They left on the evening train in order to catch the morning train out of Munich. Julia, who had been sitting inertly in her room, too listless to go to bed, heard the carriage rattle down the street, and sprang to her feet with a wild sense of protest and despair. It required all her self-control to refrain from ringing for a droschke and following before it was too late. Then, angry at this complete surrender to her femininity, she undressed and went to bed.
Here, she discovered to her dismay that California was not farther off than sleep. Perversely, she would not relax, nor go through any of the other forms with which she had always been able to summon sleep when excited. She doubted if they would conquer these new impressions, but refused to give them a trial. She lay awake until nearly dawn, the events of the day marching through her brain with maddening reiteration. She dreaded sleep, also, for now at least her brain was stimulated, and she guessed that it would be correspondingly depressed upon awakening. So it was. The weather, also, had changed. It was raining.
When Julia heard the heavy raindrops splashing on her balcony, she sat up with a gasp of horror, then laughed grimly. But this conspiracy of Nature gave her a certain obstinate fortitude, and she rose at once, took a cold bath, and dressed. But when she opened her door to go down to the dining-room, her courage failed her, and she rang and ordered breakfast to be brought upstairs.
“What am I to do?” she thought in terror. “What am I to do?”
It rained all day. Julia had brought no storm clothes. She prowled about the halls, getting what exercise she could, but dared not go downstairs. She sent for books from the library, but they might have been written in Greek. She summoned resolution to go to the dining-room at seven o’clock, but turned at the door, and ran back to her room. She saw Tay at every turn, and to sit alone at the table with his empty chair opposite, was beyond her endurance. Nor could she eat the food brought to her room. She went to bed again, and slept fitfully.
She awoke in the small hours to hear it still raining, and this time she fell into a fury over her demoralization.
“And this is love!” she thought. “Terrors! Ignominy! A will turned to water. I’d not be more helpless if I were in a hospital with typhoid fever.”
Her mind suddenly flew to the conversation with her friends on the night she had last dined with Ishbel. Should she go to Paris and rid herself of the disease once for all? What prospect of happiness if love were able to induce a misery keener than any of its compensations? If she could feel like this now, knowing that he loved her, and that the separation was but a matter of time, what might she not suffer if he ceased to love her, if he gave her cause for jealousy, if she found herself disappointed in him? It would be worse, far worse. Now, at least, she was—not free; no one ever felt more of a slave—but at least with the power to attain freedom. There would be a deep satisfaction, to say nothing of relief, in the knowledge that she never need think of him again—this man that had destroyed her fine poise, her remarkable powers, made her the slave of the race, the victim of the ancient instinct, a mere instrument upon which Nature was playing her old tune in contemptuous disregard of those years in which she had dwelt on impersonal heights seldom attained by young and beautiful women. She almost hated him. Better have done with it at once. In all her life with France she had never known depression like this, for love adds the sense of impotence to calamity.
She got out of bed, without ringing for her bath, and began to pack her trunk. She didn’t care if she never took a bath again. She hated herself, and she hated Tay. Above all she hated the rain.
But in the midst of her packing she sat back on the floor and scowled. To receive suggestions one must be perfectly amenable. There must be no reserve at the back of the head. Although she ground her teeth, she admitted that she would permit no man, no science, to destroy the image of Tay in her mind, root him out of her life. Nor would she confess herself a coward—nor violate the jealous instincts of her sex. If the time came when she must banish him, she would do it herself. Good God! She was female all through. Suffering was a part of her birthright. She would give up not the least of the accompaniments of love.
Cursing herself for a fool, she rang for her bath, dressed herself, and determined to walk out of doors, if the valley had turned into a lake.
But by the time she had swallowed her coffee and rolls the skies had cleared, and she started out with a guide and a sled. There w............