“It’s nicer,” she whispered happily, “to be here among the people....  I feel closer to them.  As if I could sense the big Pulse of Life that makes us all brothers and sisters.”

Frank looked down at her understandingly, but did not speak.  Tetrazzini had begun her song.  Its first notes floated faintly through the vast and unwalled auditorium.  Then her voice grew clearer, surer.

Never had those bustling, noisy streets known such a stillness as prevailed this night.  The pure soprano which had thrilled a world of high-priced audiences rang out in a wondrous clarion harmony.  It moved many people to tears.  The response was overwhelming.  Something in that vast human pack went out to the singer like a tidal wave.  Not the deafening fusilade of hand-clapping nor the shouted “Bravos!” It was something deeper, subtler.  Tetrazzini stepped forward.  Tears streamed from her eyes.  She blew impulsive kisses to the crowd.

* * * * *

The pageant of the months went on.  A coal merchant by the name of Rolph had displaced P.H.  McCarthy as Mayor of San Francisco.  He had installed what was termed “a business administration.”  San Francisco seemed pleased with the result.  Power of government had returned to the “North of Market Street.”

San Francisco had been selected by Congress as the site of the exposition.  It was scheduled for 1915 and the Panama Canal approached completion.

Frank was living with his father at the Press Club.  His mother was dead.  He had given up newspaper work, except for an occasional editorial.  Through his father’s influence he had found publication for a novel.  He was something of a public man now, despite his comparative youth.

Occasionally he saw his Uncle Robert.  Two of his cousins had married.  The third, an engineer, had gone to Colorado.  Robert Windham and his wife were planning a year of travel.

Sometimes Windham and his nephew talked of Bertha.  It was a calmer, more dispassionate talk as time went on, for years blunt every pain.  One day the former said, with tentative defiance, “I suppose you’ll think there’s something wrong about me, boy....  But I loved her mother deeply.  Honestly—­if one can call it that.  If I’d had a certain kind of—­well, immoral—­courage, I’d have married her....  Just think how different all our lives would have been.  But I hadn’t the heart to hurt Maizie; to break with her ... nor the courage to give up my position in life.  So we parted.  I didn’t know then—­”

“That you had a daughter?” questioned Frank.  His uncle nodded.  “Perhaps it would have made a difference ... perhaps not.”

* * * * *

Aleta had a week’s vacation.  They were playing a comedy in which she had no part.  So she had gone to Carmel to visit her friend Norah France.