She was only thirty when she returned, a trifle paler and a few small lines around her mouth, but otherwise a picture of saintliness and loveliness. One of the first bits of news she heard on reaching the valley was of the ignominious end of Lambert Girtin in a Chinese laundryman’s shack–"a promising career cut short," all allowed.
It was shocking to Elsie, as she had dreamed of this young man nearly every night from a certain period of her stay in China. She was on the street during the great quake, and as the earth cracked and swallowed countless victims, she fancied she saw a European, the counterpart of Girtin, plunged into the deadly abyss. She had come home with the intention of learning definite news of him, and if he was not the earthquake victim, and still lived, perhaps to renew their old-time interests.
She had been so upset by his failure to call, or even to write, after the Christmas eve at the little country church, that she had never communicated with him again. Her dreams had been most vividly realistic, as if he had been really near to her in China, and she could not make herself believe that he was dead in Pithole City, Pennsylvania.
Owing to this piece of bad news, she did not remain as long in the valley as she had planned, and almost from the day of her arrival had pined to be back in the Far East. The valley seemed dull, anyway; saw-mills were making it as treeless as China; she hated to see Luther Guisewhite destroy those giant original white pines, which reared their black-topped spiral heads along the foot of the mountains on the winter side; the wild pigeons no longer darkened the sky with their impressive flights, the flying squirrels were being shot out in Fulmer’s Sink, near her old home; her parents were gone–everything was different.
Unsettled and dissatisfied, especially after a visit to the girl who had accompanied her home on the eventful Christmas Eve, now the mother of eight handsome children, she decided to return to China. The vast herds of buffaloes that had impeded the progress of her train on her first journey westward were gone. The Indians who occasionally furnished a touch of color to the prairie landscape, likewise had disappeared. Civilization was spreading through the Great West.
She timed her arrival in San Francisco so as to be there shortly after the arrival[arrival] of a ship from China, so as to go back on its return journey. She would have several days to wait in the City of the Golden Gate but it was quaint and picturesque, the time would pass quickly.
One evening–she was not afraid, as she knew the language and customs of the Celestials–she decided to take a stroll through the famous Chinese Quarter. As she was walking along, her head down, her mind abstracted and noticing little, some one touched her on the arm. Looking around, as if to resent a familiarity, to her bewilderment she beheld her long-lost friend, Lambert Girtin.
“Lambert Girtin!” she said, in amazed tones.
“Elsie Vanneman–it is surely you?” he replied.
“Of all people, after all these years! I had been hearing that you died five years ago in the oil regions somewhere; what are you doing?”