t you need is that tonic I prescribed. Remember that. And don't
pamper your appetite when it comes back. Eat strong, nourishing food,
and beefsteak, plenty of beefsteak. And don't cook it to a cinder. Good
day."

At times the silent cottage became unendurable, and Saxon would throw
a shawl about her head and walk out the Oakland Mole, or cross the
railroad yards and the marshes to Sandy Beach where Billy had said he
used to swim. Also, by going out the Transit slip, by climbing down the
piles on a precarious ladder of iron spikes, and by crossing a boom of
logs, she won access to the Rock Wall that extended far out into the bay
and that served as a barrier between the mudflats and the tide-scoured
channel of Oakland Estuary. Here the fresh sea breezes blew and Oakland
sank down to a smudge of smoke behind her, while across the bay she
could see the smudge that represented San Francisco. Ocean steamships
passed up and down the estuary, and lofty-masted ships, towed by
red-stacked tugs.

She gazed at the sailors on the ships, wondered on what far voyages and
to what far lands they went, wondered what freedoms were theirs. Or
were they girt in by as remorseless and cruel a world as the dwellers
in Oakland were? Were they as unfair, as unjust, as brutal, in their
dealings with their fellows as were the city dwellers? It did not
seem so, and sometimes she wished herself on board, out-bound, going
anywhere, she cared not where, so long as it was away from the world to
which she had given her best and which had trampled her in return.

She did not know always when she left the house, nor where her feet took
her. Once, she came to herself in a strange part of Oakland. The street
was wide and lined with rows of shade trees. Velvet lawns, broken only
by cement sidewalks, ran down to the gutters. The houses stood apart and
were large. In her vocabulary they were mansions. What had shocked her
to consciousness of herself was a young man in the driver's seat of a
touring car standing at the curb. He was looking at her curiously and
she recognized him as Roy Blanchard, whom, in front of the Forum, Billy
had threatened to whip. Beside the car, bareheaded, stood another young
man. He, too, she remembered. He it was, at the Sunday picnic where she
first met Billy, who had thrust his cane between the legs of the flying
foot-racer and precipitated the free-for-all fight. Like Blanchard, he
was looking at her curiously, and she became aw