Jim felt as if a weight of inevitable sorrow were weighing him to the ground.  Julia’s quiet assurance, her regretful firmness, seemed to be breaking his heart.  She was in white to-day, and in the thin September sunlight, among the blossoming roses, she somehow suggested the calm placidity of a nun who looks back at her days in the world with a tender, smiling pity.  The child had left her play, and stood close to her mother’s side, one of Julia’s hands caught in both her own.

“Anna,” Jim said desperately, “won’t you ask Mother to come to London with Dad?”

Anna regarded him gravely.  She did not understand the situation, but she answered, with a child’s curious instinct for the obvious excuse: 

“But Grandmother needs her!”

“I never asked you to give her up, Julie,” Jim said, as if trying to remind her that he had not been so merciless as she.  Julia’s eyes widened with a quick alarm, her breast rose, but she answered composedly: 

“That I would have fought.”

“And you have always had as much money—­” Jim began again, trying to rally the arguments with which he had felt sure to overwhelm her.

“I spent that as much for your sake as for mine,” Julia said soberly.  “She is a Studdiford.  I wanted to be fair to Anna.  But I could do without it now, Jim; there are a thousand things—­”

“Yes, I know!” he said in quick shame.

A silence fell, there seemed nothing else to be said.  A great space widened between them.  Jim felt at the mercy of lonely and desolate winds; he felt as if all colour had faded out of the world, leaving it gray and cold.  With the sickness of utter defeat he dropped on one knee and kissed the wondering child, and then turned to go.

“You won’t—­change your mind, Ju?” he asked huskily.

Julia was conscious of a strange weakening and loosening of bonds throughout her entire system.  Vague chills shook her, she felt that tears were near, she had a hideous misgiving as to her power to keep from fainting.

“I will let you know, Jim,” she heard her own voice answer, very low.

A moment later she and Anna were alone in the garden.

“What is it, Mother?” Anna asked curiously, a dozen times.  Julia stood staring at the child blindly.  One hand was about Anna’s neck, the loose curls falling soft and warm upon it, the other Julia had pressed tight above her heart.  She stood still as if listening.

“What is it, Mother?” asked the little girl again.

“Nothing!” Julia said then, in a sort of shallow whisper, with a caught breath.

A second later she kissed the child hastily, and went quietly out of the green gate which had so lately closed upon Jim.  She went as unquestioningly as an automaton moved by some irresistible power; not only was all doubt gone from her mind, but all responsibility seemed also shed.

The street was almost deserted, but Julia saw Jim instantly, a full block away, and walking resolutely, if slowly.  She drifted silently after him, not knowing why she followed, nor what she would say when they met, but conscious that she must follow and that they would meet.