e sadly. "No more of this!" she thought. And then longing for her
husband came with a sick rush. "Oh, Jimmy!" she whispered, with filling
eyes. "If it was only you and me, my darling! If we were going _anywhere_
together, to the poorest neighbourhood and the meanest cabin in the
world--how blessed I would be! How we could work and laugh and plan
together, for Anna and the others!" But presently the tears dried on her
cheeks. "Never mind, it will keep me from thinking too hard," she
thought. "I shall be needed, I shall be busy, and nothing else matters
much!"

She got up, and went to one of the great windows that looked down across
the city. The rain was over, dark masses of cloud were breaking and
stirring overhead; through their rifts she caught the silver glimmer of
the troubled moon. Across the shadowy band that was the bay a ferryboat,
pricked with hundreds of tiny lights, was moving toward the glittering
chain of Oakland. There was a light on Alcatraz, and other nearer lights
scattered through the dark masts and dim hulks of the vessels in the
harbour below her.

"It will be bright to-morrow!" Julia thought, resting her forehead
against the glass. She was weary and spent; a measureless exhaustion
seemed to enfold her. Yet under it all there glowed some new spark of
warm reassurance and certainty. "Thank God, I see my way clear at last!"
she said softly.

CHAPTER VII

The kitchen in the old Cox house formed a sort of one-story annex behind
the building, and had windows on three sides, so that on a certain
exquisite morning in March, four years later, sunlight flooded the two
eastern windows and fell in clear squares of brightness on the checkered
blue-and-white linoleum on the floor. There were thin muslin sash
curtains at these windows, and white shades had been drawn down to meet
them. Some trailing English ivy made a delicate tracery in dark green
beside one window, and two or three potted begonias on the sill lifted
transparent trembling blooms to the sun. The rest of the large room was
in keeping with this cheerful bit of detail. There was a shining gas
stove beside the shining coal range, and a picturesque bit of colour in
the blue kettles and copper casseroles that stood in a row on the
shelves above the range. A pine cupboard had been painted white, and
held orderly rows of blue plates and cups; there were several
white-painted chairs, and two tables. One of these was pushed against
the west wall,