Martha smiled, and standing on her tiptoes kissed her big daughter. Jean went whistling from the room.
When she had gone Martha Norris closed her eyes for a moment and a look of perfect faith and devotion flooded her. In such moments she was beautiful, like some frail saint, glowing with the fire of self-surrender, strengthened beyond the power of human understanding. But no human being had ever seen Martha alone with her God.
The next morning Jean left the house early. The sun touched the Bay to millions of glittering points, and beyond it, wrapped in a haze of smoke and coming heat, the waiting city sprawled on her hills. Jean could feel it, a magnet drawing her and all these strangers massed together on the sunny deck.
As the boat neared the dock she went and stood in the stern and looked back at the little town, a mere spot at the base of the Berkeley hills. In her very definite sense of escape there was a touch of sadness. She was like a person who, having escaped from a terrible catastrophe, looks back from a point of safety and mingles with his sincere gratitude, a regret for some small souvenir he has been unable to take with him. She thought of Elsie in her dragging kimono waiting on Tom at breakfast; of the dead, habitual kiss they would exchange when he started to look for the job he never found; of Tommykins, bewildered in his disordered world of alternate slapping and petting. And of her mother, trotting about in her endless routine. She was sorry for them all.
Waiting in the outer office of the Chief Librarian, Jean felt the Future coming towards her, stepping swiftly through the stillness, a stillness vibrant with accomplished purpose, the secure accomplishment of many thousands of books. So sharp was the feeling that, when at last footsteps moved behind the door marked "Private," Jean rose as if about to face a mysterious force, made suddenly material for her understanding.
"This is Miss Norris?"
The Chief Librarian stood before her. He was tall and thin and gray, with long bony hands that looked as if they would always be cold. He was like a new chisel, straight and narrow and sharp-edged. He waved Jean back to her seat and took one himself. Then he sat, staring beyond her, as if his progress through the silent realms of spirit had been rudely halted by this collision with a corporeal body.
"You've done library work before?" The question came so unexpectedly that Jean started.
"No." The monosyllable reverberated through the ordered stillness. She felt as if she had thrown a stone at the Chief Librarian.
"Um." In the mental isolation of his daily life, this misfortune arrested his pity. "I believe you did some Latin translation for Dr. Renshaw?"