That night it was Berny’s turn to be wakeful. In the silence of the sleeping house and the warm darkness of her curtained room, she lay tossing on her bed, hearing the clear, musical striking of the parlor¹ clock as it marked the hours. When the first thin streak² of gray painted a pale line between the window curtains she rose and took a sleeping powder and soon after fell into a heavy slumber³.  
This held her in the dead, motionless unconsciousness that a drug brings, through the long morning hours. Dominick’s noiseless departure hardly disturbed the hushed quiet of the little flat. The Chinaman, trained by his exacting⁴ mistress to make no sound while she slept, went about his work with a stealthy step and cautious touch, even in the kitchen, shut off by space and muffling⁵ doors, continuing his care. He had had more than one experience with the wrath⁶ of Mrs. Ryan when she had been roused from late slumbers⁷ by a banged door or a dropped pan.
 
[392]It was nearly lunch-time when she awoke, slowly emerging from the black, unbroken deadness of her sleep to a momentarily augmenting⁸ sense of depression. She rose, her body seeming to participate in the oppressed discomfort⁹ of her mind, and, going to the bedroom window, drew the curtain and looked out.
 
The day promised little in the way of cheering influences. Fog hung heavy in the air, a gray veil depending from a gray haze¹⁰ of sky. That portion of her neighbor’s garden which the window commanded was drenched¹¹ with it, the flowers drooping¹² moistly as if it weighed on them like a heavy substance under the pressure of which they bent¹³ and dripped. The stretch of wall that she could see gleamed with dampness. A corner of stone, on which a drop regularly formed, hung and then fell, held her eyes for a few vacantly-staring moments. Then she turned away, muttering to herself,
 
“Good Lord, what a day!”
 
She was at her lunch when the telephone bell rang. She dropped her napkin and ran to the instrument which was in the hall. She did not know what she expected—or rather she did not expect anything in particular—but she was in that state of feverish¹⁴ tension when she seemed the focus of portentous¹⁵ happenings, the point upon which events of sinister¹⁶ menace might, at any moment, bear down. Bill Cannon¹⁷ might be[393] calling her up, for what purpose she could not guess, only for something that would be disagreeable and perturbing¹⁸.
 
It was, however, her husband’s voice that answered her. He spoke¹⁹ quickly, as if in a hurry, telling her that he would not be home to dinner, as a college friend of his from New York had just arrived and he would dine and go to the theater with him that evening. Berny’s ear, ready to discover, in the most alien subjects, matter bearing on her husband’s interest in Rose Cannon, listened intently for the man’s name. As Dominick did not give it she asked for it, and to her strained and waiting attention it seemed to come with an intentional²⁰ indistinctness.
 
“What is his name?” she called again, her voice hard and high. “I didn’t catch it.”
 
It was repeated and for the second time she did not hear it. Before she could demand it once more, Dominick’s “Good-by” hummed along the wire and the connection was cut.
 
She did not want any more lunch and went into the parlor, where she sat down on the cushioned window-seat and looked out on the vaporous transparencies of the fog. She had waked with the sense of weight and apprehension²³ heavy on her. As she dressed she had thought of the interview of yesterday with anger and also with something as much like fear as she was capable of feeling. She realized the folly²⁴ of the rage she[394] had shown, the folly and the futility²⁵ of it, and she realized the danger of an open declaration of war with the fierce and unscrupulous old man who was her adversary²⁶. This, with her customary bold courage, she now tried to push from her mind. After all, he couldn’t kill her, and that was about the only other way he could get rid of her. Even Bill Cannon would hardly dare, in the present day in San Francisco, cold-bloodedly to murder a woman. The thought caused a slight, sarcastic²⁷ smile to touch her lips. Fortunately for her, the lawless days of California were passed.
 
