Finally she fell asleep. The day was far gone when she awoke. She lay for a time staring at the dim arches above her, listening to the night voices she had once loved so passionately. At last she drew a deep sigh. “I might just as well face the truth,” she said aloud. “I’m glad, and that’s the end of it. It’s wicked and I’m sorry; but what is, is, and I can’t help it. We’re not all made alike.” XVIII Patience was once more installed in Lola’s room. Mr. Foord applied for letters of guardianship, which were granted at once. But as he had feared, she was left without a penny. He wrote to his half-sister, asking her if she would take charge of his ward. Miss Tremont replied in enthusiastic affirmation. Miss Galpin invited Patience to spend two weeks with her in San Francisco, offering to replenish the girl’s wardrobe with several of her own old frocks made over. Those two weeks seemed to Patience the mad whirl of excitement of which she had read in novels. She had never seen a city before, and the very cable cars fascinated her. To glide up and down the hills was to her the poetry of science. The straggling city on its hundred hills, the crowded streets and gay shop windows, the theatres, the restaurants, China Town, the beautiful bay with its bare colorous hills, surprised her into admitting that life appeared to be quite well worth living after all. When she returned to Monterey she talked so fast that Mr. Foord clapped his hands to his ears, and Rosita listened with expanded eyes. “Ay, if I could live in San Francisco!” she said, plaintively. “I acted all summer, Patita, but I got tired of the same people, and I want to go to the big theatres and see the real ones do it. I’d like to hear a great big house applauding, only I’d be so jealous of the leading lady.” Patience was to start, immediately after Christmas, by steamer for New York. Mr. Foord spent the last days giving her much good advice. He said little of his own sorrow to part from her. Once he had been tempted to keep her for the short time that remained to him, but had put the temptation aside with the sad resignation of old age. He knew Patience’s imperative need of new impressions in these her plastic years. The day before she left she went over to Carmel to say good-bye to Solomon. He flapped his wings with delight, although he could not see her, and nestled close to her side in a manner quite unlike his haughty habit. Patience thought he looked older and greyer, and his wings had a dejected droop. She took him in her arms with an impulse of tenderness, and this time he did not repulse her.