an't seem to understand that because
she wants to be free she _isn't_ free! Talks about 'if I marry again,' and
so on. Of course Carleton's marrying again has made her wild."

"But, good heavens, Richie, Ted ought to have some _sense_!"

"Well, she hasn't. She stretched a point to marry him, d'you see?
Carleton had been baptized as a child, and his first wife hadn't, and
they were married by a Justice of the Peace, or something of that sort.
So Ted claimed that in the eyes of the Church he hadn't been married at
all, and she married him. Then----"

"But if she loved him, Richie--and Ted was so young!"

"All true, of course, only if you're going to push things to the point
of taking advantage of a quibble like that, your chance of happiness is
more or less slim! So three years ago Carleton proved that he hadn't
cared a whoop about the legal or religious aspects of the case, and left
Ted. And now Ted can't see herself, at twenty-seven, tied to another
woman's husband!"

"She has her boy," Julia said severely.

"Yep, but that doesn't seem to count."

"Well, it's funny, Richie, take us all in all, what a mess we've made of
marrying!" Julia mused. "Ned gives me the impression, every time I see
him, of being a sulky martyr in his own home; Sally's managed to drag
happiness out of a most hopeless situation; Ted, of course, will never
be happy again, like Jim and me; and Connie, although she made an
exemplary marriage, either has to leave her husband or bring her baby up
in Manila, which she says positively isn't safe! Bab is the only shining
success among us all!"

"Oh, I don't know," Richie said, stopping the horse, and flinging the
reins to the Portuguese who came out of a small barn to meet them. "Here
we are, Ju--take your time! I've always considered you rather
successful," he resumed.

"Oh, me!" Julia laughed as she jumped down like a girl. She followed
Anna across a little hollow filled with buttercups and long grasses, and
they mounted the little rise to Richie's tiny cabin. The little house
had Mount Tamalpais for a background, and its wide unroofed porch faced
across the valley, and commanded a view of the wooded ridges, and the
marshes, and the distant bay, and of San Francisco twelve miles away.
Scrub oaks and bay trees grew in a tangle all about it, even a few young
redwoods and an occasional bronze and white madrona tree. Wild roses and
field flowers crowded against its very walls, and under the trees t