“Did getting into a rage ever do any good?” she thought desperately, as she sank into her desk chair. Her article lay unnoticed and forgotten by her side, while she sat staring at her scattered papers, trying to decide through the storm that still shook her whether she had not done well in throwing down her gage in defense of her friend. CHAPTER XXI THE MEETING IN THE RAIN “A time to love and a time to hate.” --ECCLESIASTES. It was the afternoon of Edna Willers’ music lesson. Over a week had elapsed since Mariposa’s interview with Essex, yet to-day, as she stood at her window looking out at the threatening sky, her fears of him were as active as ever. Though he had made no further sign, her woman’s intuitions warned her that this was but a temporary lull in his campaign. She was living under an exhausting tension. She went out with the fear of meeting him driving her into unfrequented side streets, and returned, her eyes straining through the foliage of the pepper-tree to watch for a light in the parlor windows. This afternoon, standing at the window drumming on the pane with her finger-tips, she looked at the dun, low-hanging clouds, and thought with shrinking of her walk to Sutter Street, at any turn of which she might meet him. “Well, and if I do?” she said to herself, trying to whip up her dwindling courage, “he can’t do any more than threaten me with telling all he knows. He can’t make a scene on the street proposing to me.” She felt somewhat cheered by these assurances and began putting on her outdoor things. The day was darkening curiously early, she thought, for, though it was not yet four, the long mirror, with its top-heavy gold ornaments, gave back but a dim reflection of her. There had been fine weather for two weeks, and now rain was coming. She put on her long cloak, the enveloping “circular” of the mode which fastened at the throat with a metal clasp, and took her umbrella, a black cotton one, which seemed to her quite elegant enough for a humble teacher of music. A small black bonnet, trimmed with loops of ribbon, crowned her head and showed her rich hair, rippling loosely back from her forehead. The air on the outside was warm and at the same time was softly and stilly humid. There was not a breath of wind, and in this motionless, tepid atmosphere the gardens exhaled moist earth-odors as if breathing out their strength in panting expectation of the rain. From the high places of the city one could see the bay, flat and oily, with its surrounding hills and its circular sweep of houses, a picture in shaded grays. The smoke, trailing lazily upward, was the palest tint in this study in monochrome, while the pall of the sky, leaden and lowering, was the darkest. A faint light diffused itself from the rim of sky, visible round the edges of the pall, and cast an unearthly yellowish gleam on people’s faces.