might have brought Jim back to her, she would not have
raised that hand; not now, not until some rule that would adjust their
relationship was found. Her marriage seemed a dream, their love as
strange and remote as their separation.

Only Anna seemed real, and as much a sorrow as a joy just now. To what
heritage would the beautiful, mysterious little personality unfold? What
of the swiftly coming time when she would ask questions?

Julia turned to the little white-capped, white-coated figure. Anna had
chewed a bonnet string to damp limpness; now she was saying "Da!" in an
alluring and provocative tone to a lady praying nearby. The lady
regarded her with an unmoved eye, however, and Julia gathered her small
daughter in her arms and went down to the motor car.

At her mother's door she dismissed Chadwick for an hour or two of warmth
and shelter, and, sighing, went into the unaired dark hallway that
smelled to-day of wet woollens and of a smoky kerosene wick, and
retained as well its old faint odour of carbolic acid.

CHAPTER VI

Julia found the family as usual in the kitchen, and the kitchen as usual
dirty and close. Her old grandmother, a little bent figure in a loose
calico wrapper, was rocking in a chair by the stove. Julia's mother was
helpless in a great wheeled chair, with blankets and pillows carelessly
disposed about her, and her eager eyes bright in a face chiselled by
pain. Sitting at the table was a heavy, sad-faced woman, with several
front teeth missing, in whom Julia recognized her aunt, Mrs. Torney. A
girl of thirteen, with her somewhat colourless hair in untidy braids,
and a flannel bandage high about her throat, came downstairs at the
sound of Julia's entrance. This was Regina Torney.

"Well, it's Julia!" Mrs. Cox said. "And the darlin' sweetie--you
oughtn't to bring her out such weather, Julie! How's them little hands?"

She took the baby, and Julia kissed her mother and aunt, expecting to
draw from the former the usual long complaints when she said:

"How are you, dear? How does the chair go?"

But Mrs. Page surprised her by some new quality in her look and tone,
something poignantly touching and admirable. She was a thin little
shadow of her former self now, the skin drawn tight and shining over her
cheek bones, her almost useless hands resting on a pillow in her lap.
She wore a soiled dark wrapper, her dark hair, still without a touch of
gray, was in disorder, and her blankets and pillo