ing with the happiness of life that her whole being was this morning recklessly atilt.
But that afternoon, at about the hour of three, in the ample suite of rooms high up on the lake side of the Annex, which had been occupied by the Mitchells for a week, there was nothing atilt at all about the soul of Bessie. Her spirits were all a-droop. One single glance around showed that the busy preparation for the European trip had been suspended. Wardrobe trunks stood about on end, their contents gaping, while dresses were draped over screens and chairs and laid out upon beds; but the packers had ceased their work. Mrs. Mitchell, distracted between parental love and the fulfillment of long cherished plans, as well as distressed at the exhibition of petulant and even tearful temper which her daughter had been displaying for an hour, walked restlessly from room to room.
"I tell you, it's California for mine!" that young lady affirmed in school-girlish vernacular, while an impatient foot stamped the floor, a dimpled hand smote wilfully upon the arm of a huge, brocaded satin chair, and the blue swimming eyes burned with a rebellious light.
Neither the language nor the mood would seem to become the beautiful Mistress of Arts; but each testified to the survival of the humanness of the young woman. In justice to her, however, it must be explained that she had not begun this upsetting of father's and mother's and her own cherished plan with impetuous defiances. She had begun gently, with sighs, with remarks about longing for California. She felt so tired; she wished she didn't have to travel now. If she could just go back and walk under the palms and orange trees in dear old Los Angeles; if she could get one great big bite of San Francisco fog, and see a little desert and a mountain or two, before starting out for this junky old Europe, she would be reconciled.
Otherwise, she would not be reconciled. Of course,
