leaned his cheek against
hers, speaking in a low voice.

"No--no," she murmured, smiling; "never--ah, if I hadn't come--no,
Van--please--" And then with a long breath she abandoned herself.

About midnight he left her at the door of her house on Golden Gate
Avenue. On their way home Ida had grown more serious than he had ever
known her to be. Now she began to cry softly to herself. "Oh, Van," she
said, putting her head down upon his shoulder, "oh, I am so _sorry_. You
don't think any less of me, do you? Oh, Van, you must be true to me
now!"

Chapter Six

Everybody in San Francisco knew of the Ravises and always made it a
point to speak of them as one of the best families of the city. They
were not new and they were not particularly rich. They had lived in the
same house on California Street for nearly twenty years and had always
been comfortably well off. As things go in San Francisco, they were
old-fashioned. They had family traditions and usages and time-worn
customs. Their library had been in process of collection for the past
half century and the pictures on the walls were oil paintings of steel
engravings and genuine old-fashioned chromos, beyond price to-day.

Their furniture and ornaments were of the preceding generation, solid,
conservative. They were not chosen with reference to any one style, nor
all bought at the same time. Each separate piece had an individuality of
its own. The Ravises kept their old things, long after the fashion had
gone out, preferring them to the smarter "art" objects on account of
their associations.

There were six in the family, Mr. and Mrs. Ravis, Turner, and her older
brother, Stanley, Yale '88, a very serious young gentleman of
twenty-seven, continually professing an interest in economics and
finance. Besides these were the two children, Howard, nine years old,
and his sister, aged fourteen, who had been christened Virginia.

They were a home-loving race. Mr. Ravis, senior, belonged to the
Bohemian Club, but was seldom seen there. Stanley was absorbed in his
law business, and Turner went out but little. They much preferred each
other's society to that of three fourths of their acquaintances, most of
their friends being "friends of the family," who came to dinner three or
four times a year.

It was a custom of theirs to spend the evenings in the big dining-room
at the back of the house, after the table had been cleared away, Mr.
Ravis and Stanley reading the paper