"What _is_ it, Mother?" asked the little girl again.
"Nothing!" Julia said then, in a sort of shallow whisper, with a caught
breath.
A second later she kissed the child hastily, and went quietly out of the
green gate which had so lately closed upon Jim. She went as
unquestioningly as an automaton moved by some irresistible power; not
only was all doubt gone from her mind, but all responsibility seemed
also shed.
The street was almost deserted, but Julia saw Jim instantly, a full
block away, and walking resolutely, if slowly. She drifted silently
after him, not knowing why she followed, nor what she would say when
they met, but conscious that she must follow and that they would meet.
Jim walked to Eighteenth Street, turned north, and Julia, reaching the
corner, was in time to see him entering the shabby old church where they
had been married eight years ago. And instantly a blinding vertigo, a
suffocating rush of blood to her heart, made her feel weak and cold with
the sudden revelation that the hour of change had come.
She climbed the dreary, well-remembered stairs slowly, and slipped into
one of the last pews, in the shadow of a gallery pillar.
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