know that, Julie." He watched the cool little cheek nearest
him. "But wait until we're married, Julie, you'll love me then; I'll
_make_ you!"

But all his young fire could not touch her. He could only win an
occasional troubled glance.

"I want to stay here a long, long time, you know, Mark--if I can. I want
to read things and study things. I want to be let alone. It'll be _years_
before I want to marry!" Julia raised her anxious, harassed eyes to his.
"I don't really think of men or of marriage at all," said she.

"Well, that's all right, darling," Mark said, smiling down at her, a
little touched. "I'm going to be sent up to Sacramento for a while; I'll
not worry you. But see here, if I go back to the house with you again,
do I get a kiss?"

Julia gave him a grave smile, and let him follow her into the settlement
house. But Mark did not get his kiss, for Miss Toland was there, and a
group of eager club girls who had something to arrange for a meeting the
following night. Mark left the lady of his delight staidly discussing
the relative merits of lemonade and gingersnaps and two pounds of
"broken mixed" candy, as evening refreshments, and carried away a
troubled heart. He wrote Julia, at least twice a week, shyly
affectionate and honestly egotistical letters, but it was some months
before he saw her again.

Julia's visit to her grandparents, through which Mark had been able to
trace her, had taken place some days before, on a certain Wednesday
afternoon. Suddenly, after the daily three o'clock sewing class had had
its meeting in the big hall, the thought had come to her that she must
see her own people. It was a still autumn afternoon, a little chilly,
and Julia, setting forth, felt small relish for her errand.

Her grandmother's house presented a dingy, discouraging front. Julia
twisted the familiar old bell, and got the familiar old odours of
carbolic acid and boiling onions, superimposed upon a basis of thick,
heavy, stale air. But the hour she spent in the dirty kitchen was
nevertheless not an unpleasant one. Her grandmother was all alone, and
was too used to similar vagaries on the part of all her family to resent
Julia's disappearance and long silence.

"We had your postal," she admitted, in answer to her granddaughter's
embarrassed query. "You look thin, me dear; you've not got your old
bold, stylish look about you."

And she wrinkled her old face and studied Julia with blinking eyes. "The
girls was gla