It was on her way back from Red River that Julie first saw Timothy Bixby. The shopping trips to Red River were always occasions of discomfort to Julie. It was unnerving to her to be shaken out of her accustomed rut of Hart’s Run. Out in the unfamiliar streets of the larger town, she always felt strange and dreadfully conspicuous. Henr’etta Crossman, who had been Henr’etta Wilkinson, Julie’s schoolmate in Hart’s Run, and with whom Julie generally took dinner when she came to Red River, was apt to call jovial attention to Julie’s unhappy self-consciousness. “Come right in to its momma,” she would greet Julie, enfolding her against her large bosom. “Nothing didn’t bite you comin’ up street, did it!” A day in Red River spent in Henr’etta’s society left Julie limp, crushed by the other’s exuberant self-confidence, with all the delicate antennæ of her personality brushed aside, as a butterfly’s wing is brushed by a too rough touch. The day in question was no exception. Indeed, after her wretched night, Julie was more than ever drained of all vitality when she boarded the afternoon train for Hart’s Run, squeezing herself and her bundles down into a seat beside a fat woman with a bulging suit-case. “Henr’etta certainly is kind,” she told herself wearily, “but someway, being with her always makes me feel mighty small, she’s so big and sure of herself. And Red River, too, it always makes me feel like I was out naked in the world. Why,” she thought suddenly, “that’s just what Mrs. Anderson said. She said I was pretty nigh as naked as that little bird, and it’s just the truth!” Halfway down, all the seats on one side of the car were given over to a detachment of men in khaki. They laughed and joked uproariously and burst occasionally into war songs--“We won’t be back ’til it’s over, over there,” and “Keep the home fires burning.” Men in khaki were new and strange phenomena in Julie’s part of the world, and she looked at them curiously. But she was so weary that even they could not engage her interest for long, and closing her eyes, she let herself relax. She could feel the big warm body of the woman beside her heave up and down with each breath. The train was stuffy and hot, filled with disheveled people and fretful children, and over all hung the smell of smoke and cinders and peeled oranges; presently with closed eyes she went almost to sleep in the weary atmosphere. The gray roar of the train pulsed in her ears, making a swaying background of sound before which fantastic thoughts on the verge of dreams spread themselves out. Suddenly, however, against that curtain of sound a woman’s sharp voice detached itself from the other noises and hung for a moment before Julie’s consciousness, as distinct as words on a motion-picture screen. “Yes, it is in there,” the voice said. “It is, too! I put it there myself just a while back!”