As she walked down to work the warm yet curiously refreshing wind flung itself in a fine frenzy over the gray city.  Dark-gray clouds were closing in from the south, and in the east an ominous silver band of light marked the sullen flight of the sun.  People were scampering about buoyantly, running for street-cars, chasing liberated hats, battling with billowing skirts.  It seemed as if the promise of rain had revived laughter and motion to an extraordinary degree.  At the office this ecstasy of spirit persisted; even Miss Munch came in hair awry and blowsy, her beady eyes almost laughing.

Mr. Flint had not been to the office for two days.  A sniffling cold had kept him at home.  Claire had rather looked for him to-day, and had prepared herself for a flood of accumulated dictation.  But the threat of dampness evidently dissuaded him, for the noon hour came and went and Mr. Flint did not put in an appearance.  At about three o’clock in the afternoon a long-distance call came on the telephone for Miss Robson.  Claire answered.  Flint was on the other end of the wire.  He wanted to know if she could come at once over to Yolanda and take several pages of dictation.  His cold was uncertain and he might not get out for the rest of the week.  He realized that it was something of an imposition on her good nature, but she would be doing him a great favor if....  She interrupted him with her quick assent and he finished: 

“I’ll have the car at the station, and of course you’ll stay for dinner.”

Claire hung up the receiver and looked at her watch.  It was just half after three.  The next ferryboat connecting at Sausalito with the electric train for Yolanda left at three-forty-five.  She had no time to lose; it was a good ten minutes’ walk from the office to the ferry and little to be gained by taking a street-car.  She managed her preparations for departure successfully, but in the end she had to ask Miss Munch to telephone her mother.  Miss Munch assented with an alarmingly sweet smile.

Claire walked briskly down California Street toward the ferry-building.  No rain had fallen, but the air was full of ominous promise.  The wind was even brisker than it had been in the morning, and its breath almost tropically moist.

“At sundown it will simply pour,” thought Claire, as she exchanged fifty cents for a ticket to Yolanda.

She presented her ticket at the entrance to the waiting-room and passed in.  The passageway to the boat was already open; she went at once and found a sheltered corner outside on the upper deck.  A strong sea was running and already the ferryboat was plunging and straining like a restless bloodhound in leash.  The air was full of screaming gulls and the clipped whistling of restless bay craft.  Claire was so intent on all this elemental agitation that she took no notice of the people about her, but as the boat slid lumberingly out of the slip she was recalled by a voice close at hand saying: