“I don’t care,” she said.  “It leaves him—­cleaner—­stronger!” She turned swiftly and left the room.  Brannan shrugged his shoulders.  “There’s no fathoming women,” he thought.

* * * * *

But Broderick, in far Washington, understood when there came to him a letter.  It bore neither signature nor salutation: 

“When one is stripped of weapons—­sometimes it is by the will of God!  And He does not fail to give us better ones.

“Truth!  Righteousness!  Courage to attack all Evil.  These are mightier than the weapons of the World.

“Oh, my friend, stand fast!  You are never alone.  The spirit of another is forever with you.  Watching—­waiting—­knowing you shall win the victory which transcends all price.”

He read this letter endlessly while people waited in his ante-room.  Then he summoned Herbert Waters, now his secretary, and sent them all away.  Among them was a leader of the New York money-powers who never forgave that slight; another was an emissary of the President.  Broderick neither knew nor cared.  He put the letter in his pocket; walked for hours in the snow, on the banks of the frozen Potomac.

That afternoon he reviewed the situation, was closeted an hour with Douglas of Illinois.  The two of them sought Seward of New York, who had just arrived.  To their conference came Chase and Wade of Ohio, Trumbull of Illinois, Fessenden of Maine, Wilson of Massachusetts, Cameron of Pennsylvania.

Soon thereafter Volney Howard in San Francisco received an unsigned telegram, supposedly from Gwin: 

Unexpected gathering anti-slavery forces.  Looks bad for Lecompton Resolution.  President worried about California.

In the southeastern part of San Francisco a few tea and silk merchants had, years before, established the nucleus of an Oriental quarter.  Gradually it had grown until there were provision shops where queer-looking dried vegetables, oysters strung necklace-wise on rings of bamboo, eggs preserved in a kind of brown mold, strange brown nuts and sweetmeats were displayed; there were drugs-shops with wondrous gold and ebony fret work, temples with squat gods above amazing shrines.

There were stark-odored fish-stalls in alleyways so narrow that the sun touched them rarely, barred upper-windows from which the faces of slant-eyed women peeped in eager wistfulness as if upon an unfamiliar world.  Cellar doorways from which slipper-shod, pasty-faced Cantonese crept furtively at dawn; sentineled portals, which gave ingress to gambling houses protected by sheet-iron doors.

On a pleasant Sunday, early in February, Benito, Alice, Adrian and Inez walked in Chinatown with David Broderick.  The latter was about to leave for Washington to attend his second session in Congress.  Things had fared ill with him politically there and at home.

Just now David Broderick was trying to forget Congress and those battles which the next few weeks were sure to bring.  He wanted to carry with him to Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine.  An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune and almond were displayed.