at the hotel. Kennedy was close to her second confinement, and the

ladies had lunched in Julia's handsome sitting-room. "Lord, Julie dear!

It seems sometimes as if you have to have _something_ in this world,"

Kennedy went on cheerfully; "either actual trouble or mental worries!

Anthony and I were talking finances half last night: we decided that we

can't move to a larger house, just now, and so on--and we both said _what_

would it be like to be free from money worries for ten minutes--"

"But, Ken, don't you see how necessary you are to each other!" said

Julia, kneeling before the chair in which her fat godson was seated, and

displaying a number of gold chains and bracelets for his amusement. "You

have to take a turn at everything--cooking and sewing and caring for old

Sweetum here--Anthony couldn't get on without you!"

"And I suppose you think Doctor Studdiford could find twenty wives as

pretty and clever and charming as you are, Ju?"

"Fifty!" Julia answered.

"Well, now, that just shows what a little idiot you are!" Mrs. Marbury

scolded. "Not but what most women feel that way sooner or later," she

added, less severely. "I remember that phase very well, myself! But the

thing for you to do, Julie, is to remember that you're exactly the same

woman he fell in love with, d'you see? Just mind your own affairs, and

be happy and busy, and try not to fancy things!"

"What a sensible old thing you are, Ken!" said Julia gratefully. And as

Kennedy came over to stand near her, Julia gave her a little rub with

her head, like an affectionate pony. "I think it's partly this hotel

that's demoralizing me," Julia went on, a little shamed. "I feel so

useless--getting up, eating, dressing, idling about, and going to bed

again. Jim has his work, and I'll be glad when I have mine again!"