Mark could not quite follow this argument, but he was quick with soothing generalities.

“Aw, pshaw, Julie, as if you aren’t about as good as they make ’em, just as you are!  Why, I’m crazy about you—­I’m crazy about the way you look and about the way you act; you’re good enough for me!  Julie,” his voice sank again, “Julie, won’t you let me pick out a little flat somewheres?  Pomeroy said I could have any one of the old squares for nothing; we could get some rugs and chairs from the People’s Easy Payment Company.  Just you and me, Julie; what do you think?”

“I-I’d like to have a cute little house,” said Julia, with a shaky smile.

“Sure you would!  And a garden—­”

“Oh, I’d love a little garden!” The girl smiled again.

“Well, then, why not, Julia?”

She looked at him obliquely.

“Suppose I stopped loving you, Mark?”

Mark gave a great laugh.

“Once I have you, Ju, I’ll risk it!”

Child that she was, a glimpse of that complete possession stained her cheeks crimson.

“I have to go down to Mama in Santa Clara next week,” she submitted awkwardly.

“Well, go down.  But—­how about New Year’s, Julie?  Will you marry me then?”

Julia got up, and they walked away across the soft green of the grass.

“I don’t honestly know what I want to do, Mark,” she said a little drearily.  “I’m not crazy to go to Santa Clara, and yet it’s something awful—­living at my grandmother’s house!  I’d like to kill my grandfather, I know that.  He’s the meanest old man I ever saw.  I suppose I could keep at Artheris for an engagement—­he’s awfully decent—­but now that Rose and Connie have gone, I have to go round alone, and—­it isn’t that I’m afraid of anything, but I simply don’t seem to care any more!  I don’t believe I want to be an actress.  Artheris offered me small parts with the Sacramento Star Stock, playing fourteen weeks and twenty plays, this winter, but I thought of getting up there, and having to hunt up a boarding-house—­” Her voice sank indifferently.  “I don’t believe I’d take anything less than ingenue,” she added presently.  “Florence Pitt played ingenue in stock when she was only fifteen!”

“You could work up, Ju,” Mark suggested, honestly anxious to console.

“Yes, the way Connie and Rose have!” the girl answered dryly.  “Con’s been in the business six years and Rose nine!” Her eyes travelled the blue spaces of the summer sky.  “I wish I could go to New York,” she said vaguely.

“They say New York is jam-packed with girls hanging round theatrical agencies,” Mark submitted, to which Julia answered with a dispirited, “I know!”