n her. Her father had caught many such a look upon
her face. She had resolved to live without him, but accomplishment is
not so easy. Besides, it was not as if she never saw him. San Francisco
is not so large a city but that by the turning of a corner you may not
come across a friend. Ruth grew to study the sounds the different kinds
of vehicles made; and the rolling wheels of a doctor's carriage behind
her would set her pulses fluttering in fright.

She was walking one day along Sutter Street toward Gough from Octavia.
The street takes a sudden down-grade midway in the block. She was
approaching this declension just before the Boys' High School when a
carriage drove quickly up the hill toward her. The horses gave a bound
as if the reins had been jerked; there was the momentary flash of a
man's stern, white face as he raised his hat; and Ruth was walking down
the hill, trembling and pale. It was the first time; and for one minute
her heart seemed to stop beating and then rushed wildly on. Whether she
had bowed or made any sign of recognition, she did not know. It did
not matter, though; if he thought her cold or strange or anything, what
difference could it possibly make? For her there would be left forever
this dead emptiness. These casual meetings were inevitable; and she
would come home after them worn-out and heavy-eyed. "A slight headache"
was a recurrent excuse with her.

They had common friends, and it would not have been surprising had she
met him at the different affairs to which she went, always through her
mother's desire. But the dread of coming upon him slowly departed as
the months rolled by and with them all token of him. Time and again she
would hear allusions to him. "Dr. Kemp has developed into a misogynist,"
pouted Dorothy Gwynne. "He was one of the few decided eligibles on the
horizon, but it requires the magnet of illness to draw him now. I really
must look up the symptoms of a possible ache; the toilet and expression
of an invalid are very becoming, you know."

"Dr. Kemp made a splendid donation to our kindergarten to-day. I have
not seen him since we were in the country, and he thought me looking
very well. He inquired after the family, and I told him we had a
residence, at which he smiled." This from Mrs. Levice. Ruth would have
given much to have been able to ask after him with self-possession, but
the muscles of her throat seemed to swell and choke her while silent.
She went now and then to s