But the sea air shook Julia into splendid health and energy, and she was her sweetest self in Honolulu; she and Jim both seemed to recapture here some of the exquisite tenderness of their honeymoon a year ago.  Neither would admit that there had been any drifting apart, they had never been less than lovers, yet now they experienced the delights of a reconciliation.  Julia, in her delicate linens and thin embroidered pongees, with a filmy parasol shading her bright hair, seemed more wonderful than ever before, and lovely Hawaii was a setting for one of their happiest times together.

On the boat, coming home, however, there occurred a little incident that darkened Julia’s sky for a long time to come.  On the very day of starting she and Jim, with some other returning San Franciscans, were standing, a laughing group on the deck, when a dark, handsome young woman came forward from a nearby cabin doorway, and held out her hand.

“Do you remember me, Julia?” said she, smiling.

Julia, whose white frock was draped with a dozen ropes of brilliant flowers, and who looked like a little May Queen in her radiant bloom, looked at the newcomer for a few moments, and then said, with a clearing face: 

“Hannah!  Of course I know you.  Mrs. Palmer, may I present Doctor Studdiford?”

Jim smilingly shook hands, and as the rest of the group melted away, Mrs. Palmer explained that her husband’s business was in Manila, but she was bringing up her two little children to visit her parents in Oakland.

“She’s extremely pretty,” Jim said, when he and Julia were alone in their luxurious stateroom.  “Who is she?”

“I don’t know why I supposed you knew that she is one of Mark’s sisters,” Julia said, colouring.  “I saw something of them all, after—­afterward, you know.”

“Oh!” Jim’s face, which he chanced to be washing, also grew red; he scowled as he plunged it again into the towel.  Julia proceeded with her own lunch toilet in silence, humming a little now and then, but the brightness was gone from the day for her; the swift-flying green water outside the window had turned to lead, the immaculate little apartment was bleak and bare.  Jim did not speak as they went down to lunch, nor was he himself when they met again, after a game of auction, at dinner.  In fact, this marked Julia’s first acquaintance with a new side of his character.

For Jim’s sunny nature was balanced by an occasional mood so dark as to make him a different man while it lasted.  Barbara had once lightly hinted this to Julia—­“Jim was glooming terribly, and did nothing but snarl”—­and Miss Toland had confirmed the hint when she asked him, at Christmas dinner, when he and Julia had been eight months man and wife:  “Well, Jim, never a blue devil once, eh?”

“Never a one.  Aunt Sanna!” Jim had responded gayly.

“What should he have blue devils about?” Julia had demanded on this occasion, presenting herself indignantly to them, and looking in her black velvet and white lace like a round-eyed child.