us to come again some day," Julia said. "Not too soon, but as soon
as you can. And don't let us ever feel that we've done anything that
will hurt or distress you, Richie."

"You and Anna are both angels," Richard answered. "Only tell me that you
forgive me, Julie; that things after this will be just as they were
before?"

Julia smiled, and bit a thoughtful under lip.

"This is March," she said. "We'll come and see you, let me see--in July,
and everything shall be just as it was before! Perhaps I am really
getting old," she said to herself, half laughing and half sad, when she
was in her own kitchen an hour or two later. "But, while home is not
exciting, somehow I'd rather be here than philandering on the mountain
in the moonlight with Richie!"

"What you smiling about, Julie?" her mother asked, from the peaceful
east side of the kitchen where her chair frequently stood while Julia
and Mrs. Torney were busy in that cheerful apartment.

"Just thinking it was nice to be home again, Mama!"

"I don't hold much with visiting, myself," said Mrs. Torney, who was
becoming something of a philosopher as she went into old age. "But you
can't get that through a young one's skull!" she added, trimming the
dangling pastry from a pie with masterly strokes of her knife. "Either
you have such a good time that your own home is spoiled for you, for
dear knows how long, or else you set around wondering why on earth you
ever come. And then you've got to have the folks back to visit you, and
wear yourself all out talking like all possessed while you cook for 'em
and make their beds. I don't never feel clean when I've washed my face
away from home anyway, and I like my own bed under me. You couldn't get
me to visit anywheres now, if it was the Queen of Spain ast me!"

Julia laughed out merrily, and agreed with her aunt, glad to have left
the episode with Richie behind her. But it haunted her for many days,
nevertheless, rising like a disturbing mist between her and her calm
self-confidence, and shaking her contented conviction that the
renunciations necessary to her peace of mind had all been made. She
found fresh reason to gird herself in circumspection and silence, and
brooded, a little in discouragement, upon the incessantly recurring
problems of her life.

She went to visit the cabin on Tamalpais earlier even than she had
promised, however, for in June Barbara came home for a visit, bringing
two splendid little boys, with whom Ann