With the curtain caught between her finger-tips, her figure bent forward and motionless, she looked out into the street as if she saw something there of absorbing interest. But she saw nothing. All her mental activity was bent on the problem of Dominick’s telephone message. She did not believe it. She was in that state where trifles light as air all point one way, and to have Dominick stay out to dinner with a sudden and unexpected “friend from New York” was more than a trifle. She assured herself with slow, cold reiteration²⁸ that he was dining with Rose Cannon in the big house on California Street. If they walked together on Sunday mornings, why shouldn’t they dine together on week-day nights? They were careful of appearances and they would never let themselves be seen together in any[395] public place till they were formally engaged. The man from New York was a fiction. She—that immaculate, perfect girl—had invented him. Dominick could not invent anything. He was not that kind of man. But Berny knew that all women can lie when the occasion demands, and Rose Cannon could thus supply her lover’s deficiencies.
 
With her blankly-staring eyes fixed²⁹ on the white outside world, her mental vision conjured³⁰ up a picture of them at dinner that night, sitting opposite each other at a table glistening³¹ with the richest of glass and silver, while soft-footed menials waited obsequiously³² upon them. Bill Cannon was not in the picture. Berny’s imagination had excluded him, pushing him out of the romance into some unseen, uninteresting region where people who were not lovers dined dully by themselves. She could not imagine Rose and Dominick otherwise than alone, exchanging tender glances over the newest form of champagne³³ glasses filled with the choicest brand of champagne.
 
A sound escaped her, a sound of pain, as if forced from her by the grinding of jealous passions within. She dropped the curtain and rose to her feet. If they married it would be always that way with them. They would have everything in the world, everything that to Berny made life worth while. Even Paris, with[396] her three hundred thousand dollars to open all its doors, would be a savorless place to her if Rose and Dominick were to be left to the enjoyment³⁴ of all the pleasures and luxuries of life back in California.
 
Unable to rest, fretted³⁵ by jealousy³⁶, tormented³⁷ by her longing³⁸ for the offered money, oppressed by uneasiness as to Cannon’s next move, the thought of the long afternoon in the house was unendurable to her. She could not remain unemployed³⁹ and passive while her mind was in this state of disturbance⁴⁰. Though the day was bad and there was nothing to do down town, she determined⁴¹ to go out. She might find some distraction⁴² in watching the passers-by and looking at the shop windows.
 
By the time she was dressed, it was four o’clock. The fog was thicker than ever, hanging over the city in an even, motionless pall⁴³ of vapor²². Its breath had a keen, penetrating⁴⁴ chill, like that exhaled⁴⁵ by the mouth of a cavern⁴⁶. Coming down the steps into it she seemed to be entering a white, still sea, off which an air came that was pleasant on the heated dryness of her face. She had no place to go to, no engagement to keep, but instinctively⁴⁷ turned her steps in the down-town direction. Walking would pass more time than going on the car, and she started down the street which slanted⁴⁸ to a level and then climbed a long, dim reach of hill beyond. Its emptiness—a[397] characteristic feature of San Francisco streets—struck upon her observation with a sense of griping, bleak⁴⁹ dreariness⁵⁰. She could look along the two lines of sidewalk till they were lost in the gradual milky⁵¹ thickening of the fog, and at intervals⁵² see a figure, faint and dreamlike, either emerging from space in slow approach, or melting into it in phantasmal withdrawal⁵³.
 
It was a melancholy⁵⁴, depressing vista⁵⁵. She had not reached the top of the long hill before she decided⁵⁶ that she would walk no farther. Walking was only bearable when there was something to see. But she did not know what else to do or where to go. Indecision was not usually a feature of her character. To-day, however, the unaccustomed strain of temptation and worry seemed to have weakened her resourcefulness and resolution. The one point on which she felt determined was that she would not go home.
 
