else!"

On just this casual, kindly advice Jim really did go home, prepared to
be very dignified with Julia; and to make the separation definite and
final, if not legal, or to bring her back, however formally, as his
wife, exactly as he saw fit.

And then came the meeting in the Toland library, when in one stunning
flash he saw her as she was: beautiful, dignified, and charming, a woman
to whom all eyes turned naturally and admiringly, grave, sweet, and wise
in a world full of pretence and ignorance, selfishness and shallowness.

She spoke, and her voice went through him like a sword, a mist rose
before his eyes. He tried to remember that bitter resentment upon which
his pride had fed for more than four long years; he battled with a mad
desire to catch her in his arms, and to cry to her and to all the world,
"After all, you are still mine!"

He watched her, her beauty as fresh to him as if he had never seen it
before. Had those serious eyes, turned to Richie with such sisterly
concern, and so exquisitely blue in the soft lamplight, ever met his
with love and laughter brightening them? Had the kindly arms that went
so quickly about his mother, in her trouble, ever answered the pressure
of his own? She could look at him dispassionately, entirely forgetful of
herself in the presence of death, but in the very sickroom his eyes
could not leave her little kneeling figure; whenever she spoke, he felt
his heart contract with a spasm of pain. It seemed to him that if he
could kneel before her, and feel the light pressure of her linked hands
about his neck, and have her lay that soft, sweet cheek of hers against
his, in heavenly token of forgiveness, he would be ready to die of joy.

How far Julia was from this mood he was soon to learn, and no phase of
their courtship eight years ago had roused in him such agonies of
jealousy and longing as beset him now, when Julia, quiet of pulse and
level eyed, convinced him that she could very contentedly exist without
him.

All these things went confusedly through Jim's mind, as he sat at his
club window, staring blankly down at the dreary summer twilight in the
street. The club was a temporary wooden building, roomy and comfortable
enough, but facing on all four sides the devastation of the great
earthquake. Here and there a small brick building stood in the ashy
waste, and on the top of Nob Hill the outline of the big Fairmont Hotel
rose boldly against the gloom. But, for the most