She walked across the room to the door, and stood there with her hand on the knob, and said in a whisper:  “Now, what shall I do?  What shall I do?”

At first she thought she would hide, then that she would run away.  Then she knew what she must do:  she opened the dressing-room door, and walked unchallenged through the big auditorium.  Groups of chattering people were scattered about it; somebody was banging the piano; nobody paid the least attention to Julia as she went down the stairs, and started to walk to the Toland house.

She was not thinking now.  She only wanted to get away.

Nobody stopped her.  The house was deserted.  A maid put her head in Julia’s door, and finding Julia dressing immediately apologized.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Page!  I thought—­”

“That’s all right,” said Julia quietly.  She was very pale.  “Will you tell Mrs. Toland that I had to take the two o’clock boat?”

“Yes’m.  You won’t be here for dinner?”

“No,” said Julia, straining to make a belt meet.

“Could I bring you a cup of tea or a sandwich?”

“Oh, no, thank you!”

The maid was gone.  Julia went down through the house quietly, a few moments later.  Her breath came quick and short until she was fairly on the boat, with Sausalito slipping farther and farther into the background.  Even then her mind was awhirl, and fatigue and perhaps hunger, too, made it impossible to think seriously.  Far easier to lean back lazily in the sun, and watch the water slip by, and make no attempt to control the confused, chaotic thoughts that wheeled dreamily through her brain.  Now and then memory brought her to a sudden upright position, brought the hot colour to her face.

“I don’t care!” Julia would say then, half aloud.  “They’re nothing to me and I’m nothing to them; and good riddance!”

May—­but it was like a midsummer afternoon in San Francisco.  A hot wind blew across the ferry place; papers and chaff swept before it.  Julia’s skirt was whisked about her knees, her hat was twisted viciously about on her head.  She caught a reflection of herself in a car window, dishevelled, her hat at an ugly angle, her nose reddened by the wind.

Mrs. Tarbury’s house, when she got to it, presented its usual Sunday afternoon appearance.  The window curtains were up at all angles in the dining-room, hot sunshine streamed through the fly-specked panes, the draught from the open door drove a wild whirl of newspapers over the room.  Cigarette smoke hung heavy upon the air.

Julia peeped into the dark kitchen; the midday meal was over, and a Japanese boy was hopelessly and patiently attacking scattered heaps of dishes and glassware.  The girl was hungry, but the cooling wreck of a leg of mutton and the cold vegetables swimming in water did not appeal to her, and she went slowly upstairs, helping herself in passing to no more substantial luncheon than two soda crackers and a large green pickle.