"What a dirty rotter he must be, when he seemed such a prince!" was William's summary. "Pretty tough on you, Sue," he added, with fraternal kindly contempt, "Of course you would take him seriously, and believe every word! A man like that knows just how to go about it,--and Lord, you came pretty near getting in deep!"

Susan's face burned and she bit her lip in the darkness. It was unbearable that Billy should think Bocqueraz less in earnest than she had been, should imagine her so easily won! She wished heartily that she had not mentioned the affair.

"He probably does that everywhere he goes," said Billy, thoughtfully.

"You had a pretty narrow escape, Sue, and I'll bet he thought he got out of it pretty well, too! After the thing had once started, he probably began to realize that you are a lot more decent than most, and you may bet he felt pretty rotten about it---"

"Do you mean to say that he DIDN'T mean to---" began Susan hotly, stung even beyond anger by outraged pride. But, as the enormity of her question smote her suddenly, she stopped short, with a sensation almost of nausea.

"Marry you?" Billy finished it for her. "I don't know--probably he would. Lord, Lord, what a blackguard! What a skunk!" And Billy got up with a short breath, as if he were suffocating, walked away from her, and began to walk up and down across the broad dark deck.

Susan felt bitter remorse and shame sweep her like a flame as he left her. She felt, sitting there alone in the darkness, as if she would die of the bitterness of knowing herself at last. In beginning her confidence, she had been warmed by the thought of the amazing and romantic quality of her news, she had thought that Bocqueraz's admiration would seem a great thing in Billy's eyes. Now she felt sick and cold and ashamed, the glamour fell, once and for all, from what she had done and, as one hideous memory after another roared in her ears, Susan felt as if her thoughts would drive her mad.

Billy came suddenly back to his seat beside her, and laid his hand over hers. She knew that he was trying to comfort her.

"Never you mind, Sue," he said, "it's not your fault that there are men rotten enough to take advantage of a girl like you. You're easy, Susan, you're too darned easy, you poor kid. But thank G.o.d, you got out in time. It would have killed your aunt," said Billy, with a little shudder, "and I would never have forgiven myself. You're like my own sister, Sue, and I never saw it coming! I thought you were wise to dope like that---"

"Wise to dope like that!" Susan could have risen up and slapped him, in the darkness. She could have burst into frantic tears; she would gladly have felt the boat sinking--sinking to hide her shame and his contempt for her under the friendly, quiet water.

For long years the memory of that trip home from Sausalito, the boat, the warm and dusty ferry-place, the jerking cable-car, the grimy, wilted street, remained vivid and terrible in her memory.

She found herself in her room, talking to the aroused Mary Lou. She found herself in bed, her heart beating fast, her eyes wide and bright.

Susan meant to stop thinking of what could not be helped, and get to sleep at once.

The hours went by, still she lay wakeful and sick at heart. She turned and tossed, sighed, buried her face in her pillow, turned and tossed again. Shame shook her, worried her in dreams, agonized her when she was awake. Susan felt as if she would lose her mind in the endless hours of this terrible night.

There was a little hint of dawn in the sky when she crept wearily over Mary Lou's slumbering form.

"Ha! What is it?" asked Mary Lou.

"It's early--I'm going out--my head aches!" Susan said. Mary Lou sank back gratefully, and Susan dressed in the dim light. She crept downstairs, and went noiselessly out into the chilly street.

Her head ached, and her skin felt dry and hot. She took an early car for North Beach, sat mute and chilled on the dummy until she reached the terminal, and walked blindly down to the water. Little waves shifted wet pebbles on the sh.o.r.e, a cool wind sighed high above her.

Susan found a sheltered niche among piles of lumber--and sat staring dully ahead of her. The water was dark, but the fog was slowly lifting, to show barges at anchor, and empty rowboats rocking by the pier. The tide was low, piles closely covered with shining black barnacles rose lank from the water; odorous webs of green seaweed draped the wooden cross-bars and rusty iron cleats of the dock.

Susan remembered the beaches she had known in her childhood, when, a small skipping person, she had run ahead of her father and mother, wet her shoes in the sinking watery sand, and curved away from the path of the waves in obedience to her mother's voice. She remembered walks home beside the roaring water, with the wind whistling in her ears, the sunset full in her eyes, her tired little arms hooked in the arms of the parents who shouted and laughed at each other over the noisy elements.

"My good, dear, hungry, little, tired Mouse!" her mother had called her, in the blissful hour of supper and warmth and peace that followed.

Her mother had always been good--her father good. Every one was good,--even impractical, absurd Mary Lou, and homely Lydia Lord, and little Miss Sherman at the office, with her cold red hands, and her hungry eyes,--every one was good, except Susan.

Dawn came, and sunrise. The fog lifted like a curtain, disappeared in curling filaments against the sun. Little brown-sailed fishing-smacks began to come dipping home, sunlight fell warm and bright on the roofs of Alcatraz, the blue hills beyond showed soft against the bluer sky.

Ferry boats cut delicate lines of foam in the sheen of the bay, morning whistles awakened the town. Susan felt the sun's grateful warmth on her shoulders and, watching the daily miracle of birth, felt vaguely some corresponding process stir her own heart. Nature cherishes no yesterdays; the work of rebuilding and replenishing goes serenely on.

Punctual dawn never finds the world unready, April's burgeoning colors bury away forever the memories of winter wind and deluge.

"There is some work that I may still do, in this world, there is a place somewhere for me," thought Susan, walking home, hungry and weary, "Now the question is to find them!"

Early in October came a round-robin from the Carrolls. Would Susan come to them for Thanksgiving and stay until Josephine's wedding on December third? "It will be our last time all together in one sense," wrote Mrs.

Carroll, "and we really need you to help us over the dreadful day after Jo goes!"

