They were at the gang-plank, across it, on the deck of the steamer now, in the packed crowd. All around them were tears and laughter, kisses, farewells. She was shaking hands again. Miss Peterson, the stenographer from the "Post," was pressing a white package into her hands; two little girls from Telegraph Hill had come down to bring a hot, wilted bunch of weed-flowers; Mary O'Brien, from the settlement house she had written about, and others, acquaintances she had hardly remembered, men with whom she had danced at the Press Club—"Oh, Mr. Clark! How good of you to come—! Good-by!—Good-by!" "Hope you have a fine trip." "Oh, thank you!—Thank you!—Good-by!"
The whistle blew; the crowd eddied about her. A last hug from Sara, tremulous kisses, Willetta's damp cheek pressed against hers, a sob in her throat. The last visitors were being hurried from the ship. Some one threw a bright paper ribbon, curling downward to the wharf. Another and another, scores of them, hundreds, sped through the sunshine, interlacing, caught by the crowd below, while others rose in long curves to the deck, till the steamer was bound to the shore by their rainbow colors.
Another whistle. Slowly, with a faint quivering of its great hulk, the ship awoke, became a living thing beneath her feet. The futile, bright strands parted, one by one, curled, fell into the water. The crowd below was a blur of white faces. Brushing her hand across her eyes, she found her own little group, Willetta, Anne, Sara, close together, waving handkerchiefs. Across the widening strip of water she waved her roses, waved and waved them till the docks were blots of gray and she could no longer see the answering flutter of white. The ship was slowly turning in the stream, heading out through the Golden Gate.
When the last sight of the dear gray city was lost, when the Ferry Tower, the high cliffs of Telegraph, the castle-like height of Russian Hill, the Presidio, Cliff House, the beach, had sunk into grayness on the horizon, she went down to her stateroom. It was piled with gifts, long striped boxes that held flowers, baskets of fruit, square silver-corded packages that spoke of bonbons, others large and small. She had not known that so many people cared.
A blind impulse had brought her into this little place where she could lock a door behind her and be alone. She had felt that she could give way there to all the tears she had not shed. But she felt only a sense of peace. She laughed a little, wiping away the few tears that did brim over her lashes, thinking of the girls who still loved her and would love her wherever she was.
Deliberately she thought of Paul, and already the deep hurt was gone. He would be reading her letter now; she felt a pang of sharp pain because she had made him suffer. But he would forget her now. In time there would be another girl, such a girl as she had been,—the girl he had loved and that no longer lived in her.
"That's why it hurt me so!" she thought, with sudden illumination. "Not because I wanted him, but because I wanted to be all that I had been, and to have all that I have missed and never will have. Marriage and home and children. No, I can't ever fit into it now. But—there's all the world, all the world, outside, waiting for me!"
Her thoughts turned forward to it.
THE END