“Well—­oh, the poor baby, were they ’busing Ellie’s baby?” she would croon, coming in.  “Don’t you care, because Ellie’s going to beat ’em all with sticks!”

Caroline anticipated Julia’s every need on these occasions:  the little heap of discarded apparel was whisked away, band and powder were promptly presented, the bath vanished, the clothes-rack with its tiny hangers was gone, and Julia had a moment in which to hug the weary, sleepy, hungry, fragrant little lump of girlhood in her arms.

“Bottle ready, Caroline?”

“Yes, Mrs. Studdiford.  She goes out on the porch now, for her nap.  Come to Caroline, darling, and get something goody-good.”

And so Julia had no choice but to go, wandering a little disconsolately to her own room, and wishing the baby took her nap at another hour and could be played with now.

Presently outside interests began to claim her again, dressmakers and manicures, shopping and the essential letter writing filled the mornings, luncheons kept her late into the afternoons, there were calls and card playing and teas.  Julia would have only a few minutes in the nursery before it was time to dress for dinner; sometimes Jim came in to feast his eyes on the beautiful, serene little Anna, in her beautiful mother’s arms; more often he was late, and Julia, trailing her evening gown behind her, would fly for studs, and pull the boot-trees from Jim’s shining pumps.

In September they went to Burlingame for the polo tournament, and here, on an unseasonably hot day, Jim had an ugly little touch of the sun, and for two or three days was very ill.  They were terrible days to Julia.  Richie came to her at once, and they took possession of the house of a friend, where Jim had chanced to be carried, and sent to San Rafael for Julia’s servants; but two splendid nurses kept her out of the sickroom, and the baby was in San Rafael, so that Julia wandered about utterly at a loss to occupy heart or hands.

On the third day the fever dropped, and Julia crept in to laugh and cry over her big boy.  Jim got well very quickly, and just a week from the day of the accident he and Julia went home to the enchanting Anna, and began to plan for a speedy removal to the Pacific Avenue house, so that the little episode was apparently quite forgotten by the time they were back in the city and the season opened.

But looking back, months later, Julia knew that she could date a definite change in their lives from that time.  Whether his slight sunstroke had really given Jim’s mind a little twist, or whether the shock left him unable to throw off oppressing thoughts with his old buoyancy, his wife did not know.  But she knew that a certain sullen, unresponsive mood possessed him.  He brooded, he looked upon her with a heavy eye, he sighed deeply when she drew his attention to the lovely little Anna.

Julia knew by this time that marriage was not all happiness, all irresponsible joy.  She had often wondered why the women she knew did not settle themselves seriously to a study of its phases, when the cloudless days inevitably gave place to something incomprehensible and disturbing.  Even lovers like Kennedy and her husband had their times of being wholly out of sympathy with each other, she knew, and she and Jim were not angels; they must only try to be patient and forbearing until the dark hour went by.