Susan accepted delightedly for the wedding, but left the question of Thanksgiving open; her aunt felt the need of her for the anniversary.

Jinny would be at home from Berkeley and Alfred and his wife Freda were expected for Thanksgiving Day. Mrs. Alfred was a noisy and a.s.sertive little person, whose complacent bullying of her husband caused his mother keen distress. Alfred was a bookkeeper now, in the bakery of his father-in-law, in the Mission, and was a changed man in these days; his att.i.tude toward his wife was one of mingled fear and admiration. It was a very large bakery, and the office was neatly railed off, "really like a bank," said poor Mrs. Lancaster, but Ma had nearly fainted when first she saw her only son in this enclosure, and never would enter the bakery again. The Alfreds lived in a five-room flat bristling with modern art papers and shining woodwork; the dining-room was papered in a bold red, with black wood tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and plate-rail; the little drawing-room had a gas-log surrounded with green tiles. Freda made endless pillows for the narrow velour couch, and was very proud of her Mission rocking-chairs and ta.s.seled portieres. Her mother's wedding-gift had been a piano with a mechanical player attached; the bride was hospitable and she loved to have groups of nicely dressed young people listening to the music, while she cooked for them in the chafing-dish. About once a month, instead of going to "Mama's" for an enormous Sunday dinner, she and Alfred had her fat "Mama" and her small wiry "Poppa" and little Augusta and Lulu and Heinie come to eat a Sunday dinner with them. And when this happened stout Mrs. Hultz always sent her own cook over the day before with a string of sausages and a fowl and a great mocha cake, and cheese and hot bread, so that Freda's party should not "cost those kits so awful a lot," as she herself put it.

And no festivity was thought by Freda to warrant Alfred's approach to his old habits. She never allowed him so much as a sherry sauce on his pudding. She frankly admitted that she "yelled b.l.o.o.d.y murder" if he suggested absenting himself from her side for so much as a single evening. She adored him, she thought him the finest type of man she knew, but she allowed him no liberty.

"A doctor told Ma once that when a man drank, as Alfie did, he couldn't stop right off short, without affecting his heart," said Mary Lou, gently.

"All right, let it affect his heart then!" said the twenty-year-old Freda hardily. Ma herself thought this disgustingly cold-blooded; she said it did not seem refined for a woman to admit that her husband had his failings, and Mary Lou said frankly that it was easy enough to see where THAT marriage would end, but Susan read more truly the little bride's flashing blue eyes and the sudden scarlet in her cheeks, and she won Freda's undying loyalty by a surrept.i.tious pressure of her fingers.

CHAPTER II

One afternoon in mid-November Susan and Mary Lou chanced to be in the dining-room, working over a puzzle-card that had been delivered as an advertis.e.m.e.nt of some new breakfast food. They had intended to go to market immediately after lunch, but it was now three o'clock, and still they hung over the fascinating little combination of paper angles and triangles, feeling that any instant might see the problem solved.

Suddenly the telephone rang, and Susan went to answer it, while Mary Lou, who had for some minutes been loosening her collar and belt preparatory to changing for the street, trailed slowly upstairs, holding her garments together.

Outside was a bright, warm winter day, babies were being wheeled about in the sunshine, and children, just out of school, were shouting and running in the street. From where Susan sat at the telephone she could see a bright angle of sunshine falling through the hall window upon the faded carpet of the rear entry, and could hear Mrs. Cortelyou's cherished canary, Bobby, bursting his throat in a cascade of song upstairs. The canary was still singing when she hung up the receiver, two minutes later,--the sound drove through her temples like a knife, and the placid sunshine in the entry seemed suddenly brazen and harsh.

Susan went upstairs and into Mary Lou's room.

"Mary Lou---" she began.

"Why, what is it?" said Mary Lou, catching her arm, for Susan was very white, and she was staring at her cousin with wide eyes and parted lips.

"It was Billy," Susan answered. "Josephine Carroll's dead."

"WHAT!" Mary Lou said sharply.

"That's what he said," Susan repeated dully. "There was an accident,--at Yellowstone--they were going to meet poor Stewart--and when he got in--they had to tell him--poor fellow! Ethel Frothingham's arm was broken, and Jo never moved--Phil has taken Mrs. Carroll on to-day--Billy just saw them off!" Susan sat down at the bureau, and rested her head in her hands. "I can't believe it!" she said, under her breath. "I simply CANNOT believe it!"

"Josephine Carroll killed! Why--it's the most awful thing I ever heard!" Mary Lou exclaimed. Her horror quieted Susan.

"Billy didn't know anything more than that," Susan said, beginning hastily to change her dress. "I'll go straight over there, I guess. He said they only had a wire, but that one of the afternoon papers has a short account. My goodness--goodness--goodness--when they were all so happy! And Jo always the gayest of them all--it doesn't seem possible!"

Still dazed, she crossed the bay in the pleasant afternoon sunlight, and went up to the house. Anna was already there, and the four spent a quiet, sad evening together. No details had reached them, the full force of the blow was not yet felt. When Anna had to go away the next day Susan stayed; she and Betsy got the house ready for the mother's home-coming, put away Josephine's dresses, her tennis-racket, her music----

"It's not right!" sobbed the rebellious little sister. "She was the best of us all--and we've had so much to bear! It isn't fair!"

"It's all wrong," Susan said, heavily.

Mrs. Carroll, brave and steady, if very tired, came home on the third day, and with her coming the atmosphere of the whole house changed.

Anna had come back again; the sorrowing girls drew close about their mother, and Susan felt that she was not needed.

"Mrs. Carroll is the most wonderful woman in the world!" she said to Billy, going home after the funeral. "Yes," Billy answered frowningly.

"She's too darn wonderful! She can't keep this up!"