“Goodness, Auntie!  I didn’t see you there!  Yes, you know I have to go and see Mr. Bocqueraz off at eleven.”

“Oh, so you do!  But you won’t go back with the others, dear?  Tell them we want you for Christmas!”

“With the others?”

“Miss Ella and Emily,” her aunt supplied, mildly surprised.

“Oh!  Oh, yes!  Yes, I suppose so.  I don’t know,” Susan said in great confusion.

“You’ll probably see Lydia Lord there,” pursued Mrs. Lancaster, presently.  “She’s seeing Mrs. Lawrence’s cousins off.”

“On the Nippon Maru?” Susan asked nervously.

“How you do remember names, Sue!  Yes, Lydia’s going down.”

“I’d go with you, Sue, if it wasn’t for those turkeys to stuff,” said Mary Lou.  “I do love a big ship!”

“Oh, I wish you could!” Susan said.

She went upstairs with a fast-beating heart.  Her heart was throbbing so violently, indeed, that, like any near loud noise, it made thought very difficult.  Mary Lou came in upon her packing her suitcase.

“I suppose they may want you to go right back,” said Mary Lou regretfully, in reference to the Saunders, “but why don’t you leave that here in case they don’t?”

“Oh, I’d rather take it,” said Susan.

She kissed her cousin good-bye, gave her aunt a particularly fervent hug, and went out into the doubtful morning.  The fog-horn was booming on the bay, and when Susan joined the little stream of persons filing toward the dock of the great Nippon Maru, fog was already shutting out all the world, and the eaves of the pier dripped with mist.  Between the slow-moving motor-cars and trucks on the dock, well-dressed men and women were picking their way through the mud.

Susan went unchallenged up the gang-plank, with girls in big coats, carrying candy-boxes and violets, men with cameras, elderly persons who watched their steps nervously.  The big ship was filled with chattering groups, young people raced through cabins and passageways, eager to investigate.

Stevedores were slinging trunks and boxes on board; everywhere were stir and shouting and movement.  Children shrieked and romped in the fitful sunlight; there were tears and farewells, on all sides; postal-writers were already busy about the tables in the writing-room, stewards were captured on their swift comings and goings, and interrogated and importuned.  Fog lay heavy and silent over San Francisco; and the horn still boomed down the bay.

Susan, standing at the rail looking gravely on at the vivid and exciting picture, felt an uneasy and chilling little thought clutch at her heart.  She had always said that she could withdraw, at this particular minute she could withdraw.  But in a few moments more the dock would be moving steadily away from her; the clock in the ferry-tower, with gulls wheeling about it, the ferry-boats churning long wakes in the smooth surface of the bay, the stir of little craft about the piers, the screaming of a hundred whistles, in a hundred keys, would all be gone.  Alcatraz would be passed, Black Point and the Golden Gate; they would be out beyond the rolling head-waters of the harbor.  No withdrawing then.