ntest
idea. Once or twice women called, just curious of course, Mrs. Hunter
and Miss Saunders--but that soon stopped. I was better hidden on
Shotwell Street than I would have been in the heart of India! Miss
Saunders came in, and met Mama and Grandma; we were having the kitchen
calcimined, the place was pretty well upset, I remember. Dear me, how
little what they thought or did or said seemed to count, when my whole
life was one blazing, agonizing cry for Jim!"

"That got better?" Richard asked huskily, after a pause.

"Rich, I think the past two, well, three years, have been the happiest
in my life," Julia said soberly. "My feet have been on solid ground. I
not only seem to understand my life better as it is, but all the past
seems clearer, too. I thought Jim was like myself, Richie, but he
wasn't; his whole viewpoint was different; perhaps that's why we loved
each other so!"

"And suppose he comes back?" Richard asked.

Julia frowned thoughtfully.

"Oh, Richie, how do I know! It's all so mixed up. Everybody, even Aunt
Sanna, thinks that he will! Everybody thinks I am a patient,
much-enduring wife, waiting for the end of an inexplicable situation.
Aunt Sanna thinks it's temporary aberration. Your father thinks there's
another woman in it. Your mother confided to Aunt Sanna that it is her
opinion that Bab refused Jim, and Jim married from pique."

"That sounds like Mother!" Richie said with a dry laugh.

"Doesn't it?" Julia smiled. "But the truth is," she added, "Jim has no
preconcerted plan. He's made a very close man friend or two in Germany,
belongs to a doctors' club. I know him so well! He lets the days, and
the weeks, and the years go by, forgetting me and everything that
concerns me as much as he can, and getting into a slow, dull rage
whenever he remembers that fate hit him, of all men in the world, such a
blow!"

"And the baby?" said Richie. "Don't you suppose she counts? Oh, Lord, to
have a kid of one's own," he added slowly, with the half-smiling sigh
Julia knew so well.

"I imagine she would count if he had seen her lately," Julia suggested.
"But she was such a tiny scrap! And Jim, as men go, isn't a lover of
children."

"You wouldn't divorce him, Julie?" Richard asked, after a silence.

"Oh, never!" she answered quickly. "No, I won't do that." She smiled.
"Yet, Rich," she added presently, "it's a strange thing to me that
really my one dread is that he will come back. I _think_ he means nothing