They seemed to carry her along with
the restful sweep of a river. She cried, hardly knowing that she cried,
and with no effort to stop the steady current of tears.
And when she presently sat back and dried her eyes, a delicious ease and
relaxation permeated her whole body. Like a convalescent, weak and
trembling, she drew great breaths of air, rejoicing that the devastating
fever and the burning illusions were gone, and only the quiet weeks of
getting well lay before her.
She sat in the church a long time, staring dreamily before her. Odd
thoughts and memories drifted through her mind now: she was again a
little girl of eight, slipping into the delicatessen store in O'Farrell
Street for pickles and pork sausage; now she was a bride, with Jim in
New York, moving through the dappled spring sunlight of Fifth Avenue, on
the top of a rocking omnibus. She thought of the settlement house:
winter rain streaming down its windows, and she and Miss Toland dining
on chops and apple pie, each deep in a book as she ate; and she
remembered Mark, poor Mark, who had crossed her life only to bring
himself bitter unhappiness, and to leave her the sorrow of an
ineffaceable stain!
Only thirty, yet what a long, long road already lay behind her, how much
sorrow, how much joy! What mistakes and cross purposes had been tangled
into her life and Jim's, Mark's and Richie's, Barbara's and Sally's and
Ted's--into all their lives!
"Perhaps that _is_ life," mused Julia, kneeling down to say one more
little prayer before she went away.
Pages:
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626