The evening before her departure the last leaf was added to this momentous and miserable Sacramento chapter. Meeting her in the sitting-room, Bart Nelson had detained her and made a halting and bashful offer of marriage. Viola, too stunned by the terrible surprise of the past week to have room for any more astonishment, had listened to him indifferently, and then politely but coldly refused him. The young man seemed to be astonished. He looked at her incredulously. "But--but," he stammered, "what are you going to do?" "I'm going to San Francisco to-morrow," she answered, rather wearily, as she knew he was aware of her purpose. "But what are you going to do when you get there?" "I'm going to work at something." "Work at something! What in the world can you work at? You look as if you hadn't strength enough to grind an organ! You must be crazy." "I can work at anything," she said, almost absently. "Besides, I have money to live on, enough for a long time--several years." He looked at her moodily, amazed by her indifference. "It would be a hundred times better for you to stay here and marry me. I'd take care of you and support you. Ain't that better for a woman than scratching along by herself? Mrs. Seymour says you haven't got a friend in San Francisco." "No; but I don't mind that. I don't want to marry. I don't ever want to." "But isn't it better to have a man to work for you, and give you a nice comfortable home, and--well--of course, be fond of you, and all that--than to go off by yourself, trusting to luck to get work? You don't know what you're in for." "Perhaps I don't. But truly, there's no use talking about it any more. I can't. I couldn't, no matter what happened. It was kind of you to think of me. Thank you, and good-by." When she had gained her own room she stood among her scattered possessions, thinking. No one knew how terrifying her loneliness seemed to her. As she looked out at it now, so close at hand, to begin to-morrow, her heart sickened, and the bleakness of an encompassing world, all strange, all cold, all uncaring, seemed to encircle her. Were not protection, companionship, home, at any price, better than this? She recalled the young man's coarse but good-natured face, his passion shining through the businesslike phlegm of his manner, and uttered a vehement exclamation, at the same time making a gesture as though repulsing him. There were some things that even to a woman in her position were impossible. The next day she started, turning her back on her father's grave, and her face toward the city where she had been born and yet had not a friend.