The advancing front of a car, looming⁵⁷ suddenly through the mist, decided her. She hailed it, climbed on board, and sank into a seat on the inside. There was no one else there. It smelt⁵⁸ of dampness, of wet woolens⁵⁹ and rubber overshoes, and its closed windows, filmed with fog, showed semicircular streaks⁶⁰ across them where passengers had rubbed them clean to look out. The conductor, an unkempt man, with an unshaven chin and dirty collar, slouched in for her fare,[398] extending a grimy paw toward her. As he took the money and punched the tag, he hummed a tune⁶¹ to himself, seeming to convey in that harmless act a slighting opinion of his passenger. Berny looked at him severely⁶², which made him hum still louder, and lounge indifferently out to the back platform where he leaned on the brake and spat⁶³ scornfully into the street.
 
Berny felt that sitting there was worse than walking. There was no one to look at, there was nothing to be seen from the windows. The car dipped over the edge of an incline, slid with an even, skimming swiftness down the face of the hill, and then, with a series of small jouncings, crossed the rails of another line. Not knowing or caring where she was, she signaled the conductor to stop, and alighted. She looked round her for an uncertain moment, and then recognized the locality. She was close to the old union Street plaza⁶⁴ on which the Greek Church fronted. Here in the days before her marriage, when she and Hazel had been known as “the pretty Iverson girls,” she had been wont⁶⁵ to come on sunny Sunday mornings and sit on the benches with such beaux as brightened the monotony of that unaspiring period.
 
She felt tired now and thought it would not be a bad idea to cross to the plaza and rest there for a space. She was warmly dressed and her clothes would not be hurt by the damp. Threading her[399] way down the street, she came out on the opening where the little park lies like an unrolled green cloth round which the shabby, gray city crowds.
 
She sank down on the first empty bench, and looking round she saw other dark shapes, having a vague, huddled⁶⁶ appearance, lounging in bunched-up attitudes on the adjacent seats. They seemed preoccupied⁶⁷. It struck her that they, like herself, were plunged⁶⁸ in meditation⁶⁹ on matters which they had sought this damp seclusion⁷⁰ silently to ponder. The only region of activity in the dim, still scene was where some boys were playing under the faintly-defined outline of a large willow⁷¹ tree. They were bending close to the ground in the performance of a game over which periods of quietness fell to be broken by sudden disrupting cries. As Berny took her seat their imp-like shapes, dark and without detail, danced about under the tree in what appeared a fantastic ecstasy⁷², while their cries broke through the woolly thickness of the air with an intimate clearness, strangely at variance⁷³ with the remote effect of their figures.
 
The fact that no one noticed her, or could clearly see her, affected⁷⁴ her as it seemed to have done the other occupants of the benches. She relaxed from her alert sprightliness⁷⁵ of pose, and sank against the back of the seat in the limpness of unobserved indifference⁷⁶. Sitting thus, her eyes on the ground, she heard, at first unheeding,[400] then with a growing sense of attention, footsteps approaching on the gravel⁷⁷ walk. They were the short, quick footsteps of a woman. Berny looked up and saw the woman, a little darker than the atmosphere, emerging from the surrounding grayness, as if she were slowly rising to the surface through water.
 
Her form detached itself gradually from the fog, the effect of deliberation being due to the fact that she was dressed in gray, a long, loose coat and a round hat with a film of veil about it. She would have been a study in monochrome but for the color in the cheek turned to Berny, a glowing, rose-tinted cheek into which the damp had called a pink brighter than any rouge⁷⁸. Berny looked at it with reluctant admiration⁷⁹, and the woman turned and presented her full face, blooming as a flower, to the watcher’s eye. It was Rose Cannon.
 
If in these wan²¹ and dripping surroundings the young girl had not looked so freshly fair and comely⁸⁰, Berny might have let her pass unchecked. But upon the elder woman’s sore and bitter mood the vision of this rosy⁸¹ youthfulness, triumphant⁸² where all the rest of the world sank unprotesting under the weight of a common ugliness, came with a sense of unbearable⁸³ wrong and grievance⁸⁴. As Rose passed, Berny, with a sudden blinding up-rush of excitement, leaned forward and rose.
 
[401]“Miss Cannon,” s............