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