Title:  The Story Of Julia Page Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V

Author:  Kathleen Norris

Release Date:  December, 2003 [EBook #4787] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 19, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

VOLUME V

THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE

KATHLEEN NORRIS

CHAPTER I

To Emeline, wife of George Page, there came slowly, in her thirtieth year, a sullen conviction that life was monstrously unfair.  From a resentful realization that she was not happy in her marriage, Emeline’s mind went back to the days of her pert, precocious childhood and her restless and discontented girlhood, and she felt, with a sort of smouldering fury, that she had never been happy, had never had a fair chance, at all!

It took Mrs. Page some years to come to this conclusion, for, if she was shrewd and sharp among the women she knew, she was, in essential things, an unintelligent woman, and mental effort of any sort was strange to her.  Throughout her entire life, her mind had never been truly awakened.  She had scrambled through Grammar School, and had followed it with five years as saleswoman in a millinery store, in that district of San Francisco known as the Mission, marrying George Page at twenty-three, and up to that time well enough pleased with herself and her life.

But that was eight years ago.  Now Emeline could see that she had reached—­more, she had passed—­her prime.  She began to see that the moods of those early years, however violent and changing, had been fed upon secret springs of hope, hope vague and baseless enough, but strong to colour a girl’s life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns.  There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen, something would happen.  The little Emeline Cox, moving between the dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day!  She might become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make a brilliant marriage.