nens and thin embroidered
pongees, with a filmy parasol shading her bright hair, seemed more
wonderful than ever before, and lovely Hawaii was a setting for one of
their happiest times together.

On the boat, coming home, however, there occurred a little incident that
darkened Julia's sky for a long time to come. On the very day of
starting she and Jim, with some other returning San Franciscans, were
standing, a laughing group on the deck, when a dark, handsome young
woman came forward from a nearby cabin doorway, and held out her hand.

"Do you remember me, Julia?" said she, smiling.

Julia, whose white frock was draped with a dozen ropes of brilliant
flowers, and who looked like a little May Queen in her radiant bloom,
looked at the newcomer for a few moments, and then said, with a clearing
face:

"Hannah! Of course I know you. Mrs. Palmer, may I present Doctor
Studdiford?"

Jim smilingly shook hands, and as the rest of the group melted away,
Mrs. Palmer explained that her husband's business was in Manila, but she
was bringing up her two little children to visit her parents in Oakland.

"She's extremely pretty," Jim said, when he and Julia were alone in
their luxurious stateroom. "Who is she?"

"I don't know why I supposed you knew that she is one of Mark's
sisters," Julia said, colouring. "I saw something of them all,
after--afterward, you know."

"Oh!" Jim's face, which he chanced to be washing, also grew red; he
scowled as he plunged it again into the towel. Julia proceeded with her
own lunch toilet in silence, humming a little now and then, but the
brightness was gone from the day for her; the swift-flying green water
outside the window had turned to lead, the immaculate little apartment
was bleak and bare. Jim did not speak as they went down to lunch, nor
was he himself when they met again, after a game of auction, at dinner.
In fact, this marked Julia's first acquaintance with a new side of his
character.

For Jim's sunny nature was balanced by an occasional mood so dark as to
make him a different man while it lasted. Barbara had once lightly
hinted this to Julia--"Jim was glooming terribly, and did nothing but
snarl"--and Miss Toland had confirmed the hint when she asked him, at
Christmas dinner, when he and Julia had been eight months man and wife:
"Well, Jim, never a blue devil once, eh?"

"Never a one. Aunt Sanna!" Jim had responded gayly.

"What should he have blue devils about?" Julia had dem