"Ju--it's too dreadful to hurt you this way!" Barbara said. "But that's
not all. The only reason I told you all this was because Jim may be
coming home; he may come on in October, and want to see you. Francis
thinks--But it seems too cruel to let him come on and take you by
surprise!"

"Oh, my God!" said Julia, in a low, tense tone, "what utter wreck I have
made of my life! Why is it," she said, springing up and beginning to
walk again, "why is it that I am so helpless, why must I sit still and
let the soul be torn out of my body! My child must grow up
fatherless--under a cloud--"

"Julie! Julie!" Barbara begged, wild with anxiety, as she kept pace
beside Julia on the dry brown grass. "Dearest, don't, or you'll make me
feel terribly for having told you!"

"Oh, no--no," Julia said, suddenly calm and weary. "You had to tell me!"
The two walked slowly on for a moment, in silence, then Julia added
passionately: "Oh, what a wretched, miserable business! Oh, Bab, why do
I simply have to go from one agony to another? I'm so tired of being
unhappy; I'm so wretched!" Her voice fell, the fire went out of her
tone. "I'm tired," she said, in a voice that seemed to Barbara curiously
in keeping with the flat, toneless summer twilight, the dull brown
hills, the darkening sky, the dry slippery grass over which a cool swift
breeze was beginning to wander. "If Anna and I could only run away from
it all!" said Julia sombrely.

"Julie, just one thing." Barbara hesitated. "Shall you see Jim?"

Julia paused, and their eyes met in the gloom. Barbara thought she had
never seen anything more marked than the tragic intensity of the other
woman's face. Julia might have been a young priestess, the problems of
the world on her shoulders.

"That I can't say, Bab," she answered thoughtfully. And a moment later
they reached the cabin, and were welcomed by Richie and the children.

CHAPTER VIII

It was in late September that the mail brought her a note from Jim.
Julia's heart felt a second of paralyzing cramp as she put her hand on
the letter; she read its dozen lines in a haze of dancing light; the
letters seemed to swim together.

Jim wrote that he was at home for a few days, and was most anxious to
see her, and to have a talk that would be of advantage to them both. For
obvious reasons, her home was not suitable; would she suggest a time and
place? He was always hers faithfully, James Studdiford.

Anna, glowing and delicious, wa