vening
gown behind her, would fly for studs, and pull the boot-trees from Jim's
shining pumps.

In September they went to Burlingame for the polo tournament, and here,
on an unseasonably hot day, Jim had an ugly little touch of the sun, and
for two or three days was very ill. They were terrible days to Julia.
Richie came to her at once, and they took possession of the house of a
friend, where Jim had chanced to be carried, and sent to San Rafael for
Julia's servants; but two splendid nurses kept her out of the sickroom,
and the baby was in San Rafael, so that Julia wandered about utterly at
a loss to occupy heart or hands.

On the third day the fever dropped, and Julia crept in to laugh and cry
over her big boy. Jim got well very quickly, and just a week from the
day of the accident he and Julia went home to the enchanting Anna, and
began to plan for a speedy removal to the Pacific Avenue house, so that
the little episode was apparently quite forgotten by the time they were
back in the city and the season opened.

But looking back, months later, Julia knew that she could date a
definite change in their lives from that time. Whether his slight
sunstroke had really given Jim's mind a little twist, or whether the
shock left him unable to throw off oppressing thoughts with his old
buoyancy, his wife did not know. But she knew that a certain sullen,
unresponsive mood possessed him. He brooded, he looked upon her with a
heavy eye, he sighed deeply when she drew his attention to the lovely
little Anna.

Julia knew by this time that marriage was not all happiness, all
irresponsible joy. She had often wondered why the women she knew did not
settle themselves seriously to a study of its phases, when the cloudless
days inevitably gave place to something incomprehensible and disturbing.
Even lovers like Kennedy and her husband had their times of being wholly
out of sympathy with each other, she knew, and she and Jim were not
angels; they must only try to be patient and forbearing until the dark
hour went by.

With a sense of unbearable weight at her heart she resigned herself to
the hard task of endurance. Sometimes with a bitter rush would come the
memory of how they had loved each other, and then Julia surrendered
herself to long paroxysms of tears; it was so hard, so bewildering, to
have Jim cold and quiet, to live in this painful alternation of hope and
fear. But she never let Jim see her tears, and told herself bravely t