beast, and it all came
back as natural as breathing. Please don't worry, Marian. Nothing shall
happen, I promise you.

It won't be necessary to tell you that Katy is her darling old self,
loyal and steadfast as the sun, and quite as necessary and as comforting
to me. And I have a couple of other interests in life that are going
to--I won't say make up for your absence, because nothing could do
that--but they are going to give me something interesting to think
about, something agreeable to work at, while you are gone. But, oh,
Marian, do hurry. Work all day and part of the night. Be Saturday's
child yourself if you must, just so you get home quick, and where your
white head makes a beacon light for the truest, lovingest pal you will
ever have,

LINDA.

Linda laid down the pen, slid down in her chair, and looked from the
window across the valley, and she wondered if in her view lay the
location that had been purchased by Peter Morrison. She glanced back at
her letter and sat looking at the closing lines and the signature.

"Much good that will do her," she commented. "When a woman loves a man
and loves him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and when she
loses him, not because she has done a single unworthy thing herself,
but because he is so rubber spined that he will let another woman
successfully intrigue him, a lot of comfort she is going to get from the
love of a schoolgirl!"

Linda's eyes strayed to the window again, and traveled down to the city
and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco, and out of the thousands
of homes there they pictured a small, neat room, full of Marian's
belongings, and Marian herself bending over a worktable, absorbed in the
final draft of her precious plans. Linda could see Marian as plainly as
she ever had seen her, but she let her imagination run, and she fancied
that when Marian was among strangers and where no one knew of John
Gilman's defection, that hers might be a very heavy heart, that hers
might be a very sad face. Then she went to planning. She had been
desolate, heart hungry, and isolated herself. First she had endured,
then she had fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her hill.
She had found work she was eager to do. She could put the best of her
brain, the skill of her fingers, the creative impulse of her heart, into
it.

She was almost sure that she had found a friend. She had a feeling that
when