The Readjustment

rave who built the city were settling down to found houses and cultivate respectability in face of a constantly resurgent past-in those days none who pretended to eminence in th

ant Bohemia in the time when that word was of good repute. Spain, perpetual spring, the flare of adventure in the blood, the impulse of men who packed 45 Virgil with their bean-bags on the Overland journey, conspired already to make San F

perceived by the painters of that set, made some of them swear that she was the real beauty of the two. Matilda, the beauty, had if not wit a sprightly feminine fancy. Then, too, her gentleness of judgment, her sweetness of intention, and her illogic of loyalty, gave her point of view a humorous quality. Her circle, confident in her good-nature, was fore

enough, God wot-poets and novelists struggling on the verge of fame; attractive, irresponsible, magnetic journalists, destined never to arrive anywhere, but following a flowery path along which a woman might

seur of women if there ever was one, whom he esteemed the prettie

47 in San Francisco out on the West Coast of America-of all places." Tradition has en

her; she lived in creation which ran the line between miniatures and heroic canvases. Lars Wark, perhaps the least considered of all her painter friends, is the one that

ions on Nob Hill, chose Edward C. Tiffany, attorney, politician in a small but honorable way, man about town-and much older than she. Alice, following quietly, accepted Billy Gray, jo

er a great deal alone after the honeymoon. On his side, there was no conscious neglect in this; on her side, there was no reproach. It was just their way of living. He adored her with a quiet, steady flame of affection which was too fine to degenerate into mere uxoriousness. Already, he was a little too fond of his liquor-a peccadillo which attracted little attention in that age

e Fleming. And he, like Marjorie Fleming's father, spoke her name no more-until near the end. When after twenty years, his own time came, Stallard, LeBrun the poet and Lars Wark gathered to pay him their last respects. LeBrun came all the way from New Orleans, and Stallar

furies. He became one of those restless, wandering journalists whose virtue to their newspaper

rother-in-law, strong and generous enough to face her perceptions, she called him back from a desk in Los Angeles, where, gossip said, he was drinking himself to death, and gave him over his daughter to keep. From that time on, during a succession of removes which

entlewomen mainly, are the arbiters and conservators of old fashioned manners on the West Coast. Of them it is said, as it is said of certain sisterhoods in France, that one may know their graduates by the way they keep their combs and brushes. In two years Eleanor absorbed something of their grave gentility from these Spanish women. Little else she got from that education, seeing that she was a Protestant a

the church go to Hell,

Sulpicia

(Mrs. Sturtevant had j

on her beside her manners-a mark common enough among Protestant women reared in the shadow of the Catholic Church. Outside its pale by belief, she cl

, when her call came to her. In one moment, the secret of her fat

She knew that their fortunes were low, that only her inheritance, left in trust by her grandparents, kept them moving. Also, a dim suspicion which she had held of her father

ppened that the death of a teacher made Friday an unexpected holiday. Returning on Thursday afternoon, she found the house locked. She remembered that this was "make-up day" at the weekly wh

n into the environs of a gathering city crowd. The men were straining over backs and shoulders

r?" some one call

olice arrived just then, and cleared a way; through the r

nothing, said nothing; only stood there. Presently, she was aw

ted on the word. In quick decision, then, he whirled upon the crowd, pushed it back, cleared a space. The other policeman and the man in the soiled overalls-he was foreman of The Whale-picked up Billy Gray, who was

get back littl

xalt her; afterward, shuddering over that day, she still remembered a certain perverse

my fa

ting on the top of the first flight. They had braced him up against the banisters and

appen often?

so enough touched by his importance as Good Samari

y day nowadays. Used to be the br

iliar now to them all, saw the girl standing white of face beside the balustrade; the situation came over him at once. He opened the door, drew in both the intoxicated Billy Gr

as still half childhood-self pity, shame, heroic pride in her own tragedy, passionate hatreds of a world which harbors such things-she came to a resolve in whose very completeness she was happy for a time. When, before breakfast, she burst into Mattie Tiffany's boudoir,

he said it all quite simply and undramatically. It was her business to be with her fath

lay close to her hand. She had neither the heart nor the conscience to deny Eleanor this sacrifice. In that hour, there grew up between the childless aunt and

any found the way. The Sturtevant estate, nearly fifty thousand dollars in all, lay in his hands as trustee. Upon Eleanor

y descent into the grave after a career in which he had played only too little. That leisurely style of farming, which would permit him to 58 keep an eye on his dwindling law practice, attracted him. And nothing, it seemed to him, would better further the intention, n

argle whisky, through a deadly sickness, in order to get back into the habit again. His was that variety of drunkenness which is not only an unnatural thirst, but also a mania to forget. There on the Santa Lucia t

mall manor, she made a business of it; got it to pay after the second year. Billy Gray never reformed; no one but Eleanor ever expected that he would. He smuggled whisky in;

itution gone, his mind and body weakened. For twenty years, no one had ever heard him speak the name of that Saxon Alice whose death

e ranch, letting life flow in again. Tired at twenty-two, she overstated the feeling to hers

d her aunt's lawn, and little of that. Books, and such training in life as they give, she had known; but she had never known a flirtation,