Barry tried to read, but the book became mere printed words.  He went softly into Billy’s room, and sat down by the tumbled bed and the small warm sleeper.  Billy, even asleep, snuggled his hand appreciatively into his father’s, and brought its little fellow to lie there too, and pushed his head up against Barry’s arm.

And there the father sat motionless, while the clock outside in the hall struck two, and three, and four.  This was Hetty’s baby, and where was Hetty?  Alone with her little fretful mother, moving from boarding-house to boarding-house.  Pretty no longer, buoyed up by the hope of an operatic career no longer, pinched—­as they must be pinched—­in money matters.

The thought came to him suddenly that he must see her; and though he fought it as unwelcome and distasteful, it grew rapidly into a conviction.  He must see her again, must have a long talk with her, must ascertain that nothing he could do for the woman who had been his wife was left undone.  He was no longer the exacting, unsuccessful boy she had left so unceremoniously; he was a man now, standing on his own feet, and with a recognized position in the community.  The little fretful baby was a well-brushed young person who attended kindergarten and Sunday School.  A new era of respectability and prosperity had set in.  Hetty, his newly awakened sense of justice and his newly aroused ambition told him, must somehow share it.  Not that there could ever be a complete reconciliation between them, but there could be good-will, there could be a readjustment and a friendlier understanding.

The thought of Sidney came suddenly upon his idle musings with a shock that made his heart sick.  Gracious, beautiful, and fresh, although she was older than Hetty, how far she was removed from this sordid story of his, this darker side of his life!  Perhaps months from now, his troubled thoughts ran on, he would tell her of his visit to Hetty.  For he had determined to visit her.

Just at dawn he left the house and went out of his own gate.  His face was pale, his eyes deeply ringed and his head ached furiously, but it was with a sort of content that he took his seat in the early train for San Francisco.  He sank into a reverie, head propped on hand, that lasted until his journey was almost over; but once in the city, his old dread of seeing his wife came over him again, and it was only after a leisurely luncheon at the club that Barry took a Turk Street car to the dingy region where Hetty lived.

The row of dirty bay-windowed houses on either side of the street, and the dust and papers blowing about in the hot afternoon wind, somehow reminded him forcibly of old days and ways.  With a sinking heart he went up one of the flights of wooden steps and asked at the door for Mrs. Valentine.  A Japanese boy in his shirt-sleeves ushered him into a front room.  This was evidently the “parlor”; hot sunlight streamed through the bay windows; there was an upright piano against the closed folding doors, and a graphophone on a dusty cherry table; wind whined at the window-casing; one or two big flies buzzed against the